WEARING see-through white lingerie and matching sliders, a young girl displays bare legs and a vacant stare as she stands on the street corner. Down the road, another woman totters along in silver heels and a skintight miniskirt, showing off her rear as an elderly lady shuffles past. Elsewhere nearby, dozens of women parade half-naked in underwear and bikinis, trying to catch the attention of men in what has become an open sex market in North Seattle - just minutes from the offices of tech firms like Apple and Amazon.
On average, people buy sex there every day, and there are now as many as 60 working girls working on the notorious thoroughfare - many of them underage. Dutton Clarke runs Stereo Warehouse on the street, and he believes the spike in prostitution is linked to the closure of Las Vegas strip clubs when Covid hit.
His claim is backed by reports of girls as young as 11 working the two-mile strip of single storey businesses and cheap motels that make up The Blade. Prostitutes first started loitering on Aurora Avenue, also known as State Route 99, because it was frequented by truckers cruising back and forth from the Canadian border. About 30 percent of those were working in tech and business, according to local government statistics.
But the job doesn't come without risks. Winter later explained how she was kidnapped, raped and tortured by a man who she went with. And she's not alone. In July last year, a man posing as an undercover police officer abducted an Aurora prostitute.
He then drove her hundreds of miles to his home in the neighbouring state of Oregon , where he locked her in a makeshift cell in his garage. Police have since linked the suspect Negasi Zuberi, 30, to violent sexual assaults in at least four other states.
