San Diego Escorts go Upscale and Online

San Diego County's sex industry has blended into the larger economy.
Strip clubs are glitzy and more upscale, and their owners are trying
to create an atmosphere attractive to both men and women.
Additionally, the newer adult bookstores look more like Barnes &
Noble outlets than dank outposts of sin. 

Porno theaters have mostly been replaced by the Internet and adult
videos, which offer anonymity and staggering variety.  Even
prostitution has reinvented itself, as the women who have long roamed
El Cajon Boulevard are being vanquished by escort services that
advertise on the Internet. 

All of this adds up to big business. How big is anyone's guess,
because the escort businesses in San Diego County are all privately
held. No government agency can calculate with any certainty how much
the various branches of the industry bring into the local economy.
Even the police have no estimate of the industry's economic scope. 

Globally, the adult industry is an estimated $10 billion business.
According to Adult Video News, the pornographic video industry's
leading trade magazine, an estimated $800 million a year is spent on
erotic-video rentals alone. 

Industry insiders say San Diego County's strip clubs take in about
$20 million in combined revenue. Adult bookstores take in about $25
million, they say.  Together, these businesses outpace ticket
receipts for the Chargers football team, which totaled close to $40
million. And they outdraw the San Diego Opera and San Diego Symphony,
which have ticket sales of about $9 million a year combined. 

Millions more are made by a slew of Internet porn sites with San
Diego roots and by the area's thriving online escort industry.
Additionally, there are massage parlors, bathhouses, swing clubs, sex
toy makers, lingerie modeling stores, film distributors and movie
production houses that call San Diego County home. 

Like much of San Diego's economy, the sex industry here has benefited
from its proximity to LA – where the San Fernando Valley produces
most of the nation's porn movies.

San Diego's escort business does very well for a small and
conservative town as is evidenced by the hundreds of independent
escorts and escort agency ads in the yellow pages and on the internet
search engines.

And while the sex industry has its place in San Diego's culture, it
isn't as accepted here as it is in other cities, where politicians
seem more able to set aside moral objections and appreciate the tax
dollars the adult sex industry brings to their cities

Escorts and Prostitution 
Now prostitutes, or escorts as they are referred to now, are more
likely to be found in an Internet Directory or Yellow Pages ad as on
a street corner. Independent escorts and escort agencies, offer
anything from one-on-one nude dancing, to sensual and erotic massage,
to fetish and BDSM providers, to Shemales, and they are far more
expensive than a street-corner prostitute, charging a minimum of $150
an hour whether they have sex with their client or not. Usually the
$150 charge is want gets the escort to your door, and then the
up-selling begins from there with a menu of options that would make
the average man blush.

Often times, secret language which is not so secret anymore is used,
and these code words tell the customer what the escort is willing to
do. If she writes in her ad, “GFE” meaning Girlfriend Experience, the
customer can be assured the gal will kiss and do intimate activities
usually associated with a girlfriend. If she writes “PSE” meaning
Porn Star Experience, she is assuring the client of an uninhibited,
wild and satisfying time. BBBJ means Bare Back Oral Copulation and
there’s so much more. So the cat and mouse game is on with how much
the escorts can proclaim they will do and not get caught, versus what
the law will not allow them to do.

The police have registered more than 300 escorts in San Diego to
monitor those who legitimately work as paid companions. But the
number of the city's escorts who are paid for sex could well be in
the thousands, said San Diego vice Sgt. Mark Sullivan. Sullivan said
it is impossible to track the number because many don't operate out
of San Diego. Known as "circuit girls," these women can live
anywhere, setting up appointments via the Web and catching a plane to
meet their clients. Especially, when a big convention comes to San
Diego. Escorts will drive down from LA in droves, or fly in from
anywhere else, just to meet upscale and successful businessmen who
might wish to have some extra curricular fun while they are away from
home, and then after the convention they go home again.

Escort businesses in San Diego remain at least superficially
legitimate by making the women independent contractors and operating
under a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The owners of the escort
agencies say they are simply schedulers and when the gals get to
their appointments, anything that happens from there is up to the
gals and their clients.

Sex on Demand 
Perhaps nothing has done more to transform the sex business than the
Internet. Its speed, privacy and infinite scope are tailor-made for
purveying adult entertainment. 

Of this global business, San Diego has an important sliver, and is
thought to be one of the nation's hubs for Internet Adult
entertainment customers. The reason for San Diego's popularity as an
adult Internet hub has to do with geography and the region's heavy
concentration of Net-savvy people. When asked why they're here, most
adult webmasters offer the same response as many waiters, accountants
and construction workers: "Why not sunny San Diego?" 

The shift of many adult businesses to the Internet is not just an
economic boon for San Diego, but a societal one. Because most
citizens prefer the convenience and privacy the internet affords, and
because most politicians like the idea of adult-themed establishments
not being out in the open, because as they see it, it is one less
community problem they have to deal with.

And then there are those who do not see it as a problem at all. Most
hobbyists and johns prefer the convenience and privacy the adult
industry on the internet affords them, as shopping on line is a huge
upgrade to shop for companionship from the comfort of their computer
rather than driving up and down dark streets, in unsafe
neighborhoods, at questionable hours.