r/melbourne • u/VelcroGenitals • 1d ago

Not On My Smashed Avo Massage Parlours are everywhere.

How the hell are there so many massage parlours in Melbourne and greater Melbourne? They're everywhere. Are most people getting massages regularly and I'm the odd one out? On multiple strips of shops near me in the eastern suburbs there are two different competing massage shops. All within a 5km radius of each other, and several other massage shops at larger shopping centres. I'm just so curious how this massive industry survives. I don't think I've seen people actually go into half of them before, half only look open ⅓ of the time. It's just an element of Melbourne I've never given any thought and don't really know anyone that gets them or works at them to ask.

Edit: Are people actually taking the piss or are we genuinely saying stone faced that there are several brothels essentially every few Km in the suburbs? That seems crazy to me. Also why the hell aren't Johns just actually going to proper brothels?! Going to deregulated shifty ones doesn't just sound dubious as fuck, it seems genuinely dangerous. And if it's such an open secret that they're all shady rub and tug joints, why TF aren't we closing them down. That's so wildly irresponsible of the govt/police to let the biggest human trafficking industry on earth just run rampant.

Edit 2: The username is a reference to how easy being gender fluid would be for a muppet. Just because my username has genitals in it, doesn't make me an expert on Melbourne prostitution rings. I appreciate the almost irony, but it's just a coincidence.

Edit 3: Why is everyone insisting I'm a bloke?

408 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

469 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

24

u/kay7448 22h ago

They are mostly a way of working visas, exploitation and money laundering. No rarely anyone actually goes there for those reasons , of course sex pests do exists

1

u/gugabe 19h ago

Yeah probably a bit of both. Visas/money laundering bolstering the numbers. When I used to live in Darwin there were a bunch of VERY active massage parlors in one part of town, but then again I'd expect the per capita usage rate for Darwin would be a lot higher than Melbourne due to gender ratio and the sort of jobs people have up there.