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across the country made note of this trend. One from Denver stated, “I saw it a lot [of pimps], but I’ve
never been approached by one. Usually the younger girls get affiliated with that” (J11). Another sex
worker from Dallas explained that a number of the younger girls she met in jail worked with a pimp, and
“a lot of them were so afraid to leave [their pimps]” (M5). 73
Young sex workers may have also been drawn to the lifestyle on their own volition. As one respondent
from Washington, DC explained, “During this time, the 1990s and 2000s, a lot of young girls were coming
[to the streets] because they thought they saw the glam life” (L2). Perhaps the environment they were
drawn to was similar to the one described by a 46-year-old from Denver who started trading sex in the
1990s: “When I first started it was very different than it is now, people watched out for each other. We
partied with each other. It was actually fun” (J3).
Few described the conditions on the street in the late 1990s and into the 2000s in positive terms.
According to many sex workers, relationships among streetwalking sex workers became increasingly
strained and competitive in these years as many began to rely more heavily on the work to support
growing crack addictions. As an individual from Washington, DC described, sex workers started to
become isolated from one another and the work became more dangerous 74 :
All the girls out there started smoking boat—PCP—at the same time and then we
graduated to crack. Once we all started on drugs, we all started going out separate ways.
We saw our best friends dying. We had no other choice but to turn to something to
comfort the pain [drugs]” (L1)
Many compared the camaraderie prior to widespread crack use to the increased competition they
experienced in the 1990s and 2000s, after the drug became prevalent. When asked whether the sex
workers on the street took care of each other, a 37-year-old from Dallas, who began working in the 1990s,
responded: “When I first got started, it was like that. But it seems like everyone is out for their self. You
don’t really get close to anyone anymore” (D15).
Competition pervaded the streets in these years. As a 33-year-old individual working in Denver in the
2000s explained, “There was a lot of competition. People [were] looking to get high [and there was]
competition from other addicts …They were just looking for dope, so they would get in the car for dope”
(J7). This was also true for transgender sex workers; one trans-woman working in the 1990s explained: “I
realized I had to step up my game because there were younger girls coming out.” (L1).
Relations among sex workers on the street were not the only aspect of the street-based sex market affected
by pervasive crack use. The dates themselves—in terms of seller-buyer relations, frequency of dates, rates
charged, and money earned—also began to change. 75
How the Dates Changed in Number and Substance
The need to fuel ever-increasing crack addictions prompted a number of respondents to conduct sex work
with more johns and go on more dates. In the following exchange, a 43-year-old individual from Dallas
described how she went from seeing a few regulars each week to engaging in sex work with more johns on
a consistent basis after she started using crack frequently:
Interviewer: How many regulars did you have at a time
Respondent: Probably about four, five …
Interviewer: Would you see them once a week
Respondent: Yes, I would see them once a week.
73 Please see the last section of this chapter for a more in-depth discussion of pimp involvement in the sex trade.
74 The violence and danger experienced by sex workers will be explored in depth below.
75 Subsequent sections will discuss the way in which the johns themselves, law enforcement approaches to sex work, and the levels
of violence experienced by sex workers also changed in these years.
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