A visitor inspects a “sex boxes.” (EPA)
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Do they get fries with that?
Zurich is opening its first sex drive-ins tomorrow — nine wooden booths where men can get some McLovin’ with hookers outside of the Swiss city’s downtown area.
The procedure for the so-called “sex boxes” is vaguely similar to fast-food service.
Drivers pass a check-in gate and follow a marked route — then place their orders with one of 40 prostitutes, negotiate a price and then drive on to meet up in the covered boink booth.
Street signs show the way and display the rules: Adults must be alone, drive automobiles rather than bikes, and properly discard their used condoms. Patrons must also keep their lust contained within the boundaries of their designated sex box and avoid the surrounding woods.
Each of the nine wooden sex boxes accommodates a single car and is equipped with alarm buttons that notify on-premises security.
“Prostitution is a business. We cannot prohibit it, so we want to control it in favor of the sex workers and the population,” Michael Herzig, Zurich’s social services director in charge of the sex drive-ins, told the UK’s Independent. “If we do not control it, organized crime and the pimps will take over.”
Men seeking paid hanky panky outside three approved zones around Zurich, which includes the sex boxes, face fines of up to $500.
The $2.2M sex drive-ins are not universally loved, however, seeing as only 52 percent of Zurich’s voters approved plans to introduce the boxes in a ballot initiative last year.
“It will not work, either because the clients will not come or because the site will not be used by prostitutes,” said Svwn Dogwiler, a right-wing politician in Switzerland’s Swiss People’s Party.
Zurich’s sex boxes are not the first in Europe. In Germany the sex box experiment has largely been a success with many claiming a dramatic drop in crime as a result of their introduction.
However in the city of Dortmund where the boxes were opened in 2007, the authorities eventually had to close up shop because eastern European gangs had taken the business over.