[Feature] Sodom, Gomorrah, and Bergen County

**WHILE THIS ARTICLE HAS NO DIRTY PICTURES IN IT, IT DOES TALK ABOUT THINGS LIKE SEX AND PROSTITUTION. IT IS QUITE NSFW**

As you all know by now, former Governor Spitzer got caught in a prostitution ring. Besides crushing his career, this scandal has shown that there are many different faces of prostitution.

It isn't all picking up dirty street hookers named Divine Brown in downtown Hollywood -- prostitution is everywhere. It's on the internet, it's in major cities, and yes, it is in your own back yard.

Bergen County (and I'm sure counties are all over the country) is rife full of prostitutes, dirty massage parlors, and brothels.

Seriously, our quaint little county is way dirtier then you once thought....


Heaven is a Happy Ending
Probably the most prevalent form of prostitution in our area is that of shady massage parlors. These joints are usually owned by Asians and offer everything from the simple happy endings to... pretty much everything else.

Now, I've never been to one, but I've seen enough movies to figure out how it all works. I'm sure they offer massages, but that's a secondary issue.

Bergen County has been hit with numerous massage parlor busts. Between 2002 to 2003, the very hard to miss "Heaven is a Spa" massage parlor on Route 46 in Little Ferry was busted at least 3 times for prostitution.

More recently, #752 Spa in Lyndhurst was also busted for prostitution. The kicker for me is that the owner of that establishment is a Korean woman named Soon C. Park. Way to make us Koreans look good, Soon.


Korean Brothels are not Soups
Yet another big source of dirtiness that has begun emerge is the culture of room salons.

Room salons are bars where customers pay to hang out and drink with young girls (or even young men, for those ahjumma's) in their own private rooms. While there usually isn't anything beyond flirting going on within the room salons, people usually make arrangements for sex while there.

In Korea, this is a $20 billion dollar industry. Seeing as places like Palisades Park are over 40% Korean, it's not surprising to see these room salons sprout up and grow in popularity in the US.


Ratemyho.com
While doing research for this article, I stumbled upon a very bizarre site. It's kind of like Ratemyprofessor.com, except instead of rating professors, people log in and rate their prostitutes.

I kid you not.

The site, worldsexguide.com, is broken down by state and users write about everything from strip clubs, to massage parlors, and to just picking up prostitutes off the street. They discuss how much they paid, how pretty the girls look, and what kind of services they received.

This twisted site alone gives you a good breakdown of how much prostitution there really is in our area.


In Seriousness
I realize that I am writing about this topic in a somewhat light tone. I do want to address one serious issue: the false notion that prostitution is a victimless crime.

The idea that prostitution shouldn't be illegal because nobody is getting hurt from it is something many people say to justify their actions. However, that isn't true at all. Many of the Asian prostitutes are victims of human-trafficking. They are brought to the US thinking that they will receive legitimate jobs, but then are forced into sex-work.

Further, many clients do not see these women as people. In turn, they treat them like crap, beating and abusing them.

Many of these women do not want to be prostitutes, but have nothing else they can do. They are the pure definition of victims.

The fact is that prostitution is illegal, and rightly so.


In Conclusion...
If you're like me, prostitution was something you only saw on television. But as you can see, it is freaking everywhere.

Every spa I see is now a dirty brothel. Every bar, a place people will meet up for sex. And every person standing on the street, potential ho.

All this prostitution really changes the way you look at our upper-middle class, mall-shopping, Bergen County.