Comments on: Do You Live Near a Brothel?

Do You Live Near a Brothel?

robhuddles — Fri, 13 May 2005 20:01:37 -0800

Do You Live Near a Brothel? It turns out that I do, and they're at Sacramento State's Art Department, the local office of NOW, and the Sacramento Film Commission, among others. Dubya, as it turns out, lives near a bunch of them as well, including the Center for Public Integrity and the local branch of the DC Public Library. You can find out the houses of ill repute near you, too, by simply entering your zip code and the word "brothels" in the Google Maps search box. It's supposed to be returning destinations for that type of local business. Oops. Google has no comment.

By: DeepFriedTwinkies

DeepFriedTwinkies — Fri, 13 May 2005 20:07:40 -0800

Leslee Unruh, the president of Abstinence Clearinghouse...

I just picture Ed McMahon showing up at my house and yelling "Hi-yo! to interruptus the coitus.

By: BoringPostcards

BoringPostcards — Fri, 13 May 2005 20:09:35 -0800

I just KNEW something fishy was going on at the CDC! Men in long lab coats, coming and going all hours of the night...

By: amberglow

amberglow — Fri, 13 May 2005 20:10:34 -0800

that's so weird. Film Forum is a brothel now? (altho Happy Ending i can believe.) My neighborhood is actually supposed to be full of real brothels, hidden in apartments.

By: obeygiant

obeygiant — Fri, 13 May 2005 20:12:31 -0800

i tried it and it didnt work for me.......damn macintosh!

By: i love cheese

i love cheese — Fri, 13 May 2005 20:15:10 -0800

Last month Greg Beato posted a similar piece at Wonkette. Except it was about assholes in Washington, DC.

By: jonson

jonson — Fri, 13 May 2005 20:30:37 -0800

Yeah, I searched for whores near my office a month ago, oddly enough, it found the corporate Burbank headquarters for Disney.

By: nicething

nicething — Fri, 13 May 2005 20:33:09 -0800

Twin Cities Public Television? You'd think their pledge drives would be a bit more lively.

By: dagnyscott

dagnyscott — Fri, 13 May 2005 20:36:29 -0800

Heheh, Cornerstone University (which used to be Grand Rapids Bible College, if that gives you any idea of its nature) is a brothel. So is the Acton Institute. And the Grand Haven 9, but that's really only funny to me.

By: maryh

maryh — Fri, 13 May 2005 20:36:56 -0800

Great! The Church of Scientology headquarters, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, the International Documentary Association and, of all places, the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum: All brothels! Oh, and a place simply listed as brothel in Santa Monica. It's fun living here in Babylon.

By: Jimbob

Jimbob — Fri, 13 May 2005 20:51:13 -0800

"This isn't accidental," she claimed. "I think this is deliberate. Abstinence is under fire, we're under siege. Our opponents are trying to discredit the largest organization in the world that networks abstinence educators." Lack of sex = desperate paranoia?

By: stupidsexyFlanders

stupidsexyFlanders — Fri, 13 May 2005 20:56:30 -0800

Searching for "brothel" in my little town outside Philly returns mostly Philly-area movie theatres. What the search does not find is the brothel about three blocks from my house. Fixedgear knows what I'm talkin' bout! because he's a neighbor.

By: fatbobsmith

fatbobsmith — Fri, 13 May 2005 21:06:18 -0800

St. Marks Episcopal Church...I just KNEW it!

By: sugarfish

sugarfish — Fri, 13 May 2005 21:09:42 -0800

Yes, Quimby's, that zine clearinghouse, and Women and Children First, the esteemed feminist bookstore, are clearly brothels in disguise.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Fri, 13 May 2005 21:38:37 -0800

Google did not return a call for comment on why its Maps service lists brothels, or what causes some businesses and organizations to be labeled as cathouses. Google not commenting about something that makes Google look bad? What a surprise.

By: space2k

space2k — Fri, 13 May 2005 21:44:27 -0800

Is it possible to google-bomb google maps? What's up with this?

By: raysmj

raysmj — Fri, 13 May 2005 21:45:02 -0800

There is a house in New Orleans . . . that's called the House of the Rising Sun Bed and Breakfast.

By: puke & cry

puke & cry — Fri, 13 May 2005 21:48:59 -0800

yeah this doesn't work. for me at least. MENSA, a baptist church, and an ISD learning resources center. damnit.

By: furiousthought

furiousthought — Fri, 13 May 2005 22:25:36 -0800

Theaters, galleries, museums, publishing for me... so maybe all of these put out/ host material relating to brothels, or just talk about them, and so Google Maps catches that information and associates them with brothels? That could explain the Abstinence Center's brothelhood, Baptist churches, etc. Hmmm. Wait a second. Heh.

By: HTuttle

HTuttle — Fri, 13 May 2005 22:26:02 -0800

Brothel sex is WAY overpriced anymore.

By: bstreep

bstreep — Fri, 13 May 2005 22:35:23 -0800

This is just a shot in the dark, but I'm guessing that "Born Into Brothels" is probably playing (or has played recently) at most of those venues. Theaters, bookstores, churches, etc. This may or may not be the case for the 89061 zip code.

By: warbaby

warbaby — Fri, 13 May 2005 22:52:59 -0800

you get different results for bordello

By: wendell

wendell — Fri, 13 May 2005 23:03:05 -0800

Google Maps is the best locator for crooks and liars.

By: LilBucner

LilBucner — Fri, 13 May 2005 23:17:37 -0800

try 19096 ... apparently the Philadelphia Museum of Art is a brothel.

By: puke & cry

puke & cry — Fri, 13 May 2005 23:21:44 -0800

thats more like it

By: squirrel

squirrel — Fri, 13 May 2005 23:40:31 -0800

I did it for 94117 and discovered that many seemingly innocuous businesses are actually brothels. Among them a couple of my favorite second-run movie theaters, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Well, no surprise there.

By: RylandDotNet

RylandDotNet — Sat, 14 May 2005 00:25:22 -0800

I don't think this conspiracy is just about brothels. I searched for raw sewage in 78757, and, well, let's just say that result 'E' is rather telling.

By: Mayor Curley

Mayor Curley — Sat, 14 May 2005 04:25:25 -0800

02116 is Boston's Back Bay. "02116 Prostitute" yielded:

- Bay Windows (a gay paper) - The Free Software Foundation - Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study - Unitarian Univeralist Beacon Boston

By: Malor

Malor — Sat, 14 May 2005 04:49:48 -0800

Near San Francisco, there's a brothel called "The Fat Lady". They might want to rethink that name. I've heard about media whores, but there it finally is, in black and white: the San Francisco Chronicle is a brothel. And it looks like old Mother Jones is puttin' out on the side too. Sophomoric, I know, but still amusing. :) A search for 'toxic waste' in that same area results in what seem to be a number of fairly relevant hits.... plus Office Depot in San Ramon. Someone forgot to pay the janitor, I think. :)

By: mmahaffie

mmahaffie — Sat, 14 May 2005 04:53:36 -0800

I love headlines: Quickie Google Search Lays Out "Brothels"

By: graventy

graventy — Sat, 14 May 2005 05:45:42 -0800

Born into Brothels explains away the theaters, sure. But why the colleges? Local papers? TV stations?

By: elvolio

elvolio — Sat, 14 May 2005 06:23:30 -0800

Brothels in Irving, TX includes Irving Independent School District: Learning Resources. This explains why the kids in this town don't seem to know anything. Maybe they know far more than I would have imagined... I'm not surprised, actually, as searches for things like coffee shops have often returned dentist offices and stationery stores. I love Google Maps but the inclusion of the Local results is far from optimal.

By: SisterHavana

SisterHavana — Sat, 14 May 2005 08:35:22 -0800

Apparently my workplace is crawling with prostitutes. Maybe that's behind "What's In It For You?" ; ) They seem to be at Christianity Today and Christ Church of Oakbrook, too. Who'd have thought?

By: papercake

papercake — Sat, 14 May 2005 08:49:01 -0800

Well, I actually DO live across the hall from a brothel here in my apartment building in NYC, so I can say for sure that they missed one. The madams are actually very nice. When my mother came to stay while we were out of town, she got locked out and they called the super (who comes much quicker when they call, of course) and looked after her until we got back.

By: bstreep

bstreep — Sat, 14 May 2005 09:05:35 -0800

Born Into Brothels would have been shown at a lot of colleges and universities. There's also a book that goes along with the movie, so that would explain any bookstores. As for local newspapers and tv stations, I'm guessing it's just coverage, advertisements or reviews of the movie.

By: ArsncHeart

ArsncHeart — Sat, 14 May 2005 09:11:36 -0800

If you do your search with Google Local, rather than just Google Maps, it explains a lot. The same results come up, but the webpages listed in Google Local have the word "brothel" on them somewhere.

By: faceonmars

faceonmars — Sat, 14 May 2005 09:32:57 -0800

There was a kind of twisted logic in the results from my search. One of the neighborhood brothels was a company that owns radio stations; the link went to one of their stations in Butte, MT, where I grew up. One of the pictures on that website was of the Dumas Hotel, which WAS a brothel for 90 years, until it was closed by the IRS in 1982. The Dumas had a brief afterlife as a museum about five years ago until it closed for lack of customers. I'm not going to speculate why "99205 brothel would also return the office for Republican representative Cathy McMorris.

By: localroger

localroger — Sat, 14 May 2005 09:56:27 -0800

I love it. Apparently racist shitbag politician David Duke is a prostitute :-)

By: stratastar

stratastar — Sat, 14 May 2005 10:08:38 -0800

hehehe the Cato Institute's in there, I hear they're an expensive lay. Good find ArsncHeart: that makes sense. Clearly Google, would search an organization's website and co-list any terms on it with a mapsearch.

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Sat, 14 May 2005 11:25:07 -0800

Near me the Mensa organization, two local theatre groups and a sandwich shop all came up as brothels. Silly google.

By: clevershark

clevershark — Sat, 14 May 2005 12:32:42 -0800

It's quite bizarre really -- if you try a zip code (or postal code, in Canada) and "crap", you also get an assembly of seemingly random commercial places; same with "shit".

By: coyotelaw

coyotelaw — Sat, 14 May 2005 13:00:06 -0800

The bed and breakfast across the street from the courthouse (maybe Google was a few yards off in proximity?) and the La Quinta Inn popped up for Las Cruces, NM.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Sat, 14 May 2005 14:54:48 -0800

you can actualy type in the name of your town rather then a zip code. Works just as well Aaaanyway. You can search for any term and come up with results with google maps.

By: PurplePorpoise

PurplePorpoise — Sat, 14 May 2005 15:01:47 -0800

Plugging my postal code in w/ brothel does pull up a local strip club that has a reputation for that kind of thing as well as a high-end swedish 'massage parlour.' Missed a lot of other swedish/asian 'massage parlours,' though.

By: Fontbone

Fontbone — Sat, 14 May 2005 17:10:09 -0800

Personally, I'm really excited to go to the brothels located at the French- and Swedish-American Chambers of Commerce. Mmm, dem French and Swedish girls. (And for those of you in my area who swing the other way, there's always the Armchair Sailor!)

By: MonkeySaltedNuts

MonkeySaltedNuts — Sat, 14 May 2005 18:31:26 -0800

hmm, it seems that a lot of the whores in Atlanta hang out at golf courses.

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Sat, 14 May 2005 18:33:23 -0800

"Abstinence is under fire, we're under siege." Kewl. Actually I agree with ArsncHeart. This isn't incriminating evidence towards a conspiracy. It's just how a boolean search engine functions. Websites for the locations that pop up under brothel, or websites that mention the locations in question, simply bring up the word somehow. No harm no foul. I searched my own name with my home town, and a restaurant I mentioned a long time ago in my online journal showed up. it was a very old page in a domain that I no longer use. If anything, this misunderstanding with the word "brothel" indicates that Google needs to update their findings, and scour through dated or otherwise encumbering information. Otherwise, Google's not responsible for opening fire on the concept of abstinence. They're barking up the wrong tree.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Sat, 14 May 2005 19:50:46 -0800

Websites for the locations that pop up under brothel, or websites that mention the locations in question, simply bring up the word somehow. "Somehow" being the operative word. Sure, the abstinence folks are off-base, since the problem arises all over the political [cough] map, but have you tried clevershark's "shit"+zip code test? I get a local coffee shop, an indie bookstore and a bar in a nearby town, two TV stations and the state board of elections, among other things. I dunno, seems like a kind of silly way to offer this kind of functionality. Makes me wonder about the pressure inside Google to keep the company's name in the press with new "innovations." Of course, even a brief official response from Google would clarify things immensely. Has anyone seen that anywhere?

By: geekyguy

geekyguy — Sat, 14 May 2005 23:33:22 -0800

I'm in China so, actually, yes. From what my Chinese friends tell me anyway. The most obvious, if I had to guess, would be the late night hair dressers.

By: baltimore

baltimore — Sun, 15 May 2005 06:39:08 -0800

Hmm. A search for "morons" anywhere near Washington, DC, is an equal-opportunity offencer.

By: msjen

msjen — Mon, 16 May 2005 01:23:22 -0800

;o) Turns out that The International Church of Scientology and Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences get listed as brothels for my zip code, as well as several theatres and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. I would have thought that the Crystal Cathedral would have gotten listed as a much closer....

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Mon, 16 May 2005 04:52:15 -0800

Search for "whores" near Washington, DC. Trust me; you won't be disappointed.

By: Ogre Lawless

Ogre Lawless — Mon, 16 May 2005 13:50:30 -0800

One would do better to search for "crack " nearby. For those in the know Otis Spunkmeyer really does == crack.