Get ready for the five-star brothel
I’ll begin with the sex resorts, which have turned out to be surprisingly strong financial engines for both their operators and the state. Back in your time, Nevada’s bordellos were mostly quaint little relics that did a poor job of hiding their doublewide essence, relegated to boondockial locations. But here in 2012, those burned-out butt huts of the past have been completely redone; imagine tearing down the Mark Twain motel and building Bellagio in its place. Massive injections of raw cash into the brothel biz, made possible by incentives approved by the now celebrated “Loose Legislature” of 2006, fueled an impressive burst of construction that saw our ramshackle cathouses transformed into ultra glitzy “Ranchos de Whoopee.”
These new multi-million dollar sex resorts boast airstrips, luxury suites, hot tubs, fine restaurants, fabulous bars, breathtaking pools and stunning lineups of courtesans of both sexes. Yep, the sex resort industry of 2012 now beckons to all swinging bipeds, whether they are male, female, straight or gay. It has been noted frequently that everybody’s money, after all, is green. And when you throw legal pot into the mix at these Hormonal Hyatts (but legal only on resort property), plus all the latest turbo-charged advances in pharmaceutical and computerized/virtual reality eroto-orgasmo enhancers, you’ve got some seriously lusty hot spots that have been an absolute smash with a whole lot of men and women from around the west who were quite ready for Nevada-style Hedonism.
As juicy as these resorts are (the ads during Super Bowl XXXXVI were downright nasty), they aren’t anywhere near as lucrative for the state’s treasury as the desert’s thriving renewable energy farms. Finally, the processes that convert sunlight and wind into usable electricity became efficient enough to compete with, and then undercut, the fossil fuels. Once that happened, it didn’t take long for huge corporations to jump at the chance to save millions on their annual energy bills. Now in 2012, those progressive companies who gambled on their renewable energy investments are winning, and winning big. So is Nevada, which has become the Silicon Valley, if you will, of solar, wind and geothermal power. The Silver State has become the Clean Energy State, and that means bucks, bucks and more bucks.
But the biggest financial windfall of all, the wealth that gives us gleaming schools, smooth roads and excellent social services—that money rolls into Nevada every day in unmarked 18-wheelers, traveling on the brand new superhighway that breaks off from Interstate 15 just west of Mesquite, then cuts through Nellis Air Force Base and concludes at its infamous terminus just south of Beatty. Giant truck after giant truck, hauling in cask after cask after cask.
