We've just released an early version of a new ClubHombre feature called Venues. It's still in an early stage where we are still populating the database, but we've developed it to a point and populated it with enough data where members can start to play with it and add their own data.

Venues will eventually be linked from the left menu once we feel it's sufficiently populated, but for now the easiest way to reach it is by clicking here.

If you have submitted photos before, you can also take the following path:
1. Click Profile on the left
2. Click View My Homepad
3. Scroll down and click the link to the Venues section

We'll try to put together some more detailed instructions over the next few days, but use of Venues should be fairly straight forward. After selecting the country, select the city (or add one if we have not added it yet). From there you can browse the venues that have been added so far or add a new venue. Fill out as much as you can, we can easily edit or correct the information later. If you click the Details link after the venue, you can view additional details as well as photos that have been associated with that venue.

We'll be adding additional fields in the future.

From a venue's detail page, you'll also see a link back to your Homepad. From there you can associate your photos to existing venues.

Look for more updates soon.

Hombre,

It certainly has potential. Nice job!

Max

Really nice work!

Hey Hombre, here are a few more categories that need to be added to the "Types" drop down menu:

Blowjob bar
Beer bar
KTV
BBS
FKK

May also want to expand the brothel selection, since that is a limiting word. I'm thinking:

House brothel (example: Dolly in Surabaya, Cambodia, Geylang in Singapore)

Bar brothel (example: Lokasari and Kota Indah areas of Jakarta)

Club brothel (example: Hotel Travel, Stadium, Sumo, etc. in Jakarta)

Probably better to have "House/Apt. Brothel" or add a separate "Apartment Brothel" category (assuming you adopt Murasaki's suggestions). In South America, e.g., many refer to the apartment brothels as "apartments," and might not think of them as "house brothels."

Thanks for the input! I've been meaning to ask for more input regarding the different types of venues. There are advantages and disadvantages for a limited number of types vs an expanded number of types.

A limited number of types makes it easier for a larger number of people to understand what kind of place the venue is without having to look it up. The drawback is that it might haze the distinction between different types.

An expanded number of types gives a more precise idea of the type of establishment, but some distinctions might be subtle and unnecessarily complicate the data.

For example, it seems to me that Termas and FKKs are more simply types of brothels with a cover charge. Are there additional differences I'm forgetting to consider? (BTW, cover charge is about to be added.) I'm inclined to just include the term in the title (ie Termas 4x4, FKK Oase, etc...) and keeping the type the more generic type of Brothel.

I'm going to start work on including definitions on the page. I'm unfamiliar or only vaguely familiar with some of the terms above. Can anyone help with the following questions?

1. Blowjob Bar - "A type of bar where ladies are available for blowjobs, often in public areas of the bar. Ladies are also commonly available for full service in private areas or outside of the bar." Is that a good definition?
2. Can someone provide a precise definition for Beer Bar? Or is there a better term Beer Bars can fall under?
3. Is KTV a term specific to all Karaoke Bars or does it only apply in certain countries?
4. What exactly is BBS?

I'm not familiar with the brothels Murasaki mentioned, how exactly are the types different?

The blowjob bars I am familiar with are primarily in Thailand and Japan. Although there are exceptions, the primary type of sex offered is blowjobs often in public or semi-public circumstances, such as while one is sitting at the bar, or on a small couch.

Beer bars (as I understand the term from my experiences in Thailand) are usually outdoor or semi-outdoor (e.g., with a roof but no real walls) bars where girls are available. The main drink served is beer, and the girls congregate around the various counters where the drinks are served and men can approach them. They are a cheaper alternative to the go-gos.

BBS's are sometimes euphemistically referred to as barber shops but they are actually take out brothels, in my experience found in China and usually without any barber services available. They represent a cheap alternative to KTVs in places like Chiangping.

In Germany there are clubs that are similar to termas (although without the robes), and then there are FKK's, the distinguishing feature of which is the girls walk around without clothes on (at least at most FKKs). There are also FKKs in other European countries but I don't know whether the "no clothes rule" applies there as well. If FKKs are not a separate category, it would be helpful to distinguish in the descriptions between FKKs and other clubs at least for Germany.

I can't answer the KTV question although know in Japan there are alot of Karaoke places that are not P4P places; I don't know though whether they are referred to as KTVs. The KTVs I have visited in China and Jakarta offer P4P.

I advocate for more types of venues. The title alone can convey a vast amount of information to me as to what kind of setup/conditions to expect. "Brothel" is simply far too generic to have any kind of real meaning to me. You already have massage parlors available in the menu, which are also brothels. But of course when we see the term "massage parlor" it triggers a level of comprehension and expectation, based on our experience. The same response extends to other terms as well.

That said, here are some answers.

Blowjob bar: an establishment that primarily focuses on providing blow jobs on the premises, both in public view within the bar, or in semi-private conditions. Some bars may also offer full service.

Beer bar: mostly indigenous to Thailand and Cambodia, "beer bars" are venues in which the "serving staff" are also available for take out. Most are small and open-air, occasionally with pool tables. Some are larger in size and sometimes indistinguishable from a go-go bar with the exception that they have no stage or dancers. Beer bars have no on-site facilities for sessions, and are strictly for take out.

KTV: this is the entry currently in the CH dictionary: KTV stands for Karaoke Television. KTV clubs are quite common in several countries in East Asia. Consisting of numerous private rooms outfitted with karaoke systems, KTVs usually provide a hostess or hostesses as companions while the room is rented, in addition to snacks and drinks. In some KTVs, additional services may be negotiated either directly with the house, or with the girl, depending on the setup. YMMV, given that some KTVs are strictly karaoke joints.

BBS: BBS is short-hand for "barber shops" - a euphemism used in China when referring to take out brothels. BBS's can vary in size from a few girls to many dozens, usually all sitting in one room and viewable by potential customers. It is common to pay two fees: one to the mamasan and one to the girl, though situations will vary.

FKK: this is the entry currently in the CH dictionary: Native to Germany, FKK's are facilities that are very similar to the Termas in Rio, where a customer pays an entry fee and gains access to a health club facility. A customer pays extra for the girls who work there. There is usually a wide variety of women available, representing numerous nationalities. FKK stands for "freikorperkultur" which can be loosely translated as "culture of the free body." This is appropriate, as the women usually walk around in the buff inside these facilities.


As for the brothel differentiation:

House/apartment brothels: Customers literally enter a house or apartment that have a few working girls available. Most sessions are conducted in the bedrooms, though some allow take out. These types of venues do not have a bar.

Bar brothel: these venues are full service wet bars that usually have music and multiple TV screens. Girls hang out in the bar area or in the booths. Sessions take place on the premises. Some may allow take out for an additional fee.

Club brothel: club brothels tend to be quite large facilities, and may involve multiple functions housed in one building, including spas, ktv rooms, nightclubs, discos, and fishbowls. Most have a central area from which to choose a girl, and the number of girls available can be quite large. Sessions usually take place on the premises, but take out is normally allowed for an additional fee.

Thanks for the input. I had hoped to get some other, related stuff done, but spent most of the last seven hours taking these descriptions, the existing dictionary definitions, and my own knowledge to expand the categories and rewrite a whole bunch of new definitions.

I came to this conclusion before the two prior posts, reasoning that it would be better for the reader to know the proper local terminology, and provide detailed definitions for comprehension.

I rewrote them all to have a more standard format in title and to include common factors such as entrance fees, drink prices, etc...

The results can be found below. Please comment if you have additions, corrections, and/or suggestions. I'll be integrating this into the Dictionary and Venues Utilities later today/tonight...it's been a long night!
________________

Definitions moved to "Add Venue". See post below.

Also, I forgot to mention that as of yesterday you can now indicate if you have visited a Venue by clicking on its details. Currently this information will show on your Homepad. (You can see a few Venues I'm familiar with by clicking here). In the very near future, you'll be able to see a list of who has visited a Venue on it's details page and a list of who has visited the most venues (although it will be self-reported).

Looks great. One typo in the first entry. Beer: Beer should be Bar: Beer. Maybe you had beer on the brain?

I just checked your homepad, Hombre,

It's a good thing that it says that the photo is not necessarily you; I was getting confused.

Nice job on the Venues... I will take a look next week, when I get home.

The list of definitions was really long, plus I already made changes soon after posting the previous entry, so I removed it from the post above and made it available below the form for adding a venue to a city. You can get to Venues by clicking here, then select a Country and City to see the Add Venue button.

I also built in functionality to associate venues to trip reports. It's a manual process and I have close to 3000 reports to process to do so, but I like how it makes it easier to find additional information when looking at Venues.

You may want to spare yourself and just work on trip reports posted in the past year. No need to do this for old reports IMO.

You should probably add "Red Light District" to the types of venues. You have "Red Light District: Windows" but that would not apply to Geyland in Singapore or Dolly's in Surabaya, Indonesia (as examples).

Thanks for the input!

I'm getting close to completing reports in the past year, and the more venues added the easier it gets since I'm creating less. I'm finding lots of valuable information can be found in the trip reports, particularly for venues that have not been commented on much separately, so I think the links will help, even for some of the older reports. But I will prioritize so that processing the older reports doesn't take up as much of my time.

I'm not familiar with the Dolly layout, but I would classify Geyland as a Street Walker Zone. Is there any reason these two places wouldn't be classified as such?

Also, I added a few new types.

Brothel: Hotel to describe places like Blackbeard's Resort in Costambar (Puerto Plata), Dominican Republic and Ruby Hotel in Pattaya, Thailand.

Personals Advertisements to describe publications like Vivastreet.com.br in Brazil and Mundo Anuncio in Peru.

Health Spa: Additional Services to cover places like the various spas scattered around Lima, Peru.

There are no streetwalkers in Dollys, rather there are a few streets with a large number of small brothels many of which do not seem to have names. Some have fishbowl setups you can see into from the streets, others you just walk into but it is obvious what they are. Sex is onsite unlike sex with streetwalkers which requires finding a hotel or other place.

Unless things have changed, places like the compound in Acuna, Mexico also might be described as Red Light Districts; probably Vila Mimosa in Rio as well (although I don't know its present status in light of rumors it would either be shut down or moved to another location). Indeed, the compounds in Reynosa, Laredo, and other Mexican border towns are best classified as Red Light Districts unless one wanted to add what I would consider an unnecessary category of Compound.

It is true Geyland has a lot of streetwalkers, but also a number of houses that are separate from the streetwalkers. I suppose Geyland could be classified either as a Red Light District or a streetwalker district, but Red Light District is a better description given that a large part of the action is in houses that do not involve streetwalkers.

Sections of Sanuk in Bali, Indonesia also would best be referred to as Red Light Districts. Here there are a number of houses whose only designation is an X at the end of their street number. They are not amenable to individual description, but the areas themselves--essentially Red Light Districts--are.

(Message edited by laguy on December 16, 2011)

Thanks for the great info Laguy!

I'm unfamiliar with the Mexican compounds you mentioned, but it sounds like they might be significantly different than both the Windows subcategory of RLD and a RLD Zone such as Geyland or Dollys. I'll have to think about whether I want to include it in an existing category or create a new one. If anyone has suggestions for a category other than RLD or RLD Zone, or RLD Compound, I'm open to hear them.

I'd forgotten about the walk-in brothels in Geyland, thanks for the reminder. If any of them were particularly popular, it might be better to separate them as unique venues, but that won't happen anytime soon.

RT here. I just associated a few photos with venues.

Some of my girls were from:

1. Personal recommendations
2. Ad sites that aren't listed as venues.
3. Girls I have stumbled upon in my travels.

Those were not venue options for association.

How should these be handled, if at all? In the case of the ad sites, many of them were one-time events, and may not necessarily need to be 'official' venues.

Thanks.

Thanks for the note, RTGooch! I created a new option called "-Mark No Venue-". This will allow people to remove photos from their list of unassociated photos when they can't be associated to venues for the reasons you listed or other reasons that might come up.

I do not currently have an option for members to change associations, so if mistakes are made or need to be updated for other reasons, a support ticket will need to be submitted for an administrator to do it.

Is anyone familiar with the Hostess Clubs of Phnom Penh, Cambodia? I think I'll need to create a new type for these. From what I read it sounds like they are brothel bars, except there are no rooms on site and the barfine doesn't guarantee sex. Is this an accurate description of a hostess club, or does a hostess club fit into one of the existing types?

The hostess bars of Phnom Penh are almost identical to the beer bars of Thailand, except for the fact they are enclosed, not open air. The barfine compensates the bar for the loss of the hostess for a period of time. Though sex is the implied intention, it is not guaranteed and the services and fees must be negotiated separately from the barfine.

A few years ago there were a few hostess bars that had rooms on-site but these are no more. The hostess bars are concentrated in a few areas, the prime spot being Street 104 near the riverside (Sisowath Quay). The other areas are Street 136, Street 108 and along Street 51 (Pasteur) between Heart of Darkness disco and Walkabout Hotel.

Thanks Flyngo! I added a new type with the help of your answer.

Venues is now officially released and can be found on the left menu bar after logging in. After approximately six weeks of development, I have over 360 venues added with more being added daily. I still have a lot of tweaks and options coming to make it a very informative utility. I've added some Quicklinks to the top and will add more as popularity and content reflect the need. Check it out and be sure to click the "Details" links on the places you've visited. This will show on your Profile page and will soon be reflected on the Standouts page.

Looks great. Thanks for all the hard work.

Venue check-ins now appear on the Standouts page. You can get to the Standout page from the link at the top of your own or any other Profile, or from the link right next to the top of the Venues page. The Venue rankings don't necessarily mean that much since they are either self-reported or entered while I am processing Venue data, but I think it's interesting to see all the places people have been in one place.

I have 400 venues added so far. Khun_Mor is the current leader with 88 check-ins. I don't have complete data for all of the places, so if anyone views a venue with missing info that they know or have, including non-specific data, please report it using the update utility on the page.

Awesome work!

Thanks, Hombre (and KM)!

Would it be possible to add a Google Maps link for each of the venues? Also, a "sort by" function could be helpful if some of the lists get long.

I think there are well over 10,000 venues, but 400 is a start.

There are well over 500 venues in Medellin alone.

We're up to 441 Venues, more are being added every day!

I've added a few more quicklinks, tweaked the appearance with color coded status buttons, and added sort capabilities. I just figured out how to get Google Map coordinates, so I'll be adding that feature soon.

Also to come will be recommended venues so newcomers aren't as overwhelmed with the bigger lists.

We're not going to focus much on smaller venues, especially ones that might be temporary, but will include them when they are mentioned in reports. We are more interested in well-established, permanent venues.

I could use some help from those of you that have returned from a trip in the past few months. If you could look at the list for the city you visited and let me know via support request or email the places you visited, I can update the statuses.

There are many smaller ones in Medellin that are here to stay and blow away the bigger ones.

Thanks for adding the sort function. I'm not sure if it's working on the dates column though.

JimmyDR, Regarding the small places in Medellin, like you said they are "here to stay" so they fit the qualification of not being temporary, plus many are frequently discussed on various websites and are even locations visited on tours, so they are also well established. In this case Medellin is more an exception. What I'm referring to is small places that are rarely frequented by hobbying tourists.

Mitchc, the sort function for date works, but the data is not exactly configured yet for exact sorting. For example, although you might see a green button followed by a date, the raw data is actually still "Confirmed Open [date]" or "Confirmed Active [date]". What this means is that all venues that are "Confirmed Open" will be sorted properly by date, but venues that are "Confirmed Active" will always appear first because it sorts first on "Active" vs "Open", then sorts on the date. Also, "Permanently Closed" will always follow "Confirmed" no matter what the date. I'll get the data reconfigured eventually, but that's how it will work for the time being.

When I wrote the last post 30 minutes ago, I forgot that the order was reverse chronological, so "Permanently Closed" would always appear first, not last as described. I fixed this by changing all the "Permanently Closed" to "Closed Permanently" so they will appear at the end of the list when sorted by Status.

There are currently 7 venues that are "Reported Open" or "Reported Closed" because I don't think they are verified sufficiently. Those will still appear first in the list if sorted by Status.

Any chance of including in the list of venues that each of us has visited the country of the venue? Not only would this give the reader a better sense of where that person has visited, but it would also avoid confusion when the same name is used for clubs, etc., in different countries.

Yes, it works now. Thanks.

I will be back in Medellin for a month around May, so I will give updates to about 50 Venues.

Country and City are now included in the Venue list under the profile and are grouped accordingly.

JimmyDR, that's great and would be very much appreciated!

Forgot to mention, Google Map links have also been added but will take awhile to add to many venues. I've added some to Tijuana, San Jose-Costa Rica, and Buenos Aires-Argentina. Anyone that wants to help with adding map links should sign up for a Google Account contact me for instructions.

We're currently at 515 venues!