Where to find prostitutes

Every day I go through the plaza at the Gran Vía metro stop, seen above. Every day it's filled with shoppers and passers-by. Truth be told, almost every day I stop at that McDonalds.

The plaza itself is the site of many happenings. For several weeks some breakdancers busked there, attracting a crowd of one or two hundred people who not only watched but cheered enthusiastically. It's also the direction that the sound of the singing men comes from, though I think they're usually singing a few blocks away to the south.

After all of the pictures of beautiful buildings in Madrid and other places, I realized after I took this picture that it doesn't show any impressive buildings. The white building at the far left of the picture is beautiful, if you look closely, but I didn't take this picture to show pretty buildings but to simply give you an idea of the size of the plaza itself. It's roughly square, maybe 50 yards on a side. But between that white building on the far left and the 8-story building in the left center, there is a side street. And that's where you can find hookers from dusk to dawn.

The other place to find prostitutes is along the Calle del Desangaño around the tiny Placa a José Martí. There were a lot of girls there tonight, at least 8 or 10. It's a dirty street but not particularly threatening; families with kids, well-dressed people, and tourists walked by and through them. They're just there passively standing and smoking or chatting with each other (although one of them did actually try to flag me down).

When I took the picture above at about 9:30 nothing was happening. Right now though, at 10:45, there's intermittent cheering, the voice of an MC... But I'm getting ready to go to bed and I don't really feel like going out to see. It's probably another circle of 150 people around a group of breakdancers, although the patter of the MC and the timing of the cheers suggest that it's a magic act or something else that has intermittent rising action.

I even heard the singing men briefly around 8:30, though there was no sight of them. They keep to their alley, I think.