Patron,
Thanks for your response and insight.
Apologies in advance for the length of the post, but sitting here in court waiting all day with nothing to do.
My thoughts in response to you, neverbored, rollingstone:
My two favorites in NYC are $550 an hour and $600 an hour and provide specialized services just like the Montreal ladies who were previously affiliated with the Unicorn agency, and those ladies now charge $300-$400 Canadian an hour. There is at least one poster who is a customer of a northern New Jersey agency that he says provides a lot of Montreal-level quality at $300-$400 U.S., although they may have closed their customer list. Sure I can find a NYC provider on a twitter charging $1,000 an hour, but I can find plenty of Montreal independents At relatively higher price ranges than you quoted. There is also a well thought of Asian massage parlor in NYC favorably mentioned in the Other Cities section that is likely still in the $300-$400 an hour range. And NYC certainly has a large Seeking Arrangement scene with widely varying prices.
So if you are asserting that the standard escort rate per hour in NYC is $1,000 an hour for the same thing someone gets in Montreal that is simply way too high.
I spent about a year looking for a regular local NYC SP in the ~$600/hr range. It took several discrete efforts, each involving multiple encounters over a month or two each time. Every time I found a good thing, she ended up flaking out, exploding in drama, moving or quitting. My bad luck! It may be cheaper/easier in NJ, but I don't have a car.
For me, it came down to two choices in NYC: (1) engage in a time-intensive, expensive and sometimes anxiety-provoking process to find an SP in the ~$600 range or (2) spend ~$900-$1,000 per hour with no muss and fuss and get a discreet encounter with a beautiful lady who can speak English. Add in the heightened privacy risk of hobbying in one's hometown, the LE enforcement risk in NYC (which IMO is not trivial) and market opacity (there is no "NYC merb"), and for me the the only real choice is ~US$1,000/hour.
As a tourist in MTL, I face no privacy risk, the LE risk is lower, and (per merb) it seems one can almost effortlessly find discreet encounters with beautiful ladies who speak English for about US$225/hr (CAD$300/hr, including some "extras," or "going indy"). That's about 25% of the USD$1,000 rate I was talking about. MPs in Flushing Chinatown, no thanks. As for "Seeking Arrangements," IMO it is a shitshow. (Here's an article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/style/sugar-dating-seeking-arrangement.html Just as much scamming by the SPs as upon them. It's like "Tinder for scammers.")
Pattaya rates are much less expensive than Montreal. $200 is way too high if you are asserting that as a rate. But all but one out of several ladies I saw there spoke English, many quite fluently. Bangkok is an even better choice if you want English speakers.
I have had different experiences than you in Thailand. I found the spoken English among SPs very poor, especially in Pattaya, but also (although to a lesser degree) in Bangkok. To find someone I could actually converse with (besides just negotiating price and services), I had to go to an upscale soapy MP (
Poseidon) and get a "model"-class SP. No doubt, there you will find absolutely drop-dead gorgeous women who speak English well with a strong service orientation for about TB7,000 incl. tip/45 minutes (~USD$225). But even then, bona-fide DFK or CIM are out of the question. Backdoor?...Fugeddaboudit! You can of course get any of that and more for US$100 on the Thai streets or in "oily" MPs, but a significant drop in quality. (A favorite after-breakfast stop in Bangkok was this
blowjob bar, offering cimsw/cof for US$40, opens at 10:00 a.m. Best value anywhere!)
While thrilling at the moment, it is ultimately pretty alienating (or at least less satisfying) to share intimacy with such a huge gulf in language, cultural information, and standard of living between SP and service receiver. Interestingly, wealthy Japanese tourists, who share a bit more cultural affinity with with the Thai SPs and are far less demanding than North Americans and Europeans, seem to be up prices in Bangkok.
From reading merb it sounds like iin MTL there is a robust transparent market...reputable agencies creating a degree of accountability and safety...lots of repeat-customers, increasing professionalism and accountability..all of these conducing towards at least a modicum of respect and understanding of the "other side," on *both* sides, of each encounter. That is not the tone of the Asian or Latin American mongering scenes. If you read the counterpart boards to merb like pattaya-addicts or costaricaticas, 2/3 of the commentary is mean-spirited boasting about how cheap one got laid, how to outwit the "money grubbing" SPs, and nostalgia for the "good old days" when you could do everything depraved thing imaginable to an 18 year old for $20. Most of the other 1/3 of the commentary is retirees/hillbillies who have fallen in love with SPs, moved abroad and "gone local." Like night and day. Just take a look at this
notice to customers from the blowjob Bangkok bar--lol!
Also a big contrast to NYC, where (to my native NYer eyes) there is a brusque edge of hustle, risk and unwanted drama to every pay-to-play transaction.
Tying back to the post topic, I would assume that the MTL Indy SPs (particularly those sans merb reviews) who charge more than CAD$400-$500/hr are just pulling numbers out of their asses, fishing for fools soon to part with money. I do not say the same thing about premium SPs in NYC who charge ~USD$1,000/hour because there are factors for hobbyists there (LE risk, privacy risk, scam risk, high turnover/flake factor, not to mention astronomical residential rents and other COL) that are baked into that price. They are charging more or less double what Patron with what I surmise is a fair amount of diligence and luck has been able to find in terms of basic service.
It strikes me that being an SP is one of those avocations where measurement of performance is so personalized and subjective that up to a 100% premium (if not more) over what what the market considers "basic" has got to be justifiable. Anything beyond that, I need publicly posted pics of a body and "face that can launch a thousand ships" AND lots of explicit details about services provided. (Which is pretty much what my clients get from me when I am charging them an hourly rate like that for legal services :fat:, lol ).
Lastly, since you seem interested in the law, things aren’t perfectly legal in Canada after c-36. You have nothing to worry about regarding actual enforcement of the law, just like you have nothing to worry about in the U.S. if you see a lady who screens. Actually even less to worry about in Canada, but you don’t want to have a Twitter messages and links to merb or escort agencies on your phone when you cross the border.
Thanks very much for this advice, which I will definitely heed! I do disagree with you that there is "nothing to worry about" regarding LE in the US for hobbyists. It is always better to be careful than to be sorry!
I for one am also not keen on radical price increases. But that just means I have the option to dig deeper to find my own gems, increase my revenues or be lazy and call an agency. Cause I'm pretty sure that girls would rather cam than drop to what the prices were 5 years ago. There are still plenty of options... you're just not going to find them as often on Merb anymore sadly.
It does seem that there is a lifecycle to every pay-for-play scene, it gets discovered, it becomes a magnet, it matures, the prices gradually increase. When I read that the base rate have gone from $160 to $220 over 15 years, that sounds pretty gradual to me!
Sometimes when you see someone with a very high rate for 1-2 hours, it can mean that they do not prioritize one or two hour appointments. Some women will offer very competitive rates for dinner dates and overnights, meaning that that is their preferred type of appointment. This could be a matter of comfort or taste, or because they are driving in from off-island. Some women may be the opposite, longer appointments mean they have to get someone to look after their children or pets, and so their first/second hour rates are competitive while longer dates are not. The women I travel with have among the cheapest weekly rates around but are pricey when it comes to 1-2 hours.
This is another great insight. From SP's view every encounter has its own baseline level of administrative hassle/transaction costs/safety/emotional risk. If an SP is making a living from a greater number of hourly sessions, better to offload all the risks onto a third party (agency or MP), if making a living from fewer longer sessions the rate should go down. Seems like most of the Indy's in the CAD$300-$500/hr range do discount significantly for three hours sessions, this strikes me as a sign that the rates are based on more than thin air.
