The site has received quite a few e-mails today in regards to an article posted on Yahoo!. The page looks as though it is a daily collection of information, so it may or may not be there tomorrow. However, here is the link.

A quick search on the 'net revealed that we were mentioned on another site, About.com. However, upon clicking on the link the people's page we were featured on no longer shows us as being present. It was nice that we were mentioned though.

Also, it is a bit disapointing today -- but it appears that our counter is down. At last sighting we were around the 39, 400 mark. Previous news articles have usually created 100s of hits. I hope that some of them were counted before our counter went down.

Walking around our area it is obvious that the prostitutes appear to be a bit absent these days. This has been the reason for a lack of updates. However, someone sent in an e-mail pointing to a new site in Winnipeg, Manitoba setup by the West Central Community Improvement Association.

Not much to report on at the moment.

• The site has been the topic of discussion on Vancouver's The Bill Good Show, on CKNW 98.
• Picture updates will be forthcoming. Several series of pictures have been developed and should be scanned and up sometime this week.
• We're thinking of puting up some video footage of johns picking up prostitutes. Space limitations and clarity of the video are issues that need to be dealt with first.
• A local site has made some comments about our site. You can visit their page at http://www.geocities.com/r0b047/.

Our site was recently reported in the news again. Channel 7 News (WIC) with Rick Castiglione completed a report that ran during the 6:00 evening news. A tape of the program was sent to the site and is now encoded in Real Media format. Visit the Media portion of our page to view the news program. As has happened in the past, our average number of visitors has gone up. The news article did not mention the full URL of the site. The hits would have probably been much stronger if it was mentioned.

It was interesting to watch the news article. They got most of it right, except that we are not quite yet at our 1st year aniversary. The news said we were up for two years already. Also, the reporter seemed to concentrate on the prostitution rather than the johns. What is newsworthy about this project, besides being a website, is that we are unconcerned with the city's problem of prostitution so much as the traffic coming from all areas of the city into our own.

While people usually focus on the fact that prostitution is moving, it is not really the truth. In our case, the clients are moving and the prostitution is following. The argument that we are slowly moving prostitution to other areas is incomplete. By applying a business model, we can see that the traffic, not the prostitutes, control where the business stays. It is our belief that the johns should be the focus instead of the prostitutes. If the customers are absent the business will have to fold or change its mode of operation.

Also, several pieces of email are arriving each day and have all been quite positive. We really appreciate hearing from you and welcome your comments, good or bad.

Would you like to make a comment about any of the statements made here? Feel free to email us back at calgaryhodown@hotmail.com.

Stampede has finally arrived and the city is enjoying a spectacular number of attendees to our world renound fair. Unfortunatley for us, johns are returning to their regular haunts and johns caught soliciting have unfortunately increased. We will try to get the statistics from the city police for accurate number of complaints from our area.

Check back later this month as we have some film depicting johns soliciting sex digitized into Real Video for you to download.

More pictures were added to our photo section. This has caused us to break down the page slightly so that you are not bogged down by too many pictures. Each photo in our gallery is 12k or less and there are a maximum of two pictures per page. Please feel free to let us know if you recognize the cars, have comments to share, or just feel like ranting at calgaryhodown@hotmail.com.

Had our first technical difficulty today. After updating the page and attempting to upload it, the internet connection was severed. This caused a partial index.htm file to be uploaded. A blank page was seen for approximately 12 hours. Several e-mails came in to tell us about the situation and it was rectified immediately. Thanks for the headsup.

Thought people might be interested in reading a few media tidbits that are floating around the net.

• February 2nd, 2000: CBC radio interview related to one of the Ottawa sites
• August 14th, 1999: Our site is forevermore in the archives of a site called Cybersleuths
• August 13th, 1999: This site also has an article on our site, but is in Korean.
• This Toronto website, with similar goals as ourselves has reprinted some of the articles that came out of Toronto papers

The following link contains news coverage of one of the Ottawa sites. The interesting thing about this article is the comments made by the Human Rights Commission and the local police representative.

On the rights of johns:

The commission makes similar statements that libertarians made in Calgary. The site sits on a fine line that apparently falls outside of their concern, however, they are watching the site to see what happens. Our hope is that a lot more people than just these groups are watching.

On the publishing of photos:

When questioned about the issue of taking someone's photograph while picking up a prostitute, the Ottawa police explained, "it's like a press photographer taking photos. Not always does that person want to be photographed. But there's nothing illegal about it."

Website Censored:

Some interesting news surfaced about the Ottawa Centertown Website today. They were shut down by Lycos for the possible reasons that the "website contains sex related material and because it contains potentially libelous information." (News Flash, Byward Market Website)

The Positives:

This will hopefully interest the television / web media. The news will be sure to attract additional visitors and increase awareness about these sites. So far, each time our site has been advertised, the number of johns in our area has decreased.

The actual censoring of information by Lycos is not too worrisome considering that they probably made a knee jerk reaction to someone's e-mail or had a computer program that recognized words it didn't like. We can understand that ... we don't like the actual johns, prostitutes, and other social ills on our streets.

Further Thoughts:

Censorship of a site similar to our own is interesting, but not unexpected. All of Lycos and Geocities have already been censored by popular software packages that are used in schools, Calgary's own BESS system (used in the public system) in an example. The possibility that the content may be innocuous is not as important as the possibility of impropriety. Censorship is quickly creeping across the Internet, however, the opportunity to allow certain things to hide in the shadows or to pretend they do not exist is often the same reason that specific areas of a city become ghettoized and neglected as a place for johns to pick up prostitutes.

We wish Centertown good luck as they rebuild their website and hopefully generate increased news coverage caused by this loss.

If you would like to share your comments about this issue with us, feel free to do so at calgaryhodown@hotmail.com.

This weekend is the start of several updates to the site. The following details the changes to the site so far:

• Reduced the number of top links
• Made the default "johns page" the Cruisers section;
• Updated the Cruisers section;
• Updated the Links section;
• Updated the Photo section;
• URL change to http://www.geocities.com/calgaryhodown from the longer Geocities URL that is now defunct;
• And removed information related to prostitutes since information was lacking and it was not our focus.

This summer we suspect that an increase in prostitution will be evident due to a major conference next month. We already have several groups ready to take video and stills of any johns doing business in our area and to publish them on the site. We hope that this will send a definite message that prostitution is not a part of Calgary's tourism trade.

Based on the media's repeat reaction to these anti-john sites, we believe that a site like ours detailing activities involving the sex trade will surely generate interest. If you have comments that would be of interest to us about this plan of action, let us know.

Proper update will follow shortly. We have been getting quite a few hits over the last few days from a website in the Netherlands, called Netnieuws. I cannot read the language but it obviously highlights the Calgary and Toronto sites.

The immediate success of these websites continues to appeal to neighborhoods plaugued by the prostitution trade and traffic. Another site has announced its opening in Toronto, entitled the The Parkdale "john's hall of fame", they appear to be quite aggressive and will be going public with information on the 10th of January. We will look forward to hearing the results of their group's effort.

Also,

You may have recently read about all the publicity surrounding the Toronto Roundup website that launched earlier this week. The repeat success of this type of site is bound to influence other cities to do the same. Rumours of Edmonton and Vancouver starting their own websites has been heard. We will continue to update you with any new information that may arise.

Please check out our Cruisers section as we do still get johns picking up prostitutes every now and then.

Also,

The last update may have been a bit overly optimistic, although not entirely off base. Prostitution is still down, however, there have been a few sightings of johns picking up prostitutes in the last few weeks. We hope that this is an anomaly and that the johns realize that the site is still active.

Over the past few weeks our e-mail inbox has been filling up with continued media requests, politicians asking what we are up to, and different communities who are beginning to create their own sites. Don't be surprised to find that other cities have created their own websites that publicize the license plates and vehicle descriptions.

The Calgary Herald published an article October 20^th, entitled "Vic Park sex trade traffic declines." It starts off with the following:

   Sex trade traffic in the inner-city neighborhood
   of Victoria Park is getting skimpier by the week.

   In fact, it's barely there, say police, politicians
   and community activists.

The article continues to explain how this website, along with police and politicians have been credited with the drop in prostitution and related crime. Although the Calgary Herald editors have not publicly agreed with the site, every article that they have published has been positive.

Also,

A number of weeks have passed without a single sighting of a prostitute in our area. The site now remains as a reminder of a community's ability to work together and solve a problem that politicians and police were unable to solve on their own. The site is continuing to recieve e-mails from different community groups across Canada and we hope that they are able to solve their problems as we have. Please let us know if you decide to start your own website.

We will continue to post new sightings of prostitute pick-ups, but it appears that the customer base has now moved to other locations.

Also,

Check out the A-Channel Exclusive Report that broadcasted our plight to others outside our community. You will need Real Media Player to view this three minute video.

Over the past week, several e-mails have been received regarding the lack of updates to the site. The question that must be on many of our visitors' minds is whether the site has solved the problem or simply not been updated. The problem of prostitution is still a problem for the city, but our area is no longer plauged by the number of cars or drug deals that once frequented our neighborhood.

As the site traffic slowly climbs to 26,000, the automobile traffic continues to decrease around our community. The site still receives information regarding pickups in and around our area, but they are infrequent. This site will continue to expose those who pick up prostitutes in our area, as long as the information can be verified by video, photographs, and/or eye-witnesses.

The following are a few updates that were made during the last few days:

Also,

For those who are technically savy, the first television broadcast related to our problem and this site will soon be available to watch. The short newscast may provide a context for those who are visiting this site from outside Calgary.

Over the last few days, members of the community have been watching to see if the prostitutes have returned. For the most part, the prostitutes have vanished. At times, however, johns still search for the girls. One of the problems that our community still has is the known pimps that frequent our area. Although the police and the community know who they are, we are still somewhat fearful of confronting them directly and will do everything we can to keep away from them as police continue to build a case against them.

First off, it is important for this site to say that we read and think about all the e-mail we receive. Nothing simply sits in an inbox. It is difficult to respond to your thoughtful words since our originating IP address would be easily traced. We try to respond to the bulk of our e-mail through public messages expressed through different sections of this site.

For those interested, the e-mail received has varied in topic. A few e-mails were from those who recognized pieces of the license plate and provided the name and phone number of the john. Others expressed gratitude for allowing them to see what their husbands were actually doing when they said they "just wanted to go out for a drive." Others want us to "think long and hard" about what we are doing to other communities that will absorb the prostitution problem. To this last group of people, all we can say is that we have thought about it ... and cannot think of one single reason that we should be expected to bear the burden of a problem that is not ours as a community but ours as a city.

Many of the news articles that have recently appeared in the Calgary Sun and the Calgary Herald have also focussed on where the prostitutes will move. A few e-mails have even expressed anger that we might move them into their neighborhood. Unfortunately, when the hookers moved into our neighborhood we did not take ownership or responsibility for their behavior. We simply do not want them in our neighborhood. I hope that the next neighborhood will be just as active as we have been and discourage this trade; however, the prostitutes will only move to where they face little or no resistance. We would hope that those who are supportive of our community's plight will write a short e-mail communicating your opinion to those elected officials posted in the approach section.

Please check out our cruisers section as it will be updated today or tomorrow. We are hoping that those who are returning from holidays and who simply do not know what has been going on in the last two weeks quickly hear about our site before attempting to pick up a prostitute in our neighborhood.

A recent e-mail praised our efforts but expressed a concern that the risk to personal safety is not communicated strongly enough. The e-mail uses the cartoon found at the bottom of the F.A.Q. section as an example. A man is shown jumping out of the bushes to take a photograph of a passing vehicle. The e-mail points out that it looks as though we are promoting a fun activity and have not adequately conveyed the obvious risk to personal safety.

While we have encouraged other communities to take up similar initiatives it is important to clarify that any confrontation with johns, pimps, or prostitutes is dangerous. We understand that we increase the risk to our safety when we confront sex trade traffic, but we hoped that our efforts to reduce the traffic would make the neighborhood safer. Members of our community only go out in groups of six or more and, as an added precaution, the police are always notified before we go out.

We did not know what would happen after this site went up, and it is nice to be able to say that it has been successful, but going out to confront sex trade traffic is not a game or "fun activity". We would rather be inside watching TV or outside playing some sport. Unfortunately, the sex trade traffic started to threaten the reasonable amount of safety that any neighborhood would expect. Any excitement or joy that our website may convey is based on our success and not the risky business of walking the streets.

The reality is that we are ecstatic that this site is helping to reduce prostitution, but we know that the methods we had to go through in order for that to occur were not the safest means. If you or your community decide to use our solution, talk to your local law enforcement and political representatives. Let them know what you are planning as a community. While our local politicians tried to distance themselves from the site at first, they are now publicly supportive while others want to become more directly involved. This project would have been safer if it had been allowed to be publicly supported by local law enforcement and political powers.

In other news,

Canvassing other areas affected by prostitution in Calgary has evoked some positive bits of information. The members of other areas have noted a steady decline in prostitution even though they are not taking down licence plates or photographs. While I do not have specific statistics to provide, the people who are subjected to viewing the trade outside their windows believe that prostitution has been reduced by up to 90%.

Since Sunday August 8th, the extent of our problem has been greatly impacted. Our problem has been given attention nationally and internationally. Regrettably some of this attention has sensationalized parts unrelated to our efforts. E-mail regarding the Top 10 and the Cruisers sections remains mostly positive; however, several e-mails state we are motivated by "God" or the "Ku Klux Klan". We obviously hit a nerve.

Removal of sex traffic and its related problems, to bring back a reasonable level of safety to our residential neighborhood - remain our goals.

Here are some facts:

Again, for those who are interested in what happened in terms of reducing the prostitution in our area - it has been significantly reduced. Our tactics have been praised and condemned, but it worked.

With an overwhelming amount of construction in the Victoria Park area, the hookers have decided to circle our block in an effort to make more money. With the girls have come drugs, degenerates, and anger from our neighborhood at the clients of these prostitutes. We do not want this business taking place in our neighborhood.

Since standing on a street corner is legal, our elected officials feel we "are given literally no powers whatsoever to deal with this issue." (Alderman Jon Lord). Local police officers agree that they are unable to do much about the problem with lack of funding and the number of officers. Our community, however, has a lot of power. We have decided to take to the streets and record license plates, take pictures, and promote this information to the masses.

We hope that the johns will be aware that their identities are being recorded and that they no longer feel the need to return to our neighborhood. We do not want prostitutes in our area and we will do everything in our power to reduce their business by removing the anonymity of their clients publicly.