{"id":88790,"date":"2024-12-23T23:11:37","date_gmt":"2024-12-23T23:11:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/23\/lost-vegas-spring-fever-spa-aka-the-soak-n-poke\/"},"modified":"2024-12-23T23:11:37","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T23:11:37","slug":"lost-vegas-spring-fever-spa-aka-the-soak-n-poke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/2024\/12\/23\/lost-vegas-spring-fever-spa-aka-the-soak-n-poke\/","title":{"rendered":"LOST VEGAS: Spring Fever Spa (aka The Soak n\u2019 Poke)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"post-content__sub-title\">\n        Posted on: December 23, 2024, 04:50h.\u00a0\n    <\/p>\n<p class=\"post-content__sub-title\">\n        Last updated on: December 23, 2024, 05:10h.\n    <\/p>\n<div class=\"post-info-panel\">\n<div class=\"post-info-panel__author-holder js-open-close\">\n<div class=\"post-info-panel__author-logo\">\n                <img alt=\"Avatar photo\" src=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/cropped-3-3-50x50.png\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/cropped-3-3-100x100.png 2x\" class=\"avatar avatar-50 photo\" height=\"50\" width=\"50\" decoding=\"async\"\/>            <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Rarely does a town\u2019s most notorious sex hotel so blatantly advertise what it is, but this was Las Vegas. Not only that, it was the \u201980s.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_339485\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-339485\" data-style=\"width: 858px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-339485 size-post-thumbnail-858xAUTO\" src=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/lost-spring-fever-knpr1-858x609.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"858\" height=\"609\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/lost-spring-fever-knpr1-858x609.jpg 858w, https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/lost-spring-fever-knpr1-430x305.jpg 430w, https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/lost-spring-fever-knpr1.jpg 1111w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 858px) 100vw, 858px\"\/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-339485\" class=\"text-description\">A postcard advertising Spring Fever, which was located on Boulder Highway and East Sahara Avenue. (Image: KNPR)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cRomantic private spa suites,\u201d the steamy postcards, billboards and even TV ads for Spring Fever Spa announced. \u201cAffordable hourly rates.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Most Las Vegas locals who were at least 15 before Spring Fever Spa closed still remember the campaign, and their reaction whenever they\u2019d drive by the unassuming building.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo hormonal suburban teens whose sex education was a tortured fantasia based on\u00a0\u2018Hustler\u2019\u00a0magazine stashes in desert lots and furtive, hurried doses of scrambled Playboy Channel, Spring Fever, by contrast, thrummed with unbearable vibrations of immanent erotic reality,\u201d Andrew Kiraly <a href=\"https:\/\/knpr.org\/fifth-street\/2022-05-25\/may-26-2022\">wrote in this hilarious 2022 <em>Desert Companion <\/em>tribute.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou just knew actual people were having actual sex in there, whipping up frantic jacuzzi souffl\u00e9s of chlorinated love-froth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Check out one of its steamy ads yourself and see how much composure you can muster\u2026<\/p>\n<div class=\"arve\" data-mode=\"normal\" data-oembed=\"1\" data-provider=\"youtube\" id=\"arve-youtube-qxcj-cztfdk6769ee29671b7070049549\" style=\"max-width:900px;\">\n<span class=\"arve-inner\"><br \/><span class=\"arve-embed arve-embed--has-aspect-ratio\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 500 \/ 281\"><br \/><span class=\"arve-ar\" style=\"padding-top:56.200000%\"\/><iframe allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\" class=\"arve-iframe fitvidsignore\" data-arve=\"arve-youtube-qxcj-cztfdk6769ee29671b7070049549\" data-src-no-ap=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/QXcJ-cZtFdk?feature=oembed&amp;iv_load_policy=3&amp;modestbranding=1&amp;rel=0&amp;autohide=1&amp;playsinline=0&amp;autoplay=0\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"505.8\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-presentation allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/QXcJ-cZtFdk?feature=oembed&amp;iv_load_policy=3&amp;modestbranding=1&amp;rel=0&amp;autohide=1&amp;playsinline=0&amp;autoplay=0\" width=\"900\"><\/iframe><br \/>\n<\/span><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Hot Tub Time Machine<\/h2>\n<p>Inspired by the California hot tub craze, Spring Fever (aka the Soak n\u2019 Poke, as every local referred to it) featured 22 octagonal suites, each with a bed, sauna, shower and lounge. In the middle of the octagon was a Jacuzzi. Copious floor-to-ceiling mirrors on the tile walls reflected whatever show each couple felt like putting on.<\/p>\n<p>Its doors were opened (and apparently never locked, since it operated 24\/7) in June 1979 by Michael S. Mack, Charles Mack and Laurence Friedman. According to Kiraly\u2019s research, Michael was the cousin of Nevada banker and UNLV benefactor Jerry Mack (the \u201cMack\u201d in UNLV\u2019s Thomas &amp; \u2026 Arena).<\/p>\n<p>The place also came with its own urban myth. One of its customers supposedly bought some VHS porn tapes in Thailand and discovered himself and his mistress starring in one. (Remember those mirrors? They were two-way!)<\/p>\n<p>So the guy \u2014 now divorced, of course \u2014 sues Spring Fever and forces its closure.<\/p>\n<p>After rehashing the myth in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/question\/2014-08-24\/\">its own remembrance of Spring Fever in 2014,<\/a> <em>the Las Vegas Advisor<\/em> received an email from a reader.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am from the Chicago area and we had the Pioneer Motel in Lansing, Ill. with the same urban myth about guests seeing themselves in a porn movie,\u201d it read.<\/p>\n<p>As Mark Twain once said: \u201cNever let the truth get in the way of a good story.\u201d<\/p>\n<h2>New Hands<\/h2>\n<p>Spring Fever was purchased in 1991 by Michael O. Washington. A Vietnam War vet decorated with two purple hearts, he gained national notoriety in 1984 by receiving another kind. He was chosen to receive the transplanted heart of actor Jon-Erik Hexum, after the star of TV\u2019s \u201cVoyagers!\u201d died from an accidental self-inflicted gunshot wound while playing Russian Roulette on set.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a lot to get through before coming to our main point \u2026 that Washington also owned an outcall service called Swinging Suzy\u2019s Dancers and Entertainers, which presented some bad optics in the eyes of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWashington says the police have already been snooping around to see if there is a connection between the spa and the outcall biz,\u201d <em>the Las Vegas Sun<\/em> wrote in 1991. \u201cThere isn\u2019t, he says. The place is being run the same way it always has.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As we explained while <a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/vegas-myths-busted-prostitution-is-legal-in-las-vegas\/\">busting the myth of legal Las Vegas prostitution,<\/a> it\u2019s perfectly lawful for an escort to accept money to come to a stranger\u2019s hotel room for a reason that\u2019s unspecified. It\u2019s also legal to advertise this service. In fact, it used to take up more than 100 pages of the telephone directory.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever a paid escort chooses to do once they get to your room may be legal or illegal. But it\u2019s nothing the police can do anything about if no one calls them.<\/p>\n<p>However, Washington apparently had his escorts take their Johns back to Spring Fever. That\u2019s a serious no-no that prompted District Judge James Brennan to announce, before sentencing Washington to three years in prison on a plea bargain: \u201cIt appears he\u2019s been operating a bordello in the wrong county.\u201d (Brothels are legal in every county except Clark, where Las Vegas is, and Washoe, home to Reno.)<\/p>\n<h2>Burn Baby Burn<\/h2>\n<p>Spring Fever burned down at 9:30 p.m. on July 20, 1994, after three couples and some employees were safely evacuated. The incident prompted another myth \u2014 that the fire was started by a jealous spouse of one of its clients. According to the Clark County fire investigators, though, plain old lightning was to blame.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, Mark Twain never said, \u201cNever let the truth get in the way of a good story.\u201d What he did say, as quoted by Rudyard Kipling in his 1899 collection of notes, letters, and essays called \u201cFrom Sea to Sea,\u201d was: \u201cGet your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>\u201cLost Vegas\u201d is an occasional\u00a0<em>Casino.org<\/em>\u00a0series spotlighting Las Vegas\u2019 forgotten history.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/?s=LOST+VEGAS\">Click here<\/a>\u00a0to read other entries in the series. Think you know a good Vegas story lost to history? Email corey@casino.org.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.casino.org\/news\/lost-vegas-spring-fever-spa-aka-the-soak-n-poke\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Posted on: December 23, 2024, 04:50h.\u00a0 Last updated on: December 23, 2024, 05:10h. Rarely does a town\u2019s most notorious sex hotel so blatantly advertise what<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[158],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gambling"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}