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There has rarely been any problem about betting a buck or buying a babe in Newport, Ky., a red-brick town just a nine-minute, $1.35 cab ride across the Ohio River from Cincinnati. The town's traditions trace back to the female followers who camped around the local U.S. Army barracks in the 19th century. Since then, Newport has developed such a gaudy brand of gambling and prostitution that it stands today as one of the nation's most blatant sin centers...
Thoughtful Newport grocers used to keep stools handy so the local tots could climb up to play the slot machines. Cincinnati high school kids came roistering across the river to take advantage of the whorehouse specials: $1 for the prostitute, $1 for the madam. When one statistics-minded citizen clocked the trade at New port's biggest brothel, he discovered that the eleven girls averaged a new customer every seven minutes from noon Saturday until 6 a.m. the following Monday. The town had its spattering of killings, but they were generally shrugged off as "self-defense." One Easterner...
...Virtues & New. As the years passed, Newport-like any limited-industry town-hustled to keep up with the times. Newporters claim that the pari-mutuel machine was developed there. Gamblers from coast to coast discovered that Newport was a place where they could "lay off" their bets (i.e., get well-heeled Newport gamblers who would cover all or parts of bets too big for the ordinary bookie to handle). Some 45 phone lines run into the Tropicana Club, where the layoff headquarters is in Room 315. One bar accepts as much as $75,000 a day in layoff bets alone...
...Newport's take from gambling and other forms of assorted vice now amounts to $25 million a year. Though the price has soared to $20, prostitution is still so common that bartenders seldom go through the formality of selling a customer a drink, merely shrug: "The girls are upstairs." A man can still lose his wad in the gambling joints that wink with neon along York and Monmouth Streets and glow softly in the bottom land down by the river. And though three whorehouses Lave recently flourished within a block of the station house, Newport's police still...
Attempted Pass? Of course, Newport has its share of reform-minded citizens. Inevitably, they have launched many a reform movement-with little success. "The reformers don't stay around here," says Lawyer Daniel W. Davies. "They catch too much hell from the merchants. Everybody expects a little gambling, a little vice. Everybody's liberal around here...