RENO, Nev. - The Mustang Ranch, the best-known little whorehouse in the West, is back in business at a new location. The gaudy pink stucco buildings and the working girls are there. The only thing missing is the name.
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The bordello reopened Friday east of Reno with the generic name World Famous Brothel six years after the government shut it down and auctioned off its buildings and contents.
The Mustang's old parlor ceiling has been replaced with a dome, painted in fences, shrubs and flowers. Special lighting effects gradually change the ceiling from sunrise to sunset.
"We have raised the bar on brothel elegance and operation in Nevada," said Susan Austin, the madam who also directs another brothel on the same property. "There is nothing else in the state that can compare with the pleasant, warm decor and atmosphere in two separate and competing bordello operations."
Prostitution is illegal in Nevada's largest cities but is allowed in 12 of the state's 17 counties.
Austin said the decor pays homage to Joe Conforte, the original owner of the brothel, while toning down his garish pinks and purples.
Conforte's image in leaded glass greets visitors entering the parlor, where the working girls line up. But Conforte's red flocked wallpaper and threadbare carpet have been replaced by earth tones and an Italian motif.
"I wanted to pay homage to Joe Conforte. He made prostitution legal in Nevada," Austin said.
Conforte, a one-time cab driver in San Francisco who used to deliver his passengers to prostitutes in the 1960s, took over the 104-room brothel in 1967 when prostitution was illegal in Nevada. In 1971 it became the state's first legal bordello.
Conforte ran into tax problems with the IRS. He was accused of owing $13 million in back taxes and fled to Brazil. The government seized the Mustang Ranch in 1999 after its parent companies and manager were convicted in a federal fraud and racketeering trial.
But the U.S.
Bureau of Land Managementwas uneasy about owning a brothel and put it up for grabs on eBay.
Bordello owner Lance Gilman snapped it up for $145,100, then spent $4 million to carve up the buildings and move them to his Wild Horse Resort & Spa brothel, five miles east of the old Mustang site.
He did not call it the Mustang Ranch because of a dispute with a rival brothel owner who claims to own the rights to the name.
At the World Famous Brothel, as with the original Mustang, the wings with the working girls' rooms extend like spokes from an octagonal parlor. Fifty rooms and two VIP suites are planned. At the moment, 18 girls are working.
For one, who calls herself Salaizia, it is a job the lifelong Reno resident has longed for.
"I used to see Joe Conforte on television. I'd see the flashing lights, the beautiful women. It was a glamorous world," she said. When she signed on with the new Mustang, "my dream came true."