Just one month after Paul Gallant wrote in EYE WEEKLY (in “All laid out,” on June 18) about how the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision legalizing on-premises sex clubs — previously outlawed as bawdy houses — had made Toronto “Canada’s Amsterdam,” Canada’s Paper of Record, The Globe and Mail, has followed up. A story in last weekend’s paper by Lisan Jutras carried the risqué-by-their-standards double entendre headline “A swinging way to keep the tourists coming.” (Is the Globe newsroom demonstrating here a new-found crudity or their total innocent ignorance? Hard to tell, but one presumes the former.)

Unlike Gallant’s report, Jutras ignores the gay aspect by failing to mention Goodhandy’s (our favourite pansexual spot), keeps descriptions out on the sidewalk and, most interestingly, focuses on the tourist angle.

I mean, surely these clubs are full of vacationing Yankees, right? They can’t be peopled by citizens of Toronto the Good, can they? City councillor Mark Grimes would recoil at the thought, as was detailed last month on the heels of our story when he began a campaign to shut down Ménage à Quatre, an Etobicoke club. His point, paraphrased: “OMG, yer gonna give my neighbourhood cooties!” And god knows he must know what he’s talking about, right?
In any event, Jutras makes an interesting observation: “Since [the 2005 court decision], the Canadian sex-tourism trade has flourished, particularly in the GTA. ‘There’s a buzz around Toronto,’ says [a sex tourist from Florida].… On-premise clubs are illegal in some US states, but even in states where they are technically legal, such as New York, the practice isn’t well tolerated, says Richard Pollara, proprietor of Ménage à Quatre.”

We can only hope the bigwigs at Tourism Toronto are paying attention. But before they set the type on their “Toronto: Come Again” advertising campaign, they may want to consider the other elements of Toronto the Hot ’n’ Bothered that we’ve long thought were worth marketing. (Why should Las Vegas get all the pervy tourist dollars, after all?):

FULL CONTACT LAP DANCES: In some US States, strippers keep their underpants on. In others, you can’t have a beer while you admire the show. Here, in the land built on the beaver trade, $10 gets you a crappy domestic bottle and $20 a song gets you a fully naked stripper writhing in your lap, spreading her goods in your face and allowing you to touch her breasts.
LEGAL PROSTITUTION: You can still go to jail for streetwalking or pimping, but the in-call sex trade is not only allowed but out and proud (and in our own back pages).

BATHING-OPTIONAL BATHHOUSES: An innocent wandering around Church and Wellesley would think that the homosexuals were the cleanest people on earth, what with all the bathhouses all over the place. But $20 gets you a private room for eight hours and from what we understand, the hot tub is kind of beside the point. (Bathhouse patron to lap-dance patron: “$20 per song for dancing? You’re doing it wrong!”)

AND, OF COURSE, THOSE SEX CLUBS: Including Goodhandy’s Pansexual Playground, which is clubba non grata to the daily press, as well as all kinds of other places (Wicked, Ménage à Quatre, Club Hers) to get down with OPP in front of a crowd.

All this and your clichéd jokes about the skyline’s phallic and vulvic symbols too! The possibilities are, as they say in the tourism offices, Unlimited.