rich and famous could frolic on a first-class passion playground. According to Polly, in her autobiography A House Is Not a Home , when men would take one of her girls for a date on the town, “I insisted that on such occasions they dress quietly and use a minimum of makeup. The days of the flagrantly dressed, flagrantly ‘refined’ tarts who tossed down their snorts of rotgut with the little finger well out were long past.”
These days, the Internet is making it easier for prostitutes to ply their trade and keep one step ahead of the police. But that’s not to say the fuzz doesn’t try to limit prostitution in certain areas by using certain legal loopholes. In Washington, D.C. (and especially during inauguration ceremonies and other diplomatic fêtes ) , lawmakers have instituted “Prostitution Free Zones,” (PFZs) where prostitutes can’t hang out unless they’re offering sex for free or if they ply their thighs outside of the ten-day PFZ enforcement periods, a bit of seedy political wrangling that make the PFZs quasi-constitutional. Cyndee Clay, the executive director of Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS), a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., argues that “A Prostitution Free Zone allows the loitering standard to be so low that anyone who doesn’t look like they belong in a particular neighborhood [is] rounded up.” And the battle of the sexers continues.
Adler’s bordellos often had to change locations abruptly in order to elude police, but the big-name New York personalities always seemed to know exactly where to find her. Members of the Algonquin Round Table, including Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker, frequented Adler’s classy cathouse, and so did mob boss Dutch Schultz, Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, and even the famously depraved and corrupt mayor of New York City, Jimmy Walker.
Prohibition was the law of the land, but Adler served up bootleg liquor and good times until a bunch of buzz kills including the Feds, the vice squad, and the temperance movement ruined everything. Ceaseless raids and constant fear that she might be “taken out” by some gangster eventually proved too much for Polly, who gave up on the life of an iconic New York City madam for a relatively chaste life in California, where she eventually went to college and wrote the bestselling A House Is Not a Home. Polly Adler was one hell of a woman; intelligent, insightful, pragmatic, financially successful, and brutally realistic to the very end. In her autobiography, she gives an eloquent argument in defense of her “tainted” past:
If I was to make my living as a madam, I could not be concerned either with the rightness or wrongness of prostitution, considered either from a moral or criminological standpoint. I had to look at it simply as a part of life, which exists today as it existed yesterday. . . . The operation of any business is contingent on the law of supply and demand, and if there were no customers, there certainly would be no whorehouses. Prostitution exists because [people] are willing to pay for sexual gratification, and whatever [people] are willing to pay for, someone will provide.
Ms. Adler died in 1962 in Hollywood, California.
ROSEBUDD BITTERDOSE
PRO FILE
DAY JOBS: Memoirist; pool hustler
CLAIM TO FAME: Scene-stealing turn in Hughes Brothers’ documentary American Pimp
THEATER OF OPERATIONS: Los Angeles
Don’t let his paradoxical and bewildering nom de pimp fool you—Rosebudd Bitterdose (“with two ‘Ds’ for a double-dose of this pimpin’”) is a bewildering paradox. This wily whoremonger can appear to be an old sage of the streets who gets all misty-eyed talking about the tragic death of the first bitch he pimped. Rosebudd claims a bunch of bank-robbing LAPD cops killed her so she wouldn’t talk. In an instant, however, he can morph seamlessly into a stone-cold moron reinforcing all the worst stereotypes. For instance, just try picking up what Rosebudd’s putting down on the illusive concept of
These days, the Internet is making it easier for prostitutes to ply their trade and keep one step ahead of the police. But that’s not to say the fuzz doesn’t try to limit prostitution in certain areas by using certain legal loopholes. In Washington, D.C. (and especially during inauguration ceremonies and other diplomatic fêtes ) , lawmakers have instituted “Prostitution Free Zones,” (PFZs) where prostitutes can’t hang out unless they’re offering sex for free or if they ply their thighs outside of the ten-day PFZ enforcement periods, a bit of seedy political wrangling that make the PFZs quasi-constitutional. Cyndee Clay, the executive director of Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (HIPS), a nonprofit group in Washington, D.C., argues that “A Prostitution Free Zone allows the loitering standard to be so low that anyone who doesn’t look like they belong in a particular neighborhood [is] rounded up.” And the battle of the sexers continues.
Adler’s bordellos often had to change locations abruptly in order to elude police, but the big-name New York personalities always seemed to know exactly where to find her. Members of the Algonquin Round Table, including Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker, frequented Adler’s classy cathouse, and so did mob boss Dutch Schultz, Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio, and even the famously depraved and corrupt mayor of New York City, Jimmy Walker.
Prohibition was the law of the land, but Adler served up bootleg liquor and good times until a bunch of buzz kills including the Feds, the vice squad, and the temperance movement ruined everything. Ceaseless raids and constant fear that she might be “taken out” by some gangster eventually proved too much for Polly, who gave up on the life of an iconic New York City madam for a relatively chaste life in California, where she eventually went to college and wrote the bestselling A House Is Not a Home. Polly Adler was one hell of a woman; intelligent, insightful, pragmatic, financially successful, and brutally realistic to the very end. In her autobiography, she gives an eloquent argument in defense of her “tainted” past:
If I was to make my living as a madam, I could not be concerned either with the rightness or wrongness of prostitution, considered either from a moral or criminological standpoint. I had to look at it simply as a part of life, which exists today as it existed yesterday. . . . The operation of any business is contingent on the law of supply and demand, and if there were no customers, there certainly would be no whorehouses. Prostitution exists because [people] are willing to pay for sexual gratification, and whatever [people] are willing to pay for, someone will provide.
Ms. Adler died in 1962 in Hollywood, California.
ROSEBUDD BITTERDOSE
PRO FILE
DAY JOBS: Memoirist; pool hustler
CLAIM TO FAME: Scene-stealing turn in Hughes Brothers’ documentary American Pimp
THEATER OF OPERATIONS: Los Angeles
Don’t let his paradoxical and bewildering nom de pimp fool you—Rosebudd Bitterdose (“with two ‘Ds’ for a double-dose of this pimpin’”) is a bewildering paradox. This wily whoremonger can appear to be an old sage of the streets who gets all misty-eyed talking about the tragic death of the first bitch he pimped. Rosebudd claims a bunch of bank-robbing LAPD cops killed her so she wouldn’t talk. In an instant, however, he can morph seamlessly into a stone-cold moron reinforcing all the worst stereotypes. For instance, just try picking up what Rosebudd’s putting down on the illusive concept of
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