Sex Boxes Give New Meaning to Pull in, Pull Out

Remember when you were a kid and your parents told you to clean your room, but you didn’t feel like it, so you just shoved all of your crap under your bed and into your closet to give the illusion of tidy? Well that’s kind of the approach that Switzerland is taking toward its rampant prostitution problem. And by “rampant prostitution problem,” we mean the issues the city is having with sex workers just going at it in the streets—not the actual hookers themselves.

Prostitution is completely legal in Switzerland, however, residents of Zurich (particularly those who live near red light districts) have grown tired of watching the city’s working women carry out their, um, “transactions,” with customers in plain view, and at all hours of the day and night. So as a solution, Zurich officials are proposing that the city construct “sex boxes”—which are basically parking spaces with Christmas-tree-green metal gates around them. The hope is that by providing prostitutes with semi-enclosed spaces in which to conduct their business, residents can at least avoid witnessing unsavory acts right under their noses. They’re clearly banking on the whole “out of sight, out of mind” theory, but the only problem is, they won’t really be out of sight, will they? They’ll still be doing the nasty in public areas—it’s just that now they’ll be doing it behind a bunch of garish green gates. But hey, if you can’t get rid of them, you might as well give them a work space, right? Because let’s face it: Hookers need offices, too.