Can confirm. Where Military Paychecks Are Prime Targets OAK GROVE, Ky. — Go out Gate 5 at Fort Campbell and Jenna’s Adult Superstore is right across the street. On either side are easy ways to lose your shirt. Turn left and there’s a casino. Turn right and there are miles of businesses catering to — or preying on — financially inexperienced soldiers with money in their pockets for the first time. The wide boulevard along Fort Campbell’s front wall is lined with places to get into debt or worse. There are used car lots galore and Cash America Pawn. Then, Omni Military Loans, various check-cashers and a storefront that invites soldiers to sell their plasma. On it goes along the main thoroughfare named for the Army post — the center of an ecosystem that thrives on government paychecks and not knowing how to manage them. In the stereotypes are true department, I can't count the number of E-1 to 4's with double digit car loans that they couldn't afford. One E-4 I know bought a Mercedes and then couldn't afford the gas so he had to be satisfied with washing and waxing it every weekend. Another has is car repossessed after only two months when he decided to redirect his auto loan money into video games...it's a mess.
Oh hell, this has likely been the case outside of every military post since before the Roman Legion. It was true 40 years ago, and is still true today. Oceanside at Pendleton, outside the gates of the Long Beach and San Diego Navy bases, Jacksonville (especially Court Street) outside of Lejeune, almost all of the Bay area outside their many bases, and outside the gate of every base on Okinawa. Anywhere you got a lot of young single military, civilians will set up in order to separate them from their paychecks. And many of them advertised in the base papers, so it was not hard to find them.
The base I live near now didn't have a strip right outside the gates like that, but there was one a couple miles away back during Viet Nam, mostly car lots and a few bars. The local city govt. had a low tolerance for pawn shops, strip joints, and porn palaces. It was a SAC base though, so that might have made a difference. Heard my first hard Yankee accent at a used car dealership there, when an airman was looking under the hood of a souped up GTO; he said "Just like a Texan to put an air conditioner on a hot rod." He must have just fell off the boat, it was early February and he obviously hadn't seen his first summer here. lol my bet is if he didn't buy a car with an air conditioner right then he never bought another one without one after the first month or two of summer here, 'hot rod' or not. He also didn't know that when racing all you got to do is remove the belt.
This is a tradition as old as time...I fail to see why this is even news lol? Especially news behind a paywall... Give teenagers thousands of dollars a month with no bills and send them far from home to live on their own for the first time in the lives and of course they are doing to go blow their money on stupid stuff....They're teenagers lol. Go to any barracks parking lot in the country and you'll see loads of fancy cars and trucks and every one of them has a 75" 4k tv in their room. The military has tried, and failed, to instill financial responsibility into young troops forever but it's a lost cause. I don't even know what the article says and I don't have to. Here is what teenage and young 20 something military folks spend their money on: Booze, bars, clubs, restaurants, cars, strip clubs, massage parlors, huge ass TV's, cell phones, and playstations. That 18 year old Private is making $2k per month you can kiss his ass lol. This is one of those situations where I can't even blame businesses for exploiting such a cash cow. The military Junior Enlisted is probably the most consistent and stable demographic that a business can possibly cater to in the country. They all roughly have the same interests, you know they have money, the base probably isn't going anywhere, by the time they are old enough to start thinking about the future they PCS and get recycled with a new replacement. It's an unofficial agreement between the local communities and the base. I mean hell there was a legit "massage parlor" (whore house) within direct line of sight with the south gate of my first duty station that is apparently STILL there what from I've heard lol. That's how much the bases and the local communities care about exploiting naive Privates out of their money....
Not hardly, they will crop up no matter what. And if the base has not put that place on the barring order, then it seems like they have a problem. https://www.mcieast.marines.mil/Por.../MCIEAST-MCB CAMLEJBUL 1620 CANC MAY 2021.pdf Every base I have ever been stationed at had such a list. And they are not even small businesses, the local dealership for used sales for Thrifty Auto Rental was off-limits when I was at Fort Bliss about 15 years ago. For making predatory loans on cars for well over their value. Now that a place is still in business does not matter, you have establishments like that pop up even where there is no base at all, so military is obviously not their only source of revenue. Bases also have a lot of civilians on them (in fact, on average 2-3 civilians for each member in uniform), and such "barring orders" do not apply to them at all. https://www.holloman.af.mil/About/F...78479/off-limit-areas-for-holloman-personnel/ Interestingly enough, many of the places off-limits in El Paso are the same ones that were off-limits 15 years ago when I first went there. So obviously they do not rely on military money to stay open if they are still in business over 15 years later.
That place wasn't even on the blacklist that's how I know they were just turning a blind eye to it. I was at that base for 4 years and that place was never blacklisted. There is absolutely no way that the base was unaware of this place being within shouting distance of the gate and thought perhaps it was actually a genuine massage parlor that just so happened to stay open until 4am. Ironically the sex toy shop close by the other gate was blacklisted because they sold spice in there but the actual sex worker shop was perfectly fine to frequent lol. It was directly next to a local pizza joint in a strip mall that stayed open late so it made a great place to stop by and get a pizza while stumbling back to post from the strip club down the road. Sit there and eat a pizza long enough and you'll see Soldiers knock on the door and show their ID through the slot and go on in. I was too mortified to try because I just figured there is simply no way in hell this isn't a CID sting operation seeing how you can damn near see the gate guards from this place if the trees weren't in the way. My roommate on the other hand had no such fears and according to him and quite a few other people the place wasn't even one of those "happy ending" type semi-legit massage parlors it was a full blown whore house. They didn't even pretend to give you a massage. Either that entire post command team were the stupidest people to ever walk the earth or they knew full well that this place was right there and just didn't care and neither did the MPs. Privates aren't always the most intelligent people in the world...At least ONE of them over the course of the existence of this place throughout the years has accidentally slipped up and told his Platoon Sergeant about how he paid a couple hundred bucks to the Japanese chicks in the fake massage parlor out the back gate last weekend. Or were overheard talking about the place by somebody with enough rank and authority to care. Plus running a prostitution joint is illegal everywhere in America except for Nevada and this wasn't in Nevada. So either the local authorities and mayor were also the stupidest people in the world along with the post command who didn't realize what the massage parlor that stays open until 4am right out the back gate of the Army base actually was or they didn't care either. It wasn't even a speak easy type of place where it was "closed" but you knew it wasn't. Damn place had the standard bright neon "Open" sign flashing in the window with all the lights on at 3am every night while the entire rest of the strip mall was closed and dark lol.
