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How to tell a secret brothel from the outside.

Started by Icehaven, March 28, 2018, 06:55:34 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

buttgammon

Quote from: manticore on March 28, 2018, 10:45:05 PM
In 1982 I was taken on a tour of Chapeltown, Leeds by the local man-about-town, and he pointed out houses with dolls displayed in the windows and said they were brothels. There were quite a few of them.

I doubt this of any help to you.

I wonder if this is a universal symbol for a brothel?

Those of us familiar with the Wrexham area may recall the "house with the dolls" on the Ruthin Road just outside Coedpoeth - now, that's a very out of the way brothel indeed!

There's a similar rumour in Dublin about properties that have a white statue of a reclining woman in the window (these are a common sight, especially in blocks of flats in the inner city). I doubt they're brothels; they are so ubiquitous that I reckon they come with the property in certain council premises. There's one block next to the tramline by James' Hospital where almost every window has one, which either means this is an enormous brothel or there is a more innocent explanation.

paruses

Not that I'm going to drop in but Coedpoeth? Really? Maybe Ricky Tomlinson is a regular, poor girls.

It's got quite a swish new Spa now, though so maybe I will pop into both on the way home at the weekend.

Gregory Torso

A lot of brothels in China are disguised as hairdressers. You know because you walk in, looking for a haircut like, and there's a middle aged woman in a miniskirt looking at you, nothing on the shelves, she's not even got a pair of scissors. And you sit in the chair and she starts stroking your arm and brings you a menu of sex stuff. I didn't know, when I'd only been here about a month, and went in to one and demanded a haircut. Shittest haircut I've ever had, and I wondered why the hairdresser was so angry.

Zero Gravitas

Quote from: buttgammon on March 28, 2018, 11:50:38 PM
There's a similar rumour in Dublin about properties that have a white statue of a reclining woman in the window (these are a common sight, especially in blocks of flats in the inner city). I doubt they're brothels; they are so ubiquitous that I reckon they come with the property in certain council premises. There's one block next to the tramline by James' Hospital where almost every window has one, which either means this is an enormous brothel or there is a more innocent explanation.



Weird.

buttgammon

^Very curious to see that the statue has a Wikipedia page of its own, and also that it evidently isn't produced by the council. I've never noticed one outside Dublin City (I live in South Dublin council area and have never spotted one here), so I assumed it may be something to do with that. They do seem especially prominent around James' and The Liberties, but I've seen them all over inner-city Dublin really.

Quote from: paruses on March 28, 2018, 11:53:56 PM
Not that I'm going to drop in but Coedpoeth? Really? Maybe Ricky Tomlinson is a regular, poor girls.

It's got quite a swish new Spa now, though so maybe I will pop into both on the way home at the weekend.

A Spa? In Coedpoeth? This does sound interesting/potentially dodgy; do they do massages by any chance? I think I have just discovered that village is a hotbed of prostitution...

BlodwynPig


paruses

Quote from: buttgammon on March 29, 2018, 12:05:14 AM
^Very curious to see that the statue has a Wikipedia page of its own, and also that it evidently isn't produced by the council. I've never noticed one outside Dublin City (I live in South Dublin council area and have never spotted one here), so I assumed it may be something to do with that. They do seem especially prominent around James' and The Liberties, but I've seen them all over inner-city Dublin really.

A Spa? In Coedpoeth? This does sound interesting/potentially dodgy; do they do massages by any chance? I think I have just discovered that village is a hotbed of prostitution...

I feel terrible now - a Spa shop (or is it Spar? It's Spar isn't it?). Still, it is quite nice and you wouldn't mind a handjob off a couple of the staff - or one of the women who works in the Shell garage.

buttgammon

Quote from: paruses on March 29, 2018, 12:09:40 AM
I feel terrible now - a Spa shop (or is it Spar? It's Spar isn't it?). Still, it is quite nice and you wouldn't mind a handjob off a couple of the staff - or one of the women who works in the Shell garage.

Haha! I didn't even know they had a Spar, to be honest! A big trade-up compared to when I was last there, anyway.

paruses

Quote from: buttgammon on March 29, 2018, 12:05:14 AM
^Very curious to see that the statue has a Wikipedia page of its own, and also that it evidently isn't produced by the council. I've never noticed one outside Dublin City (I live in South Dublin council area and have never spotted one here), so I assumed it may be something to do with that. They do seem especially prominent around James' and The Liberties, but I've seen them all over inner-city Dublin really.

Also - I am finding this statue thing very creepy - I've not noticed them South side but I'll keep an eye out now. Will also make discrete enquiries at work to see how widespread the urban myth (?) is.

wosl


Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: paruses on March 29, 2018, 12:09:40 AM
or one of the women who works in the Shell garage.

It'd be a pretty loveless experience if you turned up late at night and she had to administer it through the night tray thing.

Zero Gravitas

Looks like standard european commercial space to me.



Sebastian Cobb

yeah the shard is just a massive brasshouse.

buttgammon

Quote from: paruses on March 29, 2018, 12:12:27 AM
Also - I am finding this statue thing very creepy - I've not noticed them South side but I'll keep an eye out now. Will also make discrete enquiries at work to see how widespread the urban myth (?) is.

Right, I've asked my girlfriend (a native Dub) about this and she sent me a link to this article. It sounds like it's a cheap statue made by a place called Dublin Mouldings, and it means different things to different people. Some people are instant that it signifies a brothel, but others will say there is no meaning to it at all. It's one of those things that is very hard to get to the bottom of, which tells me there is more than a small element of urban myth to it. The article suggests this too:

QuoteA couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a friend on the internet about the article I was researching about, as we vernacularly knew her at that point, the White Lady of Cabra. "I heard they signify brothels," he said in the chat window. I decided to play along. "Yeah, it turns out 80% of houses in the Liberties are brothels. Pretty much anything not rented to a student or an artist," I responded. "Worrying, in the sense of how many were trafficked," he said, bringing an awkward level of conscientiousness to the conversation. I continued anyway: "Houses that have two or three statues are known as 'double' or even 'triple' brothels."

The penny drops. "Are you joking?" he asks. I accuse him of classism. He says something telling about the whole situation: "It's not classism, it's just some lad told me and I believed him. And then I saw one or two statues and thought 'huh'." That's how myths start.

So, it has no single meaning and various myths have spread about it, but this still leaves the question of how this mundane (and, frankly, rather ugly) statue became so commonplace in certain parts of Dublin. I'm also curious as to how localised this is, because I swear I've never seen one outside certain parts of the centre of Dublin.

Zero Gravitas

Honestly it just sounds like one of those working class solidarity signifiers like naming your child after a footballer, owning a single occupancy child sized trampoline, or attaching your television directly to the wall.

wosl

The fact that they're all positioned underneath blinds that appear to have expressly been left in the half-drawn position is curious.  Also, why have that many displayed in one building?  Do they come in groups, like Staffordshire dogs?

St_Eddie

You can usually spot a secret brothel by identifying a woman in fishnet stockings, stood outside of a building, shouting "this is a secret brothel!".  At that point, if you're still not sure whether it's a secret brothel or not, then look for a 20ft billboard, adorned with the words 'yes, this is definitely a secret brothel!'.  It's a subtle code but 8 out of 10 times, these signs are confirmation of a secret brothel.

Oops! Wrong Planet

Quote from: buttgammon on March 29, 2018, 12:05:14 AM
A Spa? In Coedpoeth? This does sound interesting/potentially dodgy; do they do massages by any chance? I think I have just discovered that village is a hotbed of prostitution...

Coedpoeth is Welsh for hot wood, it all adds up.

JoeyBananaduck

There was one where I used to live - literally a black door in the wall on the other side of a non-descript small warehouse looking building. I think the door had numbers on it, 23 or something. I assumed it was a side entrance for the reception of some boring double glazing co. or something, but a conversation in a pub informed me otherwise.

My grandparents flat building in the late 90s apparently housed one too. Whether that was one sex worker working independently or they'd taken over an entire floor or what I don't know. It was a spacious and sparsely occupied building so either could be true.

kalowski

There's one in Northenden in Manchester (or was, it may have gone now). It was a shop front- you couldn't see what was inside (women having sex for money, apparently). But once you knew, it was obvious. I remember cycling past once and seeing a bloke come out walking as fast as he possibly could whilst looking at the ground.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

That's a tough moment for any gay man in fairness.

You can tell one from the fact its signs just simply offers Massage, and not any other therapeutic services, or info about the practitioner's qualifications.

notjosh

Supposedly shoes hanging over telegraph wires is a sign that you can buy drugs there (the reason this works so well is because policemen aren't allowed to look up). Maybe look for a used condom dangling off a street lamp, that might be a clue.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: notjosh on March 29, 2018, 07:42:01 AM
Supposedly shoes hanging over telegraph wires is a sign that you can buy drugs there (the reason this works so well is because policemen aren't allowed to look up). Maybe look for a used condom dangling off a street lamp, that might be a clue.

Luckily the police have never found this out in decades despite having more access to users and dealers than almost any group, and even if they did find out, the idea of staking a location out in an unmarked car from across the street would literally never occur to them.

Paul Calf

Well, it's not as though the police don't know where - and largely who - the dealers are anyway.

Uncle TechTip

There's a massage parlour on Brook Street in Chester and you can tell they offer handjobs because it's scruffy and in-between a bookies and a kebab shop and who the fuck would go there just for a massage?

Edit: basically a less sophisticated version of what Phoenix said.

Uncle TechTip


Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: Uncle TechTip on March 29, 2018, 08:07:56 AM
There's a massage parlour on Brook Street in Chester and you can tell they offer handjobs because it's scruffy and in-between a bookies and a kebab shop and who the fuck would go there just for a massage?

Gary Pallister

Ornlu

I used to live in the flat underneath one in central Manchester. Blinds always drawn, lone middle-aged South-East Asian lady resident, and a succession of shifty older men spied walking up the stairs through our peephole. She was lovely.