San Diego's Adult Entertainment Online

A generation ago, there were many strip clubs in San Diego.  Along
with seedy adult bookstores with blacked-out windows, they stayed on
the fringes and mostly maintained low keyed existences.. 

Today, San Diego’s  sex industry has blended into the larger economy
while maintaining a very private existence through the internet. 

Strip clubs are glitzy and more upscale, and their owners are trying
to create an atmosphere attractive to both men and women.
Additionally, the newer adult bookstores look more like Barnes &
Noble outlets than dank outposts of sin. Porno theaters have mostly
been replaced by the Internet and adult videos, which offer anonymity
and staggering variety. 

Even prostitution has reinvented itself, as the women who have long
roamed El Cajon Boulevard increasingly compete with San Diego escort
services that advertise on the Internet. 

All of this adds up to big business. How big is anyone's guess,
because the adult entertainment businesses in San Diego are all
privately held. No government agency can calculate with any certainty
how much the various branches of the industry bring into the local
economy. Even the police have no estimate of the industry's economic
scope. 

Globally, the porn industry is an estimated $10 billion business.
According to Adult Video News, the pornographic video industry's
leading trade magazine, an estimated $800 million a year is spent on
erotic-video rentals alone. 

Industry insiders say San Diego County's strip clubs take in about
$20 million in combined revenue. Adult bookstores take in about $25
million, they say.  Together, these businesses outpace ticket
receipts for the Chargers football team, which totaled close to $35.8
million for the 2002-03 season. And they outdraw the San Diego Opera
and San Diego Symphony, which have ticket sales of about $9 million a
year combined.  Millions more are made by a slew of Internet porn
sites with San Diego roots and by the area's thriving online escort
industry. Additionally, there are massage parlors, gay bathhouses,
swing clubs, sex toy makers, lingerie modeling stores, film
distributors and movie production houses that call San Diego County
home. 

Like much of San Diego's economy, the adult sex industry here has
benefited from its proximity to LA.  Nonetheless, San Diego's sex
business pales in comparison with those of other major cities like LA
and Vegas, where strip clubs can make as much in a month as a San
Diego club does in a year. 

And while the sex industry has its place in San Diego's culture, it
isn't as accepted here as it is in places such as Atlanta or Houston,
where politicians seem more able to set aside moral objections and
appreciate the tax dollars. 

In San Diego and surrounding cities, zoning and other regulations
have limited clubs from opening, and bookstores and other
adult-entertainment venues often face legal battles with city
governments and citizens groups. 

San Diego imposed a no-touch rule at strip clubs that outlawed the
popular lap dancing and cut into the clubs' profits. San Diego Vice
officers  also says those rule are to apply top private entertainers
or escorts whether they are in your home or hotel room. Efforts to
overturn the ban were at the center of the ongoing San Diego City
Hall scandal that involved FBI wiretaps and accusations of bribery
against three City Council members, Ralph Inzunza, Michael Zucchet
and the late Charles Lewis a few years ago.

Skirmishes over regulating the sex industry ignore the larger
cultural transformation of the past 40 years. Things that were once
considered s
candalous are now commonplace. 
Tim Connelly, editor of Adult Video News, said Hustler stores are a
prime example of the sex industry's evolution.  "The Hustler stores
are doing phenomenal business," he said. "They are beautiful. They
are cleaner than Starbucks, and they have better coffee, too." 

Gaslamp Area of Downtown San Diego

No part of San Diego reflects the changes in the sex industry more
than downtown. For much of the last century, the area vexed civic
leaders determined to make it a more family-friendly entertainment
stop. 

"Twenty years ago, downtown was, in a word, seedy," said Lt. Robb
Hurt, head of San Diego's vice squad. "Strip clubs were everywhere on
lower Broadway and Fifth Avenue. It is not the same place. I can't
believe this great plaza and fountains. I remember when we were
dragging prostitutes out of that area." 

Escorts and Prostitution 

Now escorts/prostitutes are just as likely to be found in an Internet
or Yellow Pages ad as on a street corner. They work under the guise
of escort services, and are far more expensive than the average
street-corner prostitute, charging a minimum of $150 an hour whether
they have sex with their client or not. 

The police have registered more than 200 escorts in San Diego to
monitor those who legitimately work as paid companions. But the
number of the city's escorts who are paid for sex could well be in
the thousands, said San Diego vice Sgt. Mark Sullivan. 

Sullivan said it is impossible to track the number because many don't
operate out of San Diego. Known as "circuit girls," these women can
live anywhere, setting up appointments via the Web and catching a
plane to meet their clients. 

Escort businesses remain at least superficially legitimate by making
the women independent contractors and operating under a "don't ask,
don't tell" policy. The owners of the services say they are simply
schedulers and only hire women to spend time with clients. 

It is difficult for vice officers to suppress smiles when they hear
that line. 

"Our position is that there are very few legitimate escorts in San
Diego," Sullivan said. "As a rule, guys will not pay for a nude
entertainer to just come and dance." 

Web sex 

Perhaps nothing has done more to transform the sex business than the
Internet. Its speed, privacy and infinite scope are tailor-made for
purveying pornography. 

According to Websense, a local company that tracks Internet content,
the number of porn sites is 17 times greater than it was four years
ago, growing from about 88,000 sites in 2000 to nearly 1.6 million
today. 

Of this global business, San Diego has an important sliver, said Bob
Rice, who left the bar business seven years ago to become a local
adult Internet entrepreneur. 

Rice considers San Diego County to be one of the nation's hubs for
Internet porn, ranking it a seven on a scale of 10, with an estimated
300 to 400 Internet sites. They range from small amateur sites to
porn industry pioneers. 

The reason for San Diego's popularity as an adult Internet hub has to
do with geography and the region's heavy concentration of Net-savvy
people. When asked why they're here, most adult webmasters offer the
same response as many waiters, accountants and construction workers:
"Why not sunny San Diego?" 

A more important reason may be Bustyamateurs.com. The infamous site
of Internet porn's pioneer days was started in San Diego and employed
many of the people who have gone on to start their own sites. 

In its heyday, Bustyamateurs raked in as much as six figures a week,
former employees estimate. The site was taken down when its founder
discovered religion. But its staffers, grown accustomed to easy
money, went out on their own and have started up more than a dozen
sites with local ties. 

However, the days when a computer geek could post a few racy pictures
on the Web and become a millionaire are long gone, said David
Quitmeyer, who operates five adult sites. 

Quitmeyer said he totals about $3,000 a month from subscriptions as
well as commissions he charges to other sites to which he diverts
traffic. Those profits are not used to pay Quitmeyer's mortgage or
car payments, but to splurge on family vacations to such places as
Disneyland. 

Rice sees the shift of many adult businesses to the Internet as not
just an economic boon for San Diego, but a societal one. As a parent,
he said, he doesn't like the idea of adult-themed establishments
being out in the open. 

He asked, "Would you rather have 500 adult bookstores in San Diego or
500 adult Internet sites?"