Beginning at Currie Street’s Duke of York Hotel, this historic walking tour takes you to local sites that pop up in industry lore.
Guides Jenna Love and Queenie Bon Bon, self-described whores who like to walk, set expectations from the beginning: there will be no nudity, gruesome murders or seeing inside a sex dungeon on this tour. It’s also not a forum to ask questions about how sex workers pay taxes or the sexually transmitted infections they’ve had.
They’re joined by researcher and production assistant Jane Whatsername and take us through a non-comprehensive history of how sex workers have reshaped spaces in the city’s west end, how sex work has been represented and responded to.
After a mix-up about which 90s their costumes would be derived from, Jenna and Queenie are delightfully decked out in fluorescent shades of pink and orange t-shirts labelled ‘Whore Guide’. Queenie’s styled with a bonnet, and Jenna’s with butterfly clips and a holographic bum bag.
The two have charming chemistry, incorporating wordplay and repartee into their script, making the history enjoyable and easier to follow. A standout of their script, which is cleverly masked in book covers collaged with old newspaper clippings from a publication dubbed Whore News, is the ability to bring us into the present.
Conveniently, the stops chosen along the tour offer plenty of historical intrigue and shade or steps to sit on. As the sold-out group perches on the steps in front of the Currie and Rosina Streets TAFE campus, we’re told it’s still a crime in South Australia today to rent property out to known sex workers.
This leaves them vulnerable to extortion and exploitation, “especially in a housing crisis” as Queenie points out.
“I think we all know the saying right? First comes the brothel, then comes the fun, then along comes the landlord with a big plan to build a block of apartments or a Sofitel,” Jenna quips.
For this reviewer, it was this kind of commentary and relevance to the lives and careers of sex workers today scattered throughout the script that was most compelling. Though they compared the past and present well, and we were warned the journey would be non-linear, the pace of the historical timeline is hard to follow in sections – at times wondering are we in the 1880s or the 1980s now?
Nonetheless, history buffs will be adequately fed with details going back to 1848 and printed guides provided with archival images and further detail sourced from the state library.
Overall, the full tour – which clocks in at just over an hour – is a leisurely trek and well-delivered look at the narratives that have turned workers into criminals and communities into crime scenes.
Whore Walk: a sex work history walking tour is running until February 23 at the Duke of York Hotel.