Pimp seeks Nevada office as some push brothel bans
PAHRUMP, Nev. — A state marketed as a place where people can indulge in all manner of sins is confronting its status as the only place in America where you can legally pay someone for sex.
A coalition of religious groups and anti-sex trafficking activists has launched referendums to ban brothels in two of the seven Nevada counties where they’re legally operating. The effort dovetails with a campaign by the state’s most famous pimp for a seat in the state Legislature.
Dennis Hof, who has a half-dozen brothels operating in the two counties and starred in the HBO adult reality series “Cathouse,” is challenging incumbent Assembly member James Oscarson of Pahrump in a Republican primary Tuesday.
Hof said Nevada “is the last of the live-and-let-live states” and was built on “gaming, liquor, girls and mining.”
“It’s awful that people would come in and try to change that culture, that they want to inflict their moral values on the rest of us,” he said.
Karen Cohen, who lives in a county with four legal brothels, called it “an embarrassment that we are one of the very few spots in the very United States that tolerates legal prostitution.”
The Pahrump resident is involved in a push to get two anti-brothel measures on the November ballot.
Brothels, which are illegal in the counties that contain Las Vegas and Reno, harken back to Nevada’s days as a mining territory about 150 years ago. Brothels were illegal but tolerated in some areas until 1971, when the Mustang Ranch near Reno became the first legal brothel.
It led to a movement that allowed counties with populations of 700,000 people or fewer to decide whether to legalize prostitution in licensed facilities. Outside of bordellos, prostitution remains illegal. Some brothels offer free limo rides from Las Vegas, offering to pick up guests from their Strip hotels.
Today, about 20 brothels operate in the state, mostly in rural areas. The state doesn’t publicize how many are open, and most owners keep a much lower profile than Hof, who wrote a book titled “The Art of the Pimp” and has dubbed himself the “Trump of Pahrump.”
Hof was also in the limelight in 2015, when former NBA player Lamar Odom was found unconscious at Hof’s Love Ranch brothel in Crystal, Nevada, after a four-day, $75,000 stay.
The Love Ranch, about an hour’s drive northwest of Las Vegas through the desert, looks like a large single-story home with some statues and pink bicycles out front, along with a sign for “Dennis Hof’s Love Ranch Cathouse,” advertising a gift shop, full bar and “no sex required.”
Guests ring the front bell and are escorted into wingback chairs in the parlor, while the women in the house slip into their heels and assemble in a lineup to be chosen.
The brothel, like others, offers roleplay-themed rooms and spa-like services.
Sonja Bandolik, the brothel’s 58-yearold madam who also works as a prostitute, said women there sign a contract for at least two weeks — enough time to get a background check and prostitution license from the local sheriff.
Women also are required to get regular tests for sexually transmitted diseases and HIV, and condoms are mandatory.
Bandolik, who has a short pixie haircut and a deep tan, said she decided to work in a brothel at age 51 after watching a Western movie depicting an old saloon. She remarked to her husband that it would be “cool if we still had those.”
She says her husband “loved the idea.” He lives with her at the brothel and works as its general manager.
Bandolik, who estimated she made close to $18,000 in May, calls her profession “soul expanding.”
Another woman living at the brothel, a 23-year-old with pale skin and long blond hair who goes by the name Azalea Love, said she previously worked as a prostitute in Las Vegas but feels safer since she moved to the brothel three months ago.
“You have people around you if something goes wrong,” she said.