So, just in case you haven't figured out yet, I'm on vacation in Brussels, Belgium again this Thanksgiving. I arrived on Saturday morning after a Friday night red eye out of JFK. After my buddy Ward (pronounced Vwaarrrrrt) collected me from the airport we went face wash and mobile phone/SIM card shopping for me around the city center. Afterwards, we hightailed it out of town to Antwerp in his little Mazda 323. He lovingly made me grudgingly walk along the water on the board walk before taking at an aperitif at a weird café. The posted shot was taken with my new Canon SX100 IS that I bought a few days before leaving NY. I was also able to get in some Holga-ing around Antwerp as well.

Anyways, I didn't bother taking any shots when we decided to go trolling for hookers in Antwerp's Red Light District. I didn't want them to feel even more degraded and displayed any more than they already are. Especially considering that probably half of them are European sex slaves. So, yeah, it's really weird but a government sponsored solution to prostitution, similar to Amsterdam. The woman are in windowed-door storefronts and each has her own little room set up with vanity mirrors, make up, radios, tall bar chair, etc. where she can stand/sit on display. It's a iike a giant life-sized walk through hooker vending machine/automat. In each of the windowed sections there's a curtain where a woman takes her john for however long he pays. The men just open the doors to negotiate services, enter, then leave after getting off. I was only one of three women there who was not a hooker.

I felt relatively safe, but still...it's weird when it's a gay white Belgian man and a foreign black woman walking around speaking English. Two of things are not like the others.

Double anyways, I have to get back to work before I'm internet flogged by my bosses. I'll try to post more photos tonight. I'm buying ticket to Paris tonight at the Brussels Grand Central station and will try to buy a sketchbook tomorrow around town. See ya kids...