Jockstrip: The world as we know it

Minibars drop T-shirts, offer sex kits

NEW YORK, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- T-shirts are fading from the minibars of high-end U.S. hotels and sex kits are starting to appear.

Minibars are a source of revenue for hotels as well as a service for guests, so many of them no longer offering slow-selling T-shirts are stocking intimacy accessories alongside mixed nuts, chocolate bars and tiny bottles of liquor, The New York Times reported Sunday.

At New York's 60 Thompson Hotel and at the Sagamore in Miami Beach there is an $8 Shag Bag consisting of two condoms, Astroglide, Altoids, two packets of Smints and Pinnacle Horny Goat Weed, which its marketers say is a natural aphrodisiac.

The Delano in Miami Beach provides an "intimacy kit" for $9 that contains two condoms, a tube of Durex spermicide, a packet of lubrication jelly and towelettes.

At the Drake Hotel in Toronto, guests can order how-to sex manuals, sultry videos, velvet blindfolds and vibrators from a "pleasure service menu."

Women get naked for poet

SANTIAGO, Chile, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- Twenty eight Chilean women stripped naked in the middle of a busy road in Santiago, Chile, to pay homage to a poet.

The women posed in front of the house where poet Pablo Neruda once lived, Ananova reported Sunday.

"We did not have a permit so they had to take their clothes off very fast and then put them back as fast," said photographer Rene Alejandro Rojas, who took the picture.

Hot dog seller denies hooker charge

NEW YORK, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- A New York hot dog vendor denies she propositioned a cop from her wiener van and insists she's only a stripper trying to make ends meet.

Last week Catherine Scalia, a 38-year-old mother of four, and another woman were arrested after asking an undercover cop if he'd like them to expose themselves or perform a sex act, the New York Post reported Sunday.

But Scalia denies she solicited sex, insisting that she and Rose Skorge, 34, are "just strippers" trying to make a few extra bucks selling hot dogs, chips, and soda pop from a camper in a parking lot outside a family restaurant.

"There was no prostitution. It was all a big set-up," she said.

Susan Tessier, the owner of the restaurant, says she had no idea what the women were doing, and that she allowed Scalia to set up her hot dog truck in her parking lot because she felt sorry for her.

But Scalia and Skorge also handed out business cards saying, "Body Talk Enterprises. Sexiest Full-Strip Females in New York."

Police said there was a couch in the back of the truck where sex acts would take place.

Deputy Inspector Rick Capece reported that Scalia offered to reveal a part of her body for $50. When he declined, she allegedly said Skorge would perform a sex act for the same price.

50-foot lava lamp may help dying town

SOAP LAKE, Wash., Jan. 3 (UPI) -- A 50-foot fake lava lamp might do the trick to bring tourists back to Soap Lake, Wash., and its purported legendary healing powers.

Local businessman Brent Blake is waiting for the lamp to arrive by truck in hopes it could attract some of the 1.5 million tourists who visit Grand Coulee Dam every year, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported Sunday.

Vacationers once lathered up with suds left by Soap Lake's unusually heavy mineral content created by a glacier 10,000 years ago but over the years interest dried up.

"The lava lamp will make it a better town," Blake said gazing toward the spot where the five-story faux lamp would tower above the town's two-story skyline. "I know it sounds crazy. That's the whole point."

Last year he heard from the Target department store chain, which had a 50-foot fake lamp it didn't want anymore and offered it to Soap Lake for free, including disassembly from a building in New York's Times Square and shipping.

Blake insists it's on the way, but some townspeople remain skeptical.

"Personally, I think it's a ridiculous idea," said resident Oscar Crain. "But if it helps Soap Lake, then so be it. People here will take any economic boost."