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.”

A Downtown Vegas spokesperson, when reached for comment today, passed on Curtis’ insistence that “Chris has no involvement in the website whatsoever”. Yes, he’s the author of the book – but not the website that’s listed on his book. Not him. Nothing to do with him.

It happens. Presumably in the intervening years between publication of his book in 2004, someone took over Curtis’ domain name and started selling even sleezier sex advice, illustrated with photos of “hot Asian women, strippers.. or any other type of women.” Certainly the name of the sex guru on the site is not Chris Curtis but “Dean Cortez.” Totally different guy.

So let’s be fair to Curtis. Let’s take a trip in the Wayback Machine to the original version of the site, when Curtis absolutely, definitely did run it. From the “about” page from 2004…

My background is in the military and law enforcement. That may not sound like a typical Mack background, but it’s actually the most hardcore training a Mack could ever have. I used to serve as the Primary Negotiator in hostage situations. That’s no joke. In the process I learned a lot about psychology and human nature that I found I could apply to women. Believe me, once you’ve learned how to talk a guy out of wacking himself after gambling away his kids’ tuition and life savings, scooping a honey at the local bar is like taking candy from a baby.

Well, it’s time for you to become that guy.

Well, call this the Circle of Mack. Just send us an email. And if you’re coming to Vegas, let me know and maybe I can show you some of my favorite “target rich environments.”

Fellas, I’m real. Mack Tactics is real. Join the Mack Militia and become part of our team. Let’s make it happen.

Despite Curtis’ insistence that “I’m real”, he apparently had concerns about attaching his real name to the site. Next to the photos of Curtis surrounded by female “targets”, Curtis has signed his name “Chris Dean.”

So, to be absolutely clear, the 2005 site – in which Curtis boasts about being “on the prowl” and using a girl in order to have sex with her friend in the back of his car – is in no way related to the even pornier, even sleezier, even THIS GUY IS IN CHARGE OF ESCORTING WOMEN SAFELY HOME FOR THE DOWNTOWN PROJECT-ier site from 2013.

Likewise, Chris Curtis is Chris Dean. But Chris Dean has nothing do with Dean Cortez and has “no involvement whatsoever” in the site which is promoted on the back of his book.

I’ve asked DTP if Curtis wants to revise his statement. I’ll update if I hear back.

“Every interaction with a female is an opportunity” – Chris Curtis

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.”

Strangely, though, neither Officer.com nor Markel saw fit to recognize Curtis’ other major achievement: in 2005 he wrote a critically acclaimed book (four stars on Amazon and reviews around the world). Its title?

“MACK Tactics: The Science of Seduction Meets the Art of Hostage Negotiation.”

The book, which references other negotiation manuals like “Getting Past No” by William Ury, also details Curtis’ rule of reciprocity: how, when a “MACK” does something nice for a woman it is reasonable to expect something in return. (We can only speculate on the appropriate reward for walking someone safely to her car.)

“When you’re a negotiator, the way to speak to people is drilled into you. It becomes natural,” Curtis explained to Karyn Miller from London’s Daily Telegraph. “You don’t ever say to a woman, ‘Let’s go back to my place.’ Women don’t want to seem easy. Instead, suggest there’s something you want to share with her, like a CD you talked about or a bottle of wine.”

Curtis then proceeded to hit on Miller:

“You’re attracted to me, aren’t you?” No, I confess. “Go on, admit it. You find me attractive. If I went out on to the street, I could use M.A.C.K. Tactics to pick up the next woman I saw.”

Despite its $80 price tag on Amazon, I’ve ordered a copy of MACK Tactics (more extracts to follow). At time of publishing, a spokesperson for the Downtown Project had yet to respond to a request for comment.

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.

To those correspondents, the notion that people might pay to read words on the Internet is a fantasy. A fiction. It simply does not happen. Or at the very least, the only way it does happen is if we allow customers to sample our apples before choosing whether to buy them. One “Nancy” writes …

“Before I sign up for a $3/month credit-card charge, I like to know what I’m getting.

Your cutesy come-on doesn’t do it for me.

I’m out.

Nancy”

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “Fuck you, Nancy.” And you have right on your side. But, still, Nancy has a point. Three dollars is a lot of dollars to commit, without at least the option to consume everything without paying anything.

“Not it isn’t,” you’re probably saying now. “Three dollars is the price of a cup of coffee.”

You didn’t pick that comparison at random. By comparing the price of words to that of coffee, you’re parroting the go-to pitch of every editorial salesman for the past half decade. Such are the vagaries of coffee pricing in America, any proposed “content” transaction — whether it involves 99c or ten dollars — can be compared favourably to the price of a cup of coffee. We can’t be many months away from the $100 cup of coffee — more expensive than this entire set of virtual encyclopedias.

For the record, the price of a cup of coffee in NSFWCORP’s local coffee shop is $2.49: a full 51c cheaper than a month-long subscription to this publication. If money is your deciding factor, go with the caffeine.

The truth is, there are a whole list of things that are cheaper than a subscription to Not Safe For Work Corporation, including many which blow our modest value proposition (“the future of journalism, with jokes”) out of the water.

For example, as recently as 2010, your three dollars could have paid for Newsweek not once, not twice but three times over. Not three copies of the magazine, but the actual Newsweek company, which then-91-year-old mogul Sidney Harman purchased from the Washington Post Company for just a buck. (Eight months later, Harman died, his life-long ambition of owning a sad, irrelevant magazine sadly and irrelevantly fulfilled. But it could have been worse. He could have been the guy who bought TV Guide for a dollar, back in 2008.)

One can argue day and night about the long-term value of Newsweek, but the rights to the Terminator franchise? That’s $1.4 billion of money in the bank. And yet, in 1984, James Cameron sold the whole damn thing to co-producer (and future ex-wife) Gale Anne Hurd for just a dollar. By that reckoning, your three dollars would get you “The Terminator,” “Terminator 2: Judgement Day” and “Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.” But not “Terminator Salvation,” wisely.

Or how about an investment in medicine? In 2012, the Doctors Hospital in Perry Township, Ohio was sold for just one dollar, despite the property being conservatively valued at $6.8 million. It was a tax write-off, you understand, and a way to avoid paying the upkeep costs for the huge, abandoned building. But just think: your own hospital! You could do operations! Or race around on the trolleys! Just two of the things you can’t do with a subscription to Not Safe For Work Corporation.

In 2002 the jackpot in The Big Game (now Mega Millions) lottery jackpot stood at a little over $330m. That is, until the whole thing was won by three ticket holders, for a combined investment of just three dollars. The list goes on.

For the price of just a single month’s subscription to NSFWCORP, you could have bought two magazines and a hospital. Or two Terminator movies and $110 million dollars in cash. Or half of Newsweek and a cup of coffee at The Beat Coffee House on Fremont Street.

Yes, you could have chosen to buy any of those things but, unlike Nancy, you chose instead to subscribe to Not Safe For Work Corporation. For that, I’m unspeakably grateful, and maybe a little perplexed. Would I have done the same in your position? Perhaps I’d have snapped up Newsweek, availed myself of the perfectly good coffee machine on the fourth floor, expensed my NSFWCORP subscription and still had two dollars left for an ice cream Snickers. I don’t know. I’m not good with hypotheticals.

All I know for sure is that, on behalf of the entire, fast-growing NSFWCORP team (22 and counting!), I very much appreciate you risking your three dollars on our magazine. In return, I promise we’ll use every one of dollars to write, edit and publish the best magazine you have ever read, and will ever read. Or, like Sidney Harman, we’ll die trying.

Fuck you, Nancy.

Paul