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| Hotzone: fire and brimstone and women in teal two piece ensembles. |
In celebration of my moving into the periphery of a red light district, I bring you some images of Subic Bay's girlie bars. Born out of the testosterone glut that was a US naval base, the skin trade in the area lives on. The whole Subic area really depresses the daylights out of me, but this particular stretch of the national highway makes me feel like I'm in some novel written in the 90s. The neon, thelarge painted signs, the chunky old Caucasians in Hawaiian shirts, the crackhead parking boys and rugby-sniffing apprentices. And the girls, some of them underage, who can only imagine the glory days of the district, when the customers were strapping young American soldiers, not overweight pasty men spending their pensions in the tropics.
Many clubs rely on word-of-mouth (and lately, websites), but exclamatory mural work helps to differentiate and state the concept of the establishment. Most of the painting is designed to be seen during the night, with light-colored letters against dark backgrounds.
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| Angels for Sale |
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| "Guest Relations Officers", the driest euphemism. |
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Perhaps the saddest thing about the area is the resignation of the local government to the fact that women are its main product.
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| Great tourism strategy, Olongapo. |
