Article By: Lisa Jocius
Photos By: Keith Cole
Originally Published In The May 2012 Issue Of Cycle Source Magazine
March marked the eighth year for the annual Bordello Thunder Run. This event is the brain child of Step Purdy and raises money for Adaptive Action Sports, a nonprofit organization dealing with amputees. The Thunder Run started at Red Rock Harley Davidson of LasVegas and ended a short ride outside Pahrump at a bar called the Short Branch. The jumps in between were the Chicken Ranch, Sheri’s Ranch, and the Love Ranch; that’s right, all whorehouses. Rounding up a group to ride in this event was easy. Who the hell doesn’t wanna go to a bunch-o whorehouses in Pahrump? This is one of the country’s last playgrounds of dizzy debauchery, free-wheeling and sex for cash. It was sure to be a great ride. Part of a great ride is the sheer exhilaration of riding, but the love of a good ride is the communication of a man and his well functioning machinery, the faces of good brothers, and the sound of us together getting to where we wanna go. Sometimes getting there isn’t all smooth sailing but the stories that start with “I broke down…” usually end with one hell of a smirk. Like on Friday night when Skoog limped his traveling machine to my house from Kingman with a blown head gasket and a dire need for a cold Coors on ice. I got the call that my pickup truck may be needed to assist in his arrival but the madman riding in with Keith, Terx and his old lady Cass, ended up making it and in decent time. He pulled his bike into the garage and began the tear down of the top end of the motor. Skoog communicates well with his machine. He managed to rebuild it in a few hours, and then worked on that Coors until the sky reminded us that time doesn’t stand any more still than we do. I have still not pieced together a decent explanation of how a large group of many turned into a freezing pack of five bikes. I also can’t tell you how riding in a poker run of over a thousand participants ended in a ghost town, with no bikes in sight but ours. We weren’t the first to arrive at registration, but there were still a shit load of bikes in the parking lot.
I must say right off the baseball bat to the head, much to my dismay and disappointment that all whorehouses are nothing like my idea of what they should be. But considering who I am, that’s probably a good thing. I was looking forward to the seedy environment of a dark room that smelled of sweat and bad decisions. The kinda place that makes a person question their own character for being there. Instead I toured pussy prisons with cardboard cutouts of whores waving at me from front porches. I was very disappointed. One of these places was a huge façade, staging a fake building front to disguise the skeleton behind the mask to appear to be some kind of inviting western style tradition of “get f’d here.” But the truth is, its interior felt as whorehouse-ish as a Chicago basement man cave. I spent more time than a human should spend looking for a whore in a whorehouse and when I finally managed to find one, she had an ass so big that I could set my beer bottle on it like a table, and did. I would never have imagined it would be that difficult to see some tail in a whorehouse. I rang a buzzer, drank a beer, shot something in a glass, and then realized that environment was not safe for us. It’s important to keep an eye on this bunch; they are unpredictable and booze sometimes makes them go crazy if they get bored. And expecting to see whores and not seeing any is one way to shove a ratchet through the spokes of a perfectly pleasant afternoon ride. The next house seemed like an institution of ritualistic sex, where smoking hot bodies with unoccupied heads wearing invisible shock collars are drowning you in some practiced speech manipulation to convince you that you have arrived at some sort of desert paradise. A place of pay-to-play, but don’t touch the furniture. This place seemed only to be strange for the sake of strangeness. Don’t get me wrong, I like strange, but I don’t think it should cost too much and feel “that strange.” I was in a place where every conceivable “service” comes with a price! But for the life of me, I couldn’t get a quote.
Heading to the final whorehouse, we made a pit stop at The Kingdom where the women are already swinging from brass poles. Not everyone was eager to get to the stage with a fistful of ones. We weren’t off the bikes for more than a thought when Javier and I darted for the door. It’s a strip club, and this is what we do. This place is not a fancy glitter cloud. In fact, this place may scare the shit out of you, and is enjoyable to me for that reason. Walking past the door I was greeted by a bouncer that appeared to be eighty who started to communicate with me without success. We didn’t slow our stride to the stage, our eyes didn’t need to adjust to the lighting, we knew where we were going, we’d been there before. A few beers and shots later I was ready to have fun. The natural course of my having fun is someone getting offended. I was launching paper airplanes made of dollars into the direction of the same place my friend Kirk was shining his flashlight, the crotch of a dancer. I was getting the unwanted explanation of why taking pictures of the strippers is not allowed and to please stop “because they are shy.” My response was a loud fit of mocking laughter. I don’t think I have to spin too many words to get the point across that stopping here was necessary. Leaving the strip club, we headed to what was supposed to be our final destination: the Love Ranch. Instead of being greeted by a pussy warden, we were met by a hot blond with gigantic breasts named Cami. She seemed to be the favorite of the owner, Dennis Hoff, and by owner, I mean owner. Dennis was quite the host; he set us up with a girl and a tour.
This place was cool. First off, I just liked the way it looked walking through the front door. It wasn’t some bitch behind a curtain with delusions of grandeur. Here you can see all the important stuff, like whores. The left of the building was filled with bar activity. A few locals were talking it up with the bikers and working girls. The bar is “L” shaped and is fronted by just the right number of stools meaning that they aren’t packed so tightly together you’re forced to sit on someone’s lap. As for the décor, it’s comfortable. All in all, I would describe the atmosphere at the Love Ranch as welcoming. But, onto the serious stuff, the sets-it-apart stuff: the booze, the whores, and the man, Dennis Hoff. Dennis is the true American super pimp; a strictly business man with a laid back attitude anyone would appreciate. He’s a cool cat that talks cars while kicking back and smoking cigars in his house full of ‘hos. The Love Ranch was not the seedy dark movie script I was expecting to see in a whorehouse. It’s a really great environment where everyone felt comfortable enough to let go and freak out.
We spent the hours to follow drinking with the “King of Pimps,” doing what we do, not giving a shit about what that was, and enjoying every minute of it. Every one of us obtained a first name basis with the working gals. And that didn’t cost a thing. Our goal to reach the final destination of this run went weird and somehow turned into a ride through the desert with a truck full of hookers and a head full of booze. The time we arrived at the final stop, the Short Branch Saloon, remains unknown. Our group had become even smaller, and we were the only people there excluding one table of locals and the girls who followed us. The thousand plus bikes that had just been there earlier in the day, lingered in the form of empty beer bottles and sticky floors. We arrived to find a ghost town. Kathy, the owner, began a lighthearted conversation about the day’s events. My drink had barely sat in front of me long enough to realize it was there, when Keith walked in from his smoking break with Skoog, Jokie, Terx and Dave and shouted, “Back to the Love Ranch!” My return to the Love Ranch became one of those time shifting events where hours and recollection seem to escape you. It was a blur of intemperance. Stumbling through hallways of doors that open for a fee, looking for the face I rode in with. Following the discord to which ever direction it bellowed from, searching for the missing. I found Dave and his old lady passed out on plush whorehouse lounge sofas, Jokie smoking expensive cigars with Dennis Hoff conversing on topics that are too difficult for me to understand, Skoog and Keith holding down the bar and Terx taking mental pictures of Cass motor-boating the stunning blonde “ho” that was on the cover of a Hustler magazine. I failed to realize the importance of getting down the mountain while watching the taillights of Javier’s bike drift away after he said, “I’m leaving; it’s getting cold as f**k out there.” I contemplated the effort of trying to follow. But one must understand, Jokie is the kind of man I have difficulty dragging out of a bar because it has a pinball machine. This place had prostitutes, a new found friend in Mr. Hoff and alcohol that didn’t cost any more than what is normally paid for at a bar. I wasn’t getting him to leave.
Hours later, I found myself smoking on the back porch with the working girls, drinking whiskey, listening to the enthusiastic descriptions of the day’s events. I could not stop staring at the hooker’s feet which she had strapped into treacherously tall, red leather stilettos. Her tiny ankles were covered in goose bumps. ‘Is it really that cold out here?’ I asked myself, out loud. I hear a response that it’s about 40 degrees tonight and gonna get cold. A sudden urgency to follow the logic of escaping the freezing desert night attacked my head, but the night cooked a hole in my brain that wouldn’t close. I stared into space for a few long ticks, wondering if I really wanted to end the night, but it was cold as hell. So I drug my ass over to the bar, ordered a double Jameson and re-started my search for the missing. Next year I’m bringing better gloves.
