[Ed. Note: Labor Day is not just the cut-off point for wearing white shoes - it's a day to honor the workers who make this country great. In our honor (we're workers too!) we will have a special series of daily posts on working, unions and the labor movement here in the Bay Area.] San Francisco has long been a tourist destination - and not just for our cityscapes. Many come looking for an entirely different "beautiful view" - the men and women who practice "the world's oldest profession." While sex for pay is strictly illegal, the fact is that thousands throughout the Bay Area are employed as sex workers - be they porn stars, cabaret dancers, 'masseuses' or ladies of the night. And like any worker, they're fighting for their right to a clean, safe living. The Berkeley City Council is currently considering "Angel's Initiative," organized by the Sex Workers Outreach Project, which would basically decriminalize prostitution by making it the BPD's lowest law-enforcement priority. If the City Council does not ratify the initiative, it will have to be placed on the November ballot as Measure Q. Prostitution Research and Education is sponsoring a discussion this evening at the Julia Morgan theater to discuss this hot-button issue. If you're labor minded and looking for a good time in North Beach, might EssEffist suggest a trip to the Lusty Lady, the only worker-owned co-operative nude dancing venue in the country? That's right, in 2003 the "Live Nude Girls" united to save the business from closing the doors and to improve pay and working conditions for the dancers. While we haven't been, if we were planning a bachelor party, this would certainly be the first stop. "Live Nude Girls Unite!" chronicles the struggles of the dancers to organize in the face of both management intransigence and social stigmatization. When we were desperate for work during the dot-bomb, our craigslist searches for web designer and creative position showed us that there was one web enterprise that was recession-proof - that's right, porn. And yes, we sent in our resumes to see if we could get a job color-correcting photos of nude women. Look, we needed to eat, and a Photoshop levels histogram is about as asexual as it gets. Now, a change to a 1988 federal law requiring "primary producers" of pornography to document the ages of their subjects is being pushed by Attorney General John Ashcroft and would require "secondary producers" to provide the data as well. It also includes language that voids previously accepted forms of identification such as military and college IDs and would require that precise records of distribution, actor's stage names and a cross-indexed reference to other productions featuring an actor be maintained for random spot checks. This would have the power to cripple the small-time web site operators from the Valley to the East Bay in a state with little value politically to the Republicans in an election year. more ›