Ohio Mayor’s Claim Ice Shanties Attract Hookers Escalates Quickly
An Ohio mayor's recent "data" that ice shanties draw unwanted prostitutes may be nothing more than Minnesota's biggest fish tale.
During Tuesday night's city council meeting, Huson, Ohio mayor Craig Shubert made a questionable case against local ice fishing. His argument? That ice fishing leads to ice shanties, and ice shanties lead to prostitutes.
"If you open this up to ice fishing," Shubert proposese, "while on the surface this sounds good but what then what happens next year, does someone come back and say, 'I want an ice shanty?' If you then allow ice fishing with shanties," he addresses the council, "then that leads to another problem -- prostitution." The official seated next to him cocks his head in apparent confusion. "Just data points to consider," Shubert concludes, matter of factly.
The room sits in stunned silence, apparently uncertain whether Shubert is serious or joking. Another official then leans into his microphone and says, "So I'm not in favor of shanties," breaking the tension and leading to some tense laughter.
The clip was shared to Twitter by Amanda Weinstein, wife of State Rep. Casey Weinstein and captioned, "Hudson mayor thinks ice fishing leads to prostitution! Put your poles away boys!* *Same guy who thinks creative writing classes are child pornography."
Naturally, the post led to hundreds of comments, including some of these poking fun at Shubert:
There's no word on the source of Mayor Shubert's "data points," though Raw Story refers to a decades-old urban legend out of Minnesota that sex workers used to frequent the ice shanties of anglers on Mille Lacs Lake.
A UPI article titled "Hookers on Ice?" dated 1988 writes, "Authorities say there very well may have been isolated cases of prostitution on a frozen lake where as many as 10,000 men gather on winter weekends. But if it's going on now, it hasn't been detected by authorities." Read the full UPI article here.