Ladies of the night

“Hey girls, I am on way to the brothel. I’d really love it if youse would help me out. I doubt it I know, but youse are both so sexy.”

It’s not everyday that a girl gets such a tempting proposal but it happened to my mate Sam and I after drinks at the Royal Exchange Marrickville (REM).

The invitation was from a fellow REM punter who went on to ask Sam the size of her bra.

Charming chap.

Good naturedly we refused his kind offer and bid him farewell as he continued on his way to seek relief from Marrickville’s ladies of the night.

The issue of brothels is constantly on the local Council’s agenda. Only last week an application for a Brothel to operate 100 metres from Marrickville Public School had been rejected.

The Marrickville Council also voted to write to the Minister for Planning asking for a limit to be placed on the number of brothels operating in Marrickville.

So far, Marrickville has 15 brothels.

It was about two years ago when some of these brothels were seeking approval to operate at street level (currently you have to access these establishments via stairs leading to the top of Marrickville’s shops).

According to my local priest, Fr Tom of St Brigid’s Church, the brothel owners wanted their businesses to operate at street level so that people on wheelchairs could have street access.

Unfortunately their proposal never went ahead and who knows what the poor wheelchair bound blokes now have to do.

To be quite honest, I never can understand what the big hoorah is about brothels. OK, maybe I can understand that such businesses need not operate next to schools, but the ones I know that operate in the central business district of Marrickville Rd seem so non descript from the rest Marrickivlle’s businesses.

And the blokes that I have seen patronising such an establishment hardly seem to be of ‘criminal’ kind. In fact they remind me of some of the blokes I work with.

Greens councillor Fiona Bryne said in this week’s The Glebe, a limit on brothels is not going to stop people opening brothels, it’s going to push them underground and stop us from regulating them.”

The real issue should be the safety and security for Marrickville’s ladies.

The Glebe has an online poll where fellow Marrickvillians can have their say about brothels at http://www.theglebe.com.au/