Baby, you can park my car

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Take a few leggy California blondes, throw in a passion for luxury cars, plenty of parties, and a distaste for parking your own car.

What have you got? A multimillion-dollar, female valet parking business, where struggling models and actresses dressed in bikinis, miniskirts or lingerie and Santa hats park the cars of the rich and famous in the Los Angeles area.

Beverly Hills, California-based Girls Valet Parking opened for business less than six months ago. This week, it took over its rival, Valet Girls, and announced plans to expand to San Francisco, Las Vegas, San Diego and Phoenix.

"Given the option of hiring acne-riddled teenage boys in red vests, or beautiful and sexy models and actresses trained in safety and hospitality, we're betting our success that restaurants, boutique hotels, clubs and private parties will prefer the latter," company founder Brad Saltzman said on Wednesday.

Saltzman said the privately held company expected 2007 sales in excess of $3 million, rising to $14 million by 2010.

Clients, most of them movie stars and producers, can request a variety of uniforms, including lingerie, bikinis, capri pants, camisoles and miniskirts.

"If it is legal, we will do it, but we draw the line at nudity or topless," Saltzman said.
About half the business is based on requests for women valets dressed in the traditional dark pants and shirt.

Employees are hired through the kind of casting calls traditionally seen in the movie business and there are plenty of applicants. About 260 women showed up recently and six were hired.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2007-01-04T204634Z_01_SIB474770_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIFE-VALETGIRLS.xml&archived=False

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