Month: July 2013

“It’s perfect that you’re worried because I soothe women’s worries.” – Chris Curtis

“My hope for the Rangers is that they make people feel incredibly comfortable when they come Downtown.” – Chris Curtis

Yesterday I wrote about retired LV Metro cop Chris Curtis, the pickup artist and “MACK Tactics” author who has – really – been hired to keep women safe in Tony Hsieh’s Downtown Project. (Disclosure: Hsieh’s Vegas Tech Fund is an investor in NSFWCORP)

Today – huzzah! – my copy of Curtis’ book arrived, and I can’t wait to start reading. In the meantime, I thought I should check our Curtis’ website

http://www.macktactics.com

Oh. Boy

“Whether you’re into younger women, hot Asian women, strippers, girls at your college, or any type of woman, Mack Tactics has got you covered.”

(Following that “hot Asian women” link, by the way, takes you to a porn site complete with a huge banner ad for MACK Tactics: “Free Seduction Training Course Shows You How To Read Her Mind & Get In Her Panties”)

Again: the author of this book is currently in charge of making sure women are safe in Downtown Vegas. Zappos downtown team director, Jeanne Markel described him as “a fantastic person.”

Regular readers will know that NSFWCORP’s largest investor is the Vegas Tech Fund, part of Tony Hsieh’s plan to revitalize the area around East Fremont Street. We’re thrilled to be here.

Not everyone is bullish on East Fremont, though. Last year, some employees of Hsieh’s dayjob company, Zappos, expressed concern about the safety of downtown after dark. At least one female employee had to fend off a would-be attacker who attempted to get into her car.

Imagine the relief, then, when Hsieh revealed his plan to keep Fremont safe. Based on a similar scheme in Austin, Texas, more than a dozen “Downtown Rangers” dressed in smart uniforms — consisting of body-mounted video cameras and, uh, brown shirts – are paid $12.50 an hour to patrol the streets around East Fremont, even offering to walk women to their cars after dark.

Phew! And surely those same women will be reassured to know that the man in charge of training the Rangers is retired Sgt Chris Curtis, a 20-year veteran of Las Vegas’ Metro Police Department. Curtis was a finalist for Officer.com’s “officer of the year” and was described by Zappos downtown team director, Jeanne Markel as “a fantastic person.”

It’s midnight twenty five at NSFWCORP HQ, our worryingly unfortified office high above Downtown Las Vegas. Still, almost a dozen floors up we should at least be safe from the “severe thunderstorm” that the National Weather Service just splashed across the pilot episode of “Political Animals.” Frankly, the threat of being washed into a storm drain was the best part of that dripping-wet squib of a show.

But anyway.

Two days ago, Josh The Developer pushed the button on NSFWCORP’s subscription system, allowing the first of our $3 a month subscribers to peer around the gates. In the 48 hours or so that have passed since, those subscribers have just kept on coming, to the point where I’ve had to stop the “new reader” text message alerts being sent to my phone.

We’re still thousands short of the number we need to break even, of course, and tens of thousands shy of a point where we can do this until the day we die. But, far sooner than I or anyone else here expected, that point looks positively reachable.

Not that we’ve been without naysayers. Amid all the nice emails of congratulations and the equally welcome notes of constructive criticism, are those correspondents who feel obliged to inform me that you don’t exist.