I wasn’t sure what it meant. Did it involve elephant guns? Would I have to wear a khaki-colored oilskin hat? Was it done online using Apple’s Safari web browser? My friend Mike, who originally coined the phrase, quickly dashed all these hopes with his description:
This confused me. It struck me as the kind of hobby an aspiring serial killer might take up. Mike made it very clear that this was not about making use of hookers, and certainly not about hunting them for sport. It was a tourist’s version of a safari. We’d drive through their natural habitat and safely observe them from the car, but would by no means rouse the hookers from their domain or roll down the windows to pet and feed them.
We weren’t playing the role of bratty kids going to the fish store to tap on the glass. We were taking part in a thinking man’s game, a mystery where you use visual clues to deduce whether a woman standing on a street corner is a prostitute or not.
“She wasn’t a hooker, you dope. She was walking with her boyfriend.”
“That wasn’t her boyfriend, that was her pimp! Didn’t you see his hat?!”
“Real life isn’t a 1970s Blaxploitation movie. Real pimps don’t wear certain types of hats.”
“Yes they do. They wear hats that make them stand out like a peacock.”
It was like the board game Clue, except instead of the culprit being Colonel Mustard with a candlestick in the library, it was a very obese Hispanic woman with a unibrow in booty shorts. The fact that the booty shorts were two sizes too small is the clue that solved the mystery.
In these modern times, it can really be a challenge to decide whether a random woman walking down the street is a hooker or not. A short skirt doesn’t make a woman a hooker. She could just be heading to a club. A low-cut blouse doesn’t make a woman a hooker. Such shirts are fairly common with women under the age of 30. Wearing too much makeup doesn’t make a woman a hooker. It just means she’s old or from Wisconsin.
This is what makes a hooker safari so fun. You can guess, but nothing’s absolute. Do hookers wear sweatpants? They could. Can a hooker be driving a motorized scooter? It’s possible. Do hookers sit on mailboxes and drink two-liter bottles of Mr. Pibb? I’m sure some of them do. If a woman shouts “I’m waiting for the bus, fool! Get off me!” at a squad car, does that mean she’s a hooker? Maybe. Do hookers run their operations out of Denny’s restaurants? With over 2,500 locations nationwide and breakfast served anytime, it’s very likely.
There’s no single defining factor that guarantees someone is a hooker, which actually makes the game possible in almost any location. You could have a hooker safari at a wedding, bar mitzvah, or family reunion. You could even have a hooker safari at work, tallying votes as to whether your 50-year-old male boss is a hooker, and what particular hooker-like characteristics he possesses.
Are his clothes a size or two too small? That’s what hookers do to accentuate their features. Does he loiter, making his presence known but not really initiating conversation? That’s what hookers do when they’re waiting for a customer to approach them. When you say hello, does he casually compliment your appearance and wink? He sure sounds like a hooker to me.
However, sketchy neighborhoods are still the best option. You’ll get a lot more value, as such places also provide an array of non-hooker entertainment, including loud arguments outside pool halls, drug deals in plain sight, and homeless people surrounded by feral dogs that may or may not be eating them while they sleep.
If you have to ask why anyone would find this sort of “entertainment” appealing, then you obviously haven’t been reading this column very long. Sure, most people get their kicks from drinking, smoking, following a sports team, or restoring old cars, but you shouldn’t overlook urban blight as a hobby. There’s something oddly satisfying about one-upping a friend’s story by saying, “Oh yeah? Well I once saw a homeless guy eat a dead cat.”
There’s a reason why “COPS” is the longest-running reality TV show in history with more than 750 episodes. People love urban blight. Why not take an interest in your local blight? In times of economic woe, hooker safaris are one late night activity that will always be free.
What is The Man? The Man is always bringing people down, but who is this invisible bastard? Who is this omnipresent godless whoreson who constantly plagues us, siphoning the marrow from our brittle bones? Who is this sadist who keeps us close, so that he may someday break us like Lindsay Lohan, leaving us with nothing more than an empty bank account and a pair of aging hooters?