Updated: Feb. 2, 2006, 4:05 PM ET
For the bare Super Bowl necessities, try WindsorBy Wayne Drehs
ESPN.com
WINDSOR, Ontario -- As one hand holds up her golden blond hair and the other hand lifts her cheerleader's skirt up over her stomach, 24-year-old "Brandy" -- lips covered in a shiny pink gloss, eyes draped in deep blue shadow -- kneels on a white-sheeted bed and looks straight at you. A football is tucked between her legs. A Super Bowl XL logo is draped across the front of her skirt.
In this and seven other provocatively posed cheerleader photos on her Web site, Brandy gets her message across loud and clear: "Call me."
Oh, and do it soon. As her Web site says, "Remember, to guarantee your time with me, I suggest you pre-book. Super Bowl week is going to be an especially busy week, so I highly suggest booking early."
Brandy is one of about 250 licensed, regulated professional escorts in this border town, which sits less than a mile from the hub of Super Bowl XL, Detroit's GM Renaissance Center. She, like most of her competition, expects Super Bowl fans to cross the Detroit River in droves this weekend, looking for things they just can't readily get on the American side of the Ambassador B*****: Cuban cigars, all-nude strip clubs, a 19-year-old drinking age and legalized prostitution.
Don Jolovich
Is it the dancer or the dance? The answer is just across the Detroit River."It's all legal over here," Brandy says in a telephone interview. "They don't have to worry about it. You hear horror stories about escorts in the States: guys getting ripped off, guys given the runaround, girls not showing up. There's a bunch of bad reviews out there. Let them come over here, get their money's worth and take full advantage of what we have to offer."
Since it became a national "happening," Super Bowl weekend has always offered its share of racier diversions for those fans who walk on the wilder side. But until this year, those diversions have never been so close, so out in the open and so ... well, legal.
Not that everyone in Windsor is necessarily proud of it. Windsor has more to offer than its seamy underbelly, city leaders say. Although the city is expecting Super Bowl tourists to spend an estimated $3 million on hotel rooms while an additional $2.4 million is pumped into the city's economy, some business and civic officials were less than thrilled with a New Year's Day story in The Detroit News that pegged Windsor as "Sin City North."
Besides the clean streets and waterfront views of the Detroit skyline, Mayor Eddie Francis, and the city's convention and visitor's bureau sing the praises of Windsor's restaurants and a $24 million art museum. During Super Bowl week, there is a Fan Zone, a smaller-scale NFL Experience, along with a downtown tailgate party and a weekend ice festival.
"[Adult entertainment] is certainly not the thing we'd like to have first and foremost in people's minds," says Sandra Bradt, the city's director of tourism. "But if that's the hook that brings people over, then so be it. Then we can show them all the other entertainment options we have to offer."
But while Bradt and others try to combat the Sin City stereotype, Windsor's after-dark entertainment venues are ramping up for what they hope will be a record weekend. Most hotel rooms in Windsor are requiring a four-night stay, which means the serious merrymaking should kick in Thursday night.
Don Jolovich
Barrister John Rokakis, a longtime customer, enjoys a Cuban at Windsor's La Casa Del Habano.Jay Henderson, the manager of La Casa Del Habano, an upscale cigar shop on Ouellette (one of the main drags through Windsor), is ready. Cuban cigars priced from $20 to $120 are stacked from the floor to the ceiling. The store's hours -- which typically range from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. -- will be much more flexible over the next few days, depending on the demand.
"If I have to stay here for 24 hours and have myself a bath in the sink, I'll just go with it," Henderson says. "We just don't know what to expect. We've never seen anything like this."
Just around the corner on Chatham at Jason's Executive Lounge, one of the city's five all-nude gentlemen's clubs, manager Brad McLellan has doubled his weekend staff from 15 girls to 30 and added a nightly dinner buffet. He said out-of-town dancers have been coming in by the handfuls every day in search of work.
"I have to tell them, 'No,'" said McLellan, who required any of his Super Bowl week dancers to work the week before, as well. "It's just not fair for the girls who have worked here all year long."
Inside the plush club, empty on one recent late afternoon, two dancers explain that although Canadian law allows dancers to be fully nude, absolutely no contact with customers is allowed. One newspaper report this week said Windsor police were even cracking down on handshakes and hugs between dancers and customers.
"But you don't want some girl jumping all over you after she's been jumping on a bunch of other guys," a dancer named "Alyssa" says. "Who knows what you're going to get."
For the bare Super Bowl necessities, try WindsorBy Wayne Drehs
ESPN.com
WINDSOR, Ontario -- As one hand holds up her golden blond hair and the other hand lifts her cheerleader's skirt up over her stomach, 24-year-old "Brandy" -- lips covered in a shiny pink gloss, eyes draped in deep blue shadow -- kneels on a white-sheeted bed and looks straight at you. A football is tucked between her legs. A Super Bowl XL logo is draped across the front of her skirt.
In this and seven other provocatively posed cheerleader photos on her Web site, Brandy gets her message across loud and clear: "Call me."
Oh, and do it soon. As her Web site says, "Remember, to guarantee your time with me, I suggest you pre-book. Super Bowl week is going to be an especially busy week, so I highly suggest booking early."
Brandy is one of about 250 licensed, regulated professional escorts in this border town, which sits less than a mile from the hub of Super Bowl XL, Detroit's GM Renaissance Center. She, like most of her competition, expects Super Bowl fans to cross the Detroit River in droves this weekend, looking for things they just can't readily get on the American side of the Ambassador B*****: Cuban cigars, all-nude strip clubs, a 19-year-old drinking age and legalized prostitution.
Don Jolovich
Is it the dancer or the dance? The answer is just across the Detroit River."It's all legal over here," Brandy says in a telephone interview. "They don't have to worry about it. You hear horror stories about escorts in the States: guys getting ripped off, guys given the runaround, girls not showing up. There's a bunch of bad reviews out there. Let them come over here, get their money's worth and take full advantage of what we have to offer."
Since it became a national "happening," Super Bowl weekend has always offered its share of racier diversions for those fans who walk on the wilder side. But until this year, those diversions have never been so close, so out in the open and so ... well, legal.
Not that everyone in Windsor is necessarily proud of it. Windsor has more to offer than its seamy underbelly, city leaders say. Although the city is expecting Super Bowl tourists to spend an estimated $3 million on hotel rooms while an additional $2.4 million is pumped into the city's economy, some business and civic officials were less than thrilled with a New Year's Day story in The Detroit News that pegged Windsor as "Sin City North."
Besides the clean streets and waterfront views of the Detroit skyline, Mayor Eddie Francis, and the city's convention and visitor's bureau sing the praises of Windsor's restaurants and a $24 million art museum. During Super Bowl week, there is a Fan Zone, a smaller-scale NFL Experience, along with a downtown tailgate party and a weekend ice festival.
"[Adult entertainment] is certainly not the thing we'd like to have first and foremost in people's minds," says Sandra Bradt, the city's director of tourism. "But if that's the hook that brings people over, then so be it. Then we can show them all the other entertainment options we have to offer."
But while Bradt and others try to combat the Sin City stereotype, Windsor's after-dark entertainment venues are ramping up for what they hope will be a record weekend. Most hotel rooms in Windsor are requiring a four-night stay, which means the serious merrymaking should kick in Thursday night.
Don Jolovich
Barrister John Rokakis, a longtime customer, enjoys a Cuban at Windsor's La Casa Del Habano.Jay Henderson, the manager of La Casa Del Habano, an upscale cigar shop on Ouellette (one of the main drags through Windsor), is ready. Cuban cigars priced from $20 to $120 are stacked from the floor to the ceiling. The store's hours -- which typically range from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. -- will be much more flexible over the next few days, depending on the demand.
"If I have to stay here for 24 hours and have myself a bath in the sink, I'll just go with it," Henderson says. "We just don't know what to expect. We've never seen anything like this."
Just around the corner on Chatham at Jason's Executive Lounge, one of the city's five all-nude gentlemen's clubs, manager Brad McLellan has doubled his weekend staff from 15 girls to 30 and added a nightly dinner buffet. He said out-of-town dancers have been coming in by the handfuls every day in search of work.
"I have to tell them, 'No,'" said McLellan, who required any of his Super Bowl week dancers to work the week before, as well. "It's just not fair for the girls who have worked here all year long."
Inside the plush club, empty on one recent late afternoon, two dancers explain that although Canadian law allows dancers to be fully nude, absolutely no contact with customers is allowed. One newspaper report this week said Windsor police were even cracking down on handshakes and hugs between dancers and customers.
"But you don't want some girl jumping all over you after she's been jumping on a bunch of other guys," a dancer named "Alyssa" says. "Who knows what you're going to get."