"Get your ass on the corner and start making my money ho!"

March 8, 2009 7:09 PM

Why do prostitutes go to street corners?

This doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe I am missing something. Is it just a myth (what I am suspecting)? If so where did this myth come from?

Prostitution is illegal in 98% of this country, even where it is legal it's heavily regulated, so why would prostitutes go to corners? They are out in the open and cops could see them, or someone may report them to the authorities.

Can someone shed some light on this?

posted by sixcolors to society & culture (30 comments total)

The title was a quote from a snoop doggy dog cartoon/video/parody that someone made up, a few years ago.
posted by sixcolors at 7:13 PM on March 8, 2009

so why would prostitutes go to corners? They are out in the open and cops could see them, or someone may report them to the authorities.

Because they're desperate, probably an addict and subservient to a pimp who will fuck them up worse than the cops. Streetwalking prostitutes are more miserable than you literally can imagine, apparently.
posted by Mayor Curley at 7:14 PM on March 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

First, MOST prostitution isn't on the street corner. You watch too much TV.

Second, places where prostitutes do "walk the streets" are not the same white-bread, well lit, well patrolled corners you're familiar with. There are entire sections of every metropolitan area in the country where the police don't go, where people don't call the cops, where desperate women, with no other opportunities, can and do get by in this fashion.

Further, prostitution is an action, not a status. Informal prostitution makes up the majority. These women slip into and out of this illegal profession as needed.
posted by wfrgms at 7:15 PM on March 8, 2009 [15 favorites]

Traffic (and thus potential income) comes from twice as many directions as it does in the middle of the block. Same for drug dealers.
posted by paisley henosis at 7:16 PM on March 8, 2009 [8 favorites]

ll if they're going to be on the street, a corner offers twice as much passing traffic as any other part of the street. as to the risk of getting caught, well that's part and parcel of being a prostitute yeah?
posted by onya at 7:17 PM on March 8, 2009

Because they're desperate, probably an addict and subservient to a pimp who will fuck them up worse than the cops.

And quite possibly homeless, or functionally homeless.
posted by game warden to the events rhino at 7:17 PM on March 8, 2009

There are entire sections of every metropolitan area in the country where the police don't go,

Or where the cops go, but (literally( look the other way. There's a corner in Hollywood I drive by on a regular basis where prostitutes occasionally hang out (right in front of a donut shop, so you can insert your own joke here about how frequently the cops actually stop by).
posted by scody at 7:19 PM on March 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

ugh, stupid reversed parenthesis.
posted by scody at 7:20 PM on March 8, 2009

People meet on corners. Sending the message that you're "just standing there waiting for someone," works as cover as well as advertising.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 7:26 PM on March 8, 2009

They are out in the open and cops could see them

Generally where prostitution is prohibited the police collude either by selective inaction or by active participation/corruption. The policing of the sex trade is more often enforcement of territories eg. "respectable" areas and "red light" districts.
Let me rephrase this very odd askme question:
"Why did a few 1990s rappers make the aggressive, misanthropic lingo of prostitution such a strong part of their repertoire?"
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:26 PM on March 8, 2009 [3 favorites]

Second, places where prostitutes do "walk the streets" are not the same white-bread, well lit, well patrolled corners you're familiar with. There are entire sections of every metropolitan area in the country where the police don't go, where people don't call the cops, where desperate women, with no other opportunities, can and do get by in this fashion.

Man, you've never been to downtown Philly between Walnut and Pine, 13th and 10th. On any given night, there were at least a dozen tranny hookers walking the street. The same area with tourists wandering around between having antiquing, having supper, and going to the clubs.

They do occasionally get busted or fucked up by the cops. But, they mostly have plausible deniability. They don't get busted because, during the period that the cops see them, they aren't doing anything illegal but loitering. It requires undercover work to bust them. And since the ho's just gonna be back on the street after she's out of jail, there's not a lot of point in wasting the undercover resources on that.
posted by Netzapper at 7:31 PM on March 8, 2009

When a cop looks at them, the women are just women standing on the street. Yeah, the cop might *know* that the women are there to pick up johns, but they have no proof. Converting their action (standing on the street) into an illegal activity requires an affirmative action on the woman's part (approaching a car and bargaining on price/sexual act). Until that conversion occurs, there's been no crime (unless loitering is illegal on that street corner).

Paisley Henosis and Onya have it: at a street corner, there's twice the traffic. There's also, usually, a stoplight/stop sign that gives a john a reason to stop. Also, many street corners are also bus stops so if a cop does harass a woman there, she can claim she's waiting for the bus.
posted by LOLAttorney2009 at 7:32 PM on March 8, 2009 [2 favorites]

Okay, so I live in a neighbourhood with several prostitutes around. Here's what I have observed of their activities.

I think paisley henosis has a good answer -- high-traffic areas are good. There are two sets of prostitutes in my neighbourhood: some hang around in front of a big, fairly nice hotel wearing sparkly boots and flashy clothes (not on a street corner), and the others dress a bit more low-key (though there is the occasional weather-inappropriate miniskirt, or excessively tight jeans or something) and walk slowly/loiter down the block. They don't technically stand right on the street corner, but there's a corner nearby.

In my area, prostitutes are especially conspicuous during morning rush hour Mon-Fri (I used to often find myself standing next to one while waiting for the bus to go to work.) I assume this is because of the increased traffic. There is also more traffic, and more prostitutes, on my street on Friday and Saturday nights after dark.

My neighbourhood is not very nice. The cops are a frequent presence, and I've seen a few people getting arrested, but none of them were prostitutes. Honestly, I think soliciting is a low priority for the cops, compared to other things going on. Unless someone is actively causing a disturbance for others, they seem to leave them alone.

I've once or twice seen a very obviously high and/or drunk prostitute staggering down the street, but it's rare. They tend to keep quiet and don't bother anybody, beyond just walking slowly down the block to attract car interest. While they're working, there always seems to be someone waiting for them in a car nearby, as a lookout, so I assume they hop in the car and drive off at the first sign of police interest, in any event.
posted by peggynature at 7:32 PM on March 8, 2009

The hooker "strolls" that are closest to my house are also bus stops, giving plausible deniability if need be. The difference being that instead of waiting for the bus the hookers usually make eye contact with passing motorists and drivers can offer the poor stranded girls a ride also with plausible deniability if being set up.
These are in industrial areas so no homeowners are directly affected. The same corners have been hooker corners for at least thirty years, so it's obviously a system that works.
posted by readery at 7:35 PM on March 8, 2009

There's a little more at the wikipedia entry, including a link (at note 3) to an a recent in-depth study of street-based prostitution in New York as well as some other external links, which should further dispel your notion that it's "just a myth."
posted by scody at 7:39 PM on March 8, 2009 [2 favorites]

Oh, I nearly forgot: I have also been mistaken for a prostitute, merely by walking down my street after dark. I was wearing a heavy winter coat and jeans, had uncombed hair, and no makeup. I'm fat, dress modestly, and look quite plain when not making a special effort. The guy in the car was mortified (and disappointed) when I gave him a WTF, and he sped off.

So it's not like all prostitutes are doing really obviously hookerish things in order to get customers, things for which they could be arrested. A lot of them look just like me, a normal, dumpy lady walking down the street after dark. The context, though (meaning the stretch of street I was walking and the time of night) signaled that I was "working." The plausible deniability that other commenters are bringing up is likely the major factor in why prostitutes aren't arrested on sight.
posted by peggynature at 7:46 PM on March 8, 2009

Oh, I nearly forgot: I have also been mistaken for a prostitute, merely by walking down my street after dark. I was wearing a heavy winter coat and jeans, had uncombed hair, and no makeup. I'm fat, dress modestly, and look quite plain when not making a special effort. The guy in the car was mortified (and disappointed) when I gave him a WTF, and he sped off.

Me too, when I was in the Gayborhood. He was kinda cute, though, so I considered it.
posted by Netzapper at 7:48 PM on March 8, 2009

And I don't mean to sound blase about it being a system that works, because for the women, it doesn't. This is the lowest rung of the sex trade. They are treated as human garbage, by johns and cops alike. I volunteered in a program that was a halfway house for prostitues coming put of prison that were willing to go thru drug programs and whatever else it took to become self sufficient; get a GED and/or basic job training. Their goal was often to get reunited with their kids. All had childhood stories rife with abuse. The recidivism rate was over 75% - these are very damaged people.
posted by readery at 7:49 PM on March 8, 2009 [1 favorite]

I find that corners are somewhat well utilized in my neighborhood for all sorts of illicit activity. I think that because so many people hang out on corners, it provides a cover. Also, there's more traffic. Finally, it's less "directly in front of a house" than many other areas of the street.

Having said that, the actual go-to places for street prostitutes are in business districts whose shops are frequently closed at night. So people can just walk up and down the street without too much concern.

I also lived for a few years across the street from a prostitute. She even bought some of my clothes at a garage sale and so I'd see her working the corner in my clothes. Kind of odd.
posted by bunnie at 7:51 PM on March 8, 2009 [3 favorites]

That's where the streetlights and pay phones are.

It doesn't look weird when cars stop there.

Little stores are often right there the on corners.

If there's trouble, more directions to walk away from it.
posted by fleacircus at 8:23 PM on March 8, 2009

why do firemen fundraising with a boot go to corners and on ramps? why do the high school cheerleaders do car washes near corners? why do people sell puppies near corners? people stop at lights and have time to think about handing over money.
posted by nadawi at 8:28 PM on March 8, 2009

I used to live in a neighborhood that had a lot of prostitues. (One time I counted 15 that I could see from my window. Not sure if there was a convention or not.)

While some place nearby would have women on the corner, this secret had them in the middle. Why? Because there was a section about 4 car-lengths with no parking and several street lights. This would let Johns see the merchandise clearly and pull over out of traffic to negotiate. I would say that in general street corners are the same. They are well lit and people can stop easily.

And it's really no problem being visible as a prostitute, partially because, as said a woman on a corner is only a prostitute if she takes money for sex, though when they see a cop car they do tend to got for a short stroll to avoid harassment. But also because they just don't prosecute them here. They go after the Johns because they're much easier to arrest and no one feels too bad about harassing them, unlike the the street walkers who are probably already in bad shape. (Source: And episode of Cops that spent an evening busting Johns in the same well lit place across the street from my apartment. The parked a van around the corner and were booking guys in it all night.)
posted by Ookseer at 9:00 PM on March 8, 2009

Because they're desperate, probably an addict and subservient to a pimp who will fuck them up worse than the cops.

While this is certainly true in many cases, women kept in crack houses as "house girls" or confined to illegal brothels are often in more danger or in more desperate straits than women on the streets. (I was just reading about this very topic a few days ago in a fascinating sociological study available on Google Books. I'll post again if I remember the title.)

If the woman is the victim of human trafficking kept in an AMP (Asian Massage Parlor) or worse, the danger intensifies.

Legal brothels as done in Nevada pose their own problems that we rarely discuss. Counties restrict the civil liberties of prostitutes working in "legal brothels" to the extent that those with brothels regulate the times of day a prostitute may be in public places, the types of public places she may enter and with whom, and in at least one case, prohibit prostitutes from working in the same county in which her family resides. Whether these women, working three week contracts nonstop before usually drifting on, have it better or worse than streetwalkers, is an interesting question.

Unfortunately the state of research on prostitution in the US is miserable. Much more research from many fields is needed, but the assumption that streetwalking = rock bottom is not always accurate. Whether streetwalking is more or less dangerous than other forms of prostitution depends on time and place and how much choice a woman has in her working conditions.

In my work on Occupied Japan, for instance, I found that women who walked the streets earned more, kept more, and relied on another to fend off pimps. They had far more autonomy than I had imagined. Women in official or semi-official brothels intended for use of Japanese men or US GIs had virtually no protection or recourse to the law for many reasons (which my book-to-eventually-be-published will explain!).

That was a specific period in a specific place, and a reminder that prostitutes work in a lot of ways that are bound by culture and politics.
posted by vincele at 9:17 PM on March 8, 2009 [7 favorites]

It's not corners in my experience; it's bus stops and mid block areas, and generally the women wear fairly showy clothing.

Here's how the whole thing works in Berkeley / Oakland, judging by the approach two different people used in trying to pick me up Friday night. Someone walks down the main drag. A car passes, then pulls over to the curb about a block ahead and waits. Or, they drive by a bit slowly, gesturing "get in" towards the back seat just after passing, once they're in view of the walker. Then they turn onto a side street and wait.

Appearance apparently doesn't make that much difference because my brisk walk, jeans and puffy jacket, and "leave me the hell alone I just had to deal with other people for six hours straight" attitude didn't get me eliminated from consideration. Another feature of the trade seems to be that johns are stupid enough that they don't realize that you probably ignored them and/or crossed the street the first five times they drove by you because you don't want to get in. The "shoo" gesture I tried only got more vigorous "get in" gesturing. (Maybe I should have tried the direct WTF approach that peggynature did.)
posted by salvia at 9:30 PM on March 8, 2009

Because people know to look for them there?
posted by paultopia at 11:53 PM on March 8, 2009

Behind the Eight Ball by Tanya Telfair Sharpe discusses streetwalking vs. working in a crack house, beginning around page 70. The book has limited preview on Google Books. It's the title I could not recall in my earlier comment.
posted by vincele at 12:32 AM on March 9, 2009 [3 favorites]

I've had a little contact with a couple of 'street walkers' a few years ago. By and large they seemed to avoid the obvious classifications (drug addict, homeless, etc). But then again this is New Zealand. It was also before 'legalisation' but even then there were very well known locations for street prostitution and very overt massage parlours.

Since legalisation street prostitution has decreased a lot, and those who remain are reported to be safer and healthier (although a recent murder threw up a lot of debate about it).

Here legalisation hasn't had the negative outcomes vincele mentioned above. Beyond various health and safety regulations and zoning restrictions there are no limits on what a prostitute may do in their own time.
posted by sycophant at 12:37 AM on March 9, 2009

Standing on a corner gives one options, both in terms of spotting clients and spotting cops/pimps/trouble etc. It's a job where you want as few surprises as possible, so being able to see in several directions at once makes sense.

Most prostitution these days seems to be moving to the web, be it high end professions or simple craigslist.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:10 AM on March 9, 2009

Perhaps they go to corners because it's a good place to find clientele:

"But the corner is, and it was, and it always will be the poor man's lounge. It's where a man wants to be on a hot summer's night. It's cheaper than a bar, you catch a nice breeze, you watch the girls go by."
-- The Wire, Season 3, Episode 2: "All Due Respect"
posted by jbrjake at 8:47 AM on March 9, 2009

In the UK we don't tend to have grid street systems so street corners don't really figure so much. In the high traffic red light district I lived in there were a few well defined areas on to roads close to each other that could be driven in a loop so visibility, and hence trade were still important . One area was on a main road, another on a road off it that led to a motorway. However at busy times (early morning generally) and when there was police activity it would be displaced into the quieter surrounding residential streets.

It was common to find women soliciting near street corners however. Typically they would talk/make eye contact with punters on the main drag then insist that they pull up the car round the corner. Soliciting is illegal in the UK so I would guess this is to make it less visible.

The general obviousness seemed to depend largely on police activity, though this had little impact on actual numbers, though it did seem to increase the incidence of clueless punters propositioning people at random. My flat mate who had a severe spinal deformation, used crutches to get everywhere and dressed like the anarchist punk she was would get propositioned so I can only guess extreme stupidity, desperation or both. I lived in the area for a while and got to be on nodding acquaintance with some of the regulars (I cycled everywhere so was never taken as a punter with any seriousness, though occasionally jokingly). There was very rarely any trouble, save from having to dole out first aid and cups of tea to the women form the brothel across the road when she got beaten up by her pimp, though the occasional glance I got of the way punters would eye women up and down would send shivers up my spine.
posted by tallus at 4:17 PM on March 9, 2009 [1 favorite]