Inside Zurich's Drive-Up 'Sex Box' Business

It’s midnight in Zurich, a global center for banking and finance, but I’m in a taxi hunting for prostitutes. The first thing I see that tells me I’m close is the neon—red, green, blue—that illuminates each stall of the long parking garage on my left. My cabbie drives past what seem like sleazebag Christmas crèches toward a small wooden shed, where two hookers in their 20s stand, hands on hips, cigarettes dangling from shiny, rouged mouths. I roll down my window. “Do you speak English?” I ask the one with the honeycomb-streaked peroxide job.

She does, but when I tell her I’m a reporter, she rolls her eyes and says I can’t talk to her or any of the other women. “,” she says, pointing to the opposite side of the street, where a large, hardy female in a blue vest is social workers specially trained in conflict management. Zurich has strict privacy and consent laws: If I want to tour the city’s drive-through sex box complex, I must pay for the privilege as any john would.