Kink.com

Getting our rocks off: a historical perspective

4

San Francisco is waiting for its Boogie Nights. Unbeknownst to Hollywood, our fair berg was the infant creche of hardcore pornography, spawning a subculture of porn theaters that thrived despite police harassment and political pressure.

We were number one! Luckily, a few brave men are resurrecting our porn golden age money shot – read on for a first look at documentary The Smut Capital of America and an interview with the director himself, Michael Stabile.


Smut Capital is by no means Stabile’s first porn rodeo. The co-editor of Gay Porn Blog, he and Smut Capital editor-cinematographer Ben Leon are both mainstays in the SF gay porn scene. The two were researching their upcoming doc on the life of gay smut powerhouse Falcon Studios founder Chuck Holmes when Stabile came across a New York Times article that inspired the title of their new project, which is a work in progress for which the team is fundraising in order to release the finished film in 2011.

“Until then I’d always thought of it as an industry that emerged from LA, but San Francisco was actually the city that birthed the porno theater. It was the beginning of the sexual revolution, and in a lot of ways these directors were documenting this newly found freedoms.” Stabile attributes the renaissance to hippie women “with really no hangups,” a progressive zeitgeist that had seized the city in the late sixties and early seventies, and film processing studios that were willing to develop sexually explicit material. By the era’s zenith in 1972, there were porno film theaters in neighborhoods across the city.

Not that everyone was down to get all that action on screen. Dianne Feinstein, first in her post as the city’s first female president of the Board of Supervisors and then as SF’s first female mayor, led a crusade focused on cleaning up the Tenderloin, which incidentally included sweeping the neighborhood free of its supply of adult movie houses. What ensued was an orchestrated harassment policy that different porn theaters dealt with in different ways.

Established theaters, Stabile says, actually benefited from the police and media persecution. “They’d come in with cameras, it’d be on the five o clock news and it would be great for them,” he says. “Advertising was very limited at the Chronicle. Feinstein would come in with her troops and would detail everything that was going on. Suddenly there was a way to talk about it, so people would flood into the theaters.” The Mitchell Brothers grew so adept at playing the cat and mouse game, he says, that they would post Feinstein’s office number on their marquee under the words “call for a good time.”

But not everyone prospered. Smaller theaters that depended on a few workers to operate, like Alex DeRenzy’s Screening Room, suffered when police would take key staffers on pointeless joyrides around town before booking them on charges of vice crime. Eventually factors like these, and more importantly the advent of video porn in the 1980s pulled the adult film business down to Los Angeles.

The move shifted the purpose of sex films away from their original role in the Sexual Revolution. Says Stabile “People were doing it here because they enjoyed it, because they wanted their own sexualities represented. It’s not like that in LA for the most part, where even a lot of the gay studios are owned by straight men looking to turn a profit.”

But don’t worry, the party’s not over. One of Stabile’s main goals with the film is not just to highlight good sex gone by, but that which cums and goes even today. When asked whether SF is still a presence in the world of porn, he had no equivocation. “Its one of the great untold stories in the local media – San Francisco has a huge porn presence. Raging Stallion, Falcon, Hot House – seven of the top ten gay porn studios are located up here, there’s Kink.com, porn writers like Violet Blue,” he says.

It appears that the tech savvy and sexual freedom that led to our capital crowning are still alive and well on these city streets. Phew! Now you may now go back to your regularly scheduled local porn browsing.

Hot sluts!

59

culture@sfbg.com

SEX ISSUE Forget those uptight pricks: sluts are awesome. There’s no shame in harboring a voracious appetite for sexiness in all its myriad expressions. Combined with a well-developed ethical stance and safe practices, it’s one of the joys of being human. In honor of the enormous, charitable Folsom Street leather and fetish fair (Sun/26, 11 a.m.–6 p.m., donations requested. www.folsomstreetfair.org), we wanted to honor some of our favorite local sluts with the pervy attention they want and deserve. 

>>CLICK HERE FOR PICS OF OUR FAVORITE HOT SLUTS!

SLUTTIEST CELLULOID

You’ve always wanted to watch your neighbors bang, right? Well moan enthusiastically in honor of the Good Vibrations Indie Erotic Film Festival, which every year puts the call out for the cream of the amateur blue filmmaker crop, then assembles the spunkiest for your viewing pleasure at the Castro Theatre. You too can be in the audience, which will ooh and aah its approval to choose the sexiest, steamiest home-screw, the lucky winner receiving a $1,500 money shot. So how does SF get it on? This year’s 12 finalists include preggo smut (Jeannie Roshar’s “Bun in the Oven”), good old-fashioned wordplay like Benjamin Williams’ “The Filth Element,” and sci-fi sexin’ (“Orgasm Raygun” by Martin Gooch). The fest precedes a range of specialty nights around town coordinated by Good Vibes, including Lebso Retro: A Dyke Porn Retrospective (Wed/22 at the Women’s Building). It’s gonna be a hot ticket, so grab a seat, relax your rear, and revel in the sight of sexy San Francisco.

Thurs/23 pre party: 7 p.m., $10; screening: 8 p.m., $10. Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF. (415) 621-6120, www.gv-ixff.org

 

SLUTTIEST QUEEN

“I’m so honored to be named Sluttiest Queen,” inimitable alternative drag goddess Suppositori Spelling tells us. “It’s nice to see that my work hasn’t gone unnoticed. I have so many performances that require nudity that when I drop my skirt lately it’s often met with a wave of yawns from my audience. I think they’re more shocked by the presence of panties nowadays.” (Her audience, found at her raucous weekly drag show Cocktailgate — Sundays, 9 p.m., $5. Truck, 1900 Folsom St., SF. www.trucksf.com — sheds a few panties themselves when she’s on stage.) “I could tell you stories so dirty hot that this paper would burn like a Koran in Florida” she continues, “but I’m so shy and reserved. I will say this, though: as far as the queer sex scene in San Francisco goes, we seem to be in the flush of a renaissance. I keep stumbling upon things that even make me blush — like the gentleman who preferred a visible handjob on public transportation during rush hour as foreplay. But I encourage whatever floats your boat or creams your Twinkie. I just want to clarify, however, that “ouch” is not a safe word!”

Suppositori emcees the Seventh Street stage at Folsom Street Fair from 11 a.m.–2 p.m., followed by a special performance at 2:30 p.m., and then a “hanky code” themed Cocktailgate at its regular time.

 

SLUTTIEST BOYS

Dan and JD, a.k.a. Two Knotty Boys, are no strangers to the twists and loops of BDSM performance. Native San Franciscans both, they not only create mesmerizing stage shows in which they bind nubile flesh to their will, but also produce end results so visionary that you’d be excused for leaving off the “fetish” and dubbing it merely “fashion.” A ever-so-tightly cinched halter top of gleaming white cord, a barely there cobweb bikini that requires an expert hand to remove, overlays of skirts and dresses that hobble the wearer seductively and at the same time, show off the contours of the female body. It’s neat, it’s adjustable, it’s sexily professional work. It’s easy to see why the duo has filmed more than 100 video tutorials and taught countless workshops in the Bay and beyond for their eager fans: the Boys have tied up hundreds of women but, unlike some humiliation artists, they have never tied down their subjects’ beauty and comfort.

www.twoknottyboys.com

 

SLUTTIEST PARTIERS

Was it written on the rock hard abs of some San Franciscan sex god that all coital gatherings in this city have to be stark and stoic? Thankfully, the colorful gang over at Kinky Salon never got that memo. Creators Polly and Scott have created a swinger’s playland party in the pink and purple rooms of Mission Control whose focus is flair: playful costume themes have focused on everything from kitty cats (the upcoming Pussyfest) to undersea adventure and fairy tale characters. You’ve never lived, it would seem, until your Snow White costume has been peeled off on the couch in the Harem Room by Tinkerbell and Captain Hook. More recently, the team has created a new magazine to celebrate the vast array of sexualities that their partygoers lay claim to: San Fran Sexy. The rag includes erotic history lessons from sexologist Dr. Carol Queen, memoir pieces from Bawdy Storytelling’s Dixie De La Tour, photos from recent Kinky Salon soirees, and news of sensual events to come.

www.kinkysalon.com

 

SLUTTIEST ROCKERS

“If the Meat Sluts were a Pink Lady, we’d be Rizzo! We ain’t no prudes like Sandy!” says BB Rumproast of rockin’ band the Meat Sluts (www.myspace.com/themeatsluts). In a world of vegan dogs, her XXX-chromosomed trash rock-punk explosion is an all-beef foot long. The four women are cookin’ on stage — literally. In addition to the occasional back up steak dancing alongside their guitar licks and growls, the Meat Sluts have shared space at shows with a live hot dog-maker and a meat grinder flinging sausage and baloney onto hungry fans. It’s messy, carnivorous fun — the perfect expression of the group’s embrace of hedonistic appetite that could care less about what’s considered “ladylike” at the table of the musical establishment. “We are loose and crazy and not ashamed of it! We love man meat! We love weenies! Beef baloney, Slim Jims, T-bones, bring it ON!” says Rumproast. To quote the Sluts’ rager rally cry “Johnny Con Carne,” that’s what we call makin’ bacon.

The Meat Sluts play Dodgyfest 3, Oct 2, 7 p.m., $10. Thee Parkside, 1600 17th St., SF. www.theeparkside.com

 

SLUTTIEST BLOGGER

Fleur De Lis SF has a bone to pick with the way hot and horny females are portrayed. “Women are just as sexual as men and they should own it,” the blogger tells us. Need proof? Check out the blog she started this summer — just make sure your hands are free and you’ve got a little privacy while you do so. Her posts are missives from a professional woman’s enthusiastic exploration of sensual subcultures in “one of the sexiest cities in the world.” Though her identity is clad in secrecy, Fleur De Lis SF’s escapades with Craig’s List Casual Encounters, BDSM clubs, and randy run-ins at the grocery store will leave you slicker than a Slip ‘N Slide in 90 percent humidity. Erotic inspiration notwithstanding, what we love about this new It slut is her candor and assertiveness. “Mainly, I want to educate people to embrace sex and sexuality,” she says. “I want people to accept who they are, and who are we are sexually is a huge part of who we are as people.”

fleurdelissf.wordpress.com

 

SLUTTIEST MAN ACTION

For the past few years, hunky leatherman cruisers have been blessed with the return of a SoMa bar crawl, which, while hardly rivaling the infamous Miracle Mile of the 1970s and ’80s, at least offers hide-lusting bar-hoppers an array of options. Truck, Hole in the Wall, Powerhouse, the Eagle, Lone Star — all make for a daisy chain of fellow cock-seekers. But the piece de resistance is surely Chaps II, which gives itself wholly over to man-action bliss. The original Chaps, owned by Chuck Slaton and Ron Morrison, was notorious for its Crisco-minded shenanigans, and Chaps II, opened in 2008 by David Morgan, continues the proudly perverse tradition, with parties devoted to rope play, piss play, fisting, and sports gear aficionados, as well as regular nights simply dedicated to the Holy Grail of slutty manhood: cheap ass. (For those unfamiliar — cheap ass tastes like chicken parmesan.) Kudos to you, Chaps II, for keeping the BDSM spirit alive — and serving a healthy round of Jäger shots to boot.

1225 Folsom, SF. (415) 255-2427, www.chapsbarsanfrancisco.com

 

SLUTTIEST ROBOTS

Drilldo, Intruder MK II, the Satisfyher, Scorpion, the Little Guy, Annihilator, the Octapussy — these are some of the friendly, dripping sex robots you’ll meet at FuckingMachines.com, part of the Kink.com kingdom. The machines put a bevy of heaving beauties through the motions with their dildo-studded fingers and pulsating hacksaw thrusts. Designed by lucky site users, who submit their moving-parts fantasies, and the fiendishly clever sex-elves at the Fucking Machines workshop (with many of the machines fabricated on site at Kink’s HQ in the Mission Armory), these fascinating thingamabobs range from devilishly dirty to actually kind of cute. There’s even one modeled on Johnny 5 from Short Circuit, albeit renamed Fuckzilla and outfitted with a huge silicone phallus. The whole shebang is overseen by the enthusiastic Tomcat, who drives the point home that, yes, a chainsaw outfitted with 20 fake tongues “challenges the whole idea that women need someone to buy them dinner to get pleasure.” Fucking machines themselves have been around since the 1960s, he notes, “but when we started in 2001, we wanted to capitalize on the tech wave, while approaching the machine construction like sculpture.” Good thing the Fucking Machine bubble didn’t burst.

 

SLUTTIEST SLÜT

Burlesque heroine Baroness Eva Von Slüt knows what she’s got, and she’s happy to show it to you. The inked, buxom platinum blonde dove into burlesque in 2002, but she’s never been afraid of flaunting her dangerous curves onstage. “Whatever the thing is that women have that they hate their bodies, I just don’t have it. I don’t compare myself to other people because I know I look good.” Von Slüt produces her own burlesque shows, plays party-jumping jams with partner DJ Mod Days, and heads up the vocals for no less than two sexy bands — Thee Merry Widows, an all-girl psychobilly explosion of fishnets, red lipstick, and leather dresses, at whose shows Von Slüt will bust out in pasties and sequined panties, and the White Barons, a stripped down, hard-edged punk outfit in which Von Slüt lets her rebel growl loose. So what gets this freight train whistling? Purrs the lady, “Self-confidence and kindness. Also, I am a bit of a cougar, so gentlemen 10 years younger. I’m not opposed to men my age or older, but gosh they’re just so sweet when they’re young!”

Catch Von Slüt’s DJ session on Wednesday, Oct. 13 at Butter, 354 11th St., SF. www.myspace.com/missevavonslut

 

SLUTTIEST FREE-FOR-ALL

There are a lot of gay musclemen at the Folsom Street Fair, and there are a lot of steamy, shirtless gay man-parties surrounding the event (causing quite a few Monday morning tragedies). But what about everyone else? “I was talking to my friends at Kink,” says Folsom organizer Demetri Moshoyannis, “and they said that once the fair ended, all the leathermen had a place to go, but everyone at the Kink booth just had to go home. So this year we teamed up with them to change that.” The result? A glorious-sounding omnisexual dance party called Deviants that’s open to everyone. The acknowledgment that gay muscle men aren’t the only ones who can get down and dirty into the wee hours is refreshing. But so is the musical lineup — the Juan Maclean, Zach Moore from Space Cowboys, Australia’s Stereogamous — which offers something beyond the carnival circuit-music at many of the other parties. Musclemen are welcome, too, of course, as long as they’re willing to shake their chains on the dance floor.

Sun/26, 6 p.m.–2 a.m., $30 advance. 525 Harrison, SF. www.folsomstreetfair.org/deviants

 

SLUTTIEST PIE

It’s not too many harems that offer you 40 different ways to satisfy your cravings. But hot, lip-smacking loving can be yours — in three different locations or for delivery, no less! — whenever that urge to do something naughty hits, whether you like it on your lunch hour or for a post-bar dirty stopover. Oh, Pizza Orgasmica, you sure do know what gets us going. The local chain has umpteen big, salacious pies with nookie-themed names for your perusing. And although the Ménage à Trois, with it’s cuddle puddle of five salty cheeses, will leave you panting, and the Latin Lover’s barbeque sauce, chicken, zucchini, onions, and cilantro make for a meaty, spicy affair, the sluttiest pie award has got to go to the Farmer’s Daughter. She looks like a demure little milkmaid (after all, you can find her on the vegetarian menu) — but once her drizzles of creamy bianca cheese hit your tongue, and her fresh corn and broccoli fill your mouth … it’s a tumble in the hay you won’t soon forget. Old MacDonald would be scandalized.

Various locations, www.pizzaorgasmica.com

 

SLUTTIEST CLOWN

When it comes gender-bending sexual escapades, we landlubbing bipeds tend to give short shrift to our finned, feathered, and multi-legged Earthmates. That’s why we’re giving a hearty bottoms up to the California Academy of Science’s Amphiprion ocellaris. The showy orange and white striped fish, whose common name is clownfish, is best known as the aquatic brat in Finding Nemo. But we don’t care about Nemo’s celebrity — or his billions. We salute him for his ability to shift from male to female when needed, giving her access to the entire spectrum of fishy sexuality. One of the planet’s rare sequential hermaphrodites, all clownfish are born male (protandrous hermaphrodites) but become female when the female in a breeding pair dies. You may never look at a clownfish the same way again — and you should certainly go and look at them at the Cal Academy aquarium (www.calacademy.org), where the San Franciscan clownfish ride tiny fixies, design websites, and sip Blue Bottle. Kidding! But maybe we should rethink always calling them “Nemo.” How about Nema for a change? Or Nemo-ma. Or, oh goddess of LGBT fish love, Nemaphrodite.

 

SLUTTIEST BUFFET

It’s lunchtime Friday and you need a juicy thigh in your mouth: Gold Club is there. And no, we’re not talking about the lovely ladies popping, dropping, and locking it all over the SoMa strip club’s pleasure poles. Carnal urges take on new meaning when it comes to the joint’s $5 all you can eat Friday buffet, an omnivorous affair stuffed with roast beef, lasagna, fresh veggies, hummus, brownies, and their signature breasts (or as one Yelper so memorably dubbed them, “fried chicken tit-tays!”) The spread attracts a diverse crowd of office workers and lap-dance connoisseurs of all genders, endowed with an appetite for crispy skin and jiggling glutei maximi alike. So pair your plate with a $4 happy hour cocktail — available until 7 p.m. — and don’t forget to share your savings with the working women up front.

Gold Club’s all you can eat buffet Fridays 11 a.m.– 2 p.m., $5. 650 Howard, SF. (415) 536-0300, www.goldclubsf.com

Slutty profiles written by Marke B., Caitlin Donohue, Johnny Ray Huston, and Diane Sussman.

Our Weekly Picks: July 7-13, 2010

0

WEDNESDAY 7

EVENT

The Butterfly Mosque reading

Journalist and author G. Willow Wilson is familiar to comics fans for her Vertigo-published modern fantasy series Air and graphic novel Cairo, both with artist M.K. Perker, as well as her work on various superhero properties. A woman in mainstream comics is unusual enough, but Wilson is also a Muslim. Her new prose memoir, The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman’s Journey to Love and Islam, treats the experiences that led her from her home in Denver through Boston University to time spent teaching in Cairo. Much of her comics work deals with the collision of the West with the Middle East, often in fictionalized political contexts, and this reading and Q & A should include plenty of her uniquely positioned insights on this cultural dynamic. (Sam Stander)

7:30 p.m., free

Booksmith

1644 Haight, SF

(415) 863-8688

www.booksmith.com

 

DANCE

The Foundry

When words fail, a turn of a cheek or small shift in stance can signify a world of meaning. Choreographer, dancer, and director of the Foundry Alex Ketley is hyperconscious of the subtle secrets our bodies both hide and reveal. This consciousness allows him to deconstruct and reconstruct movement in such a way as to capture the emotional unknown that lies beyond words. Enlisting a cast of captivating dancers and former Ballet Frankfurt media artist Les Stuck, Ketley’s newest project, Please Love Me, explores how we relate to others and investigates the contradictory nature of love and relationships. (Katie Gaydos)

8 p.m., $20

Z Space at Theater Artaud

450 Florida, SF

www.conservatoryofdance.org

 

THURSDAY 8

FILM

Mulholland Dr.

Lucid dreams, fever dreams, wet dreams — what’s the difference in Mulholland Dr., David Lynch’s 2001 apocalyptic vision of Hollywood? Above all else, the film is a love story doomed from the very start as Rita (Laura Herring) stumbles out of a car wreck and into the arms of Betty (Naomi Watts, in a performance somewhere between Pollyanna and Patty Hearst). What follows is a Pandora’s box — and Rita’s got the key to a blue one of those you definitely shouldn’t open — of Bergmanesque female trouble, and some surrealist hell to boot: the jitterbug, Roy Orbison, and bite-size geriatrics, to name a few. In every dread-drenched scene, Lynch has our undivided attention even when we have no idea what the hell is going on. (Ryan Lattanzio)

2 and 7 p.m., $7.50–$10

Castro Theatre

429 Castro, SF

(415) 621-6120

www.castrotheatre.com

 

COMEDY

David Alan Grier

Although he got his start in acting by tackling serious roles and earning a master’s at the Yale School of Drama, David Alan Grier got his first taste of mainstream exposure and success as a cast member on the classic 1990s TV show In Living Color, where he brought to life hilarious characters such as Antoine from “Men on Film” and the crazy blues singer Calhoun Tubbs. In the years since, Grier has lent his considerable talents to several other projects, more recently Comedy Central’s show Chocolate News and his 2009 book Barack Like Me: The Chocolate Covered Truth. Here’s your chance to check out Grier live, uncensored, raw, and on stage. (Sean McCourt)

Through Sun/11

8 p.m. (also Fri/9-Sat/10, 10:15 p.m.)

$22.50–$23.50

Cobb’s Comedy Club

915 Columbus, SF

(415) 928-4320

www.cobbscomedyclub.com

 

EVENT

Cybernet Expo

It would seem like a no-brainer, filling a webmaster job at an adult Internet company. Geeks love porn, right? True as that may be, they still need a conference to link them up to the pervy, techie job of their dreams. Never fear, Cybernet Expo is here! The trade show has been linking sticky palms since 1997, and offers seminars, panel discussions, networking opportunities — and a convention-closing get down among the chains and whips of the SF Armory. “Oh yeah, it’s gonna be a fun party,” says Terry Mundell, business development manager of Kink.com, who will be organizing Saturday night’s after hours good times. Even better than a night on his website? (Caitlin Donohue)

Through Sat/10, $199

Golden Gateway Hotel (most events)

1500 Van Ness, SF

www.cybernetexpo.com

 

FRIDAY 9

DANCE

“Symbiosis: A Celebration of Dance and Music”

Kara Davis seems to be able to do it all. A trained ballet dancer, she has danced for the last 14 years with who’s who of modern dance in San Francisco. No matter the style and the challenge, she eats it up. Now she is also developing a strong, independent voice as a choreographer for her project agora company. This program, presented as part of Dance Mission Theater’s “Down and Dirty Series,” is half dance and half music. It reprises Davis’ two substantial ensemble pieces, A Softened Law and one Tuesday afternoon, first seen at ODC in December, and the gorgeous 2006 duet, Exit Wound, choreographed for herself and Nol Simonse. Exit‘s music was written by Sarah Jo Zaharako, whose Gojogo quartet, in the evening’s second half, will play more of Zaharako’s compositions. The lineup culminates in a premiere, Symbiosis, which features — no surprise here — Davis as a solo dancer. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sun/11

8 p.m., $20

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th St., SF

www.dancemission.com

 

EVENT

Pantheon

The Temple is Burning Man’s sacred space. And this year, the Temple of Flux is really something special, among other reasons for its massive collaboration of various Bay Area tribes to build the biggest and most unusual and ambitious temple in the event’s long history (something I know from embedding myself with the project for an upcoming Guardian cover story). But to pull this off, the Temple crew has embarked on an equally aggressive and unprecedented fundraising campaign, the centerpiece of which is Pantheon, featuring Elite Force, Soul of Man, 21 of SF’s best DJs, transformative décor, and a slew of sexy gods and goddesses roaming the temple grounds. So don a toga or other Greek or Roman attire and join this bacchanalian celebration. (Steven T. Jones)

9 p.m.–5 a.m., $20–$25

103 Harriett, SF

www.pantheonsf.eventbrite.com

www.temple2010.org

 

SATURDAY 10

VISUAL ART

“Alien/ation”

A showcase of illustrators whose work has appeared in Hyphen magazine, “Alien/ation: An Illustration Show” will open at SPACE Gallery in SF with DJ sets by B-Haul and Gordon Gartrell and live painting from participating artists, in what is billed as “an art riot extravaganza.” Currently on its 20th issue, Hyphen is a San Francisco-based publication focusing on Asian American culture, and the crossover of its featured art into a gallery setting is a welcome development. Magazine illustration is generally frequented by talented cartoonists and fine artists, and the artists featured here are excellent and stylistically diverse enough to keep things interesting. Particularly exciting is the inclusion of oddball cartoonist Rob Sato, lush illustrator Kim Herbst, and distinctive portraitist Jon Stich. (Stander)

7 p.m. (artists’ reception, 5:30 p.m.), $5

SPACE Gallery

1141 Polk, SF

(415) 377-3325

www.spacegallerysf.com

 

SUNDAY 11

MUSIC

“Simcha! The Jewish Music Festival’s 25th Anniversary Party”

Rabbi Nachman, a 14th century Chassidic scholar, counted in his teachings the importance of displaying simcha (Hebrew for joy), like, all day every day so that you could effectively carry out God’s commandments. The translation for all you pagan sinners remains salient: you gotta be loose to enjoy the flow. Take simcha as your mantra when you head to the Jewish Music Festival’s 25th anniversary party, where tunes from Glenn Hartman and the Klezmer Playboys, the Red Hot Chacklas, Eprhyme, and oh so much more will trip happily through the Yerba Buena Gardens. Duck next door to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Sculpture Court (Third Street at Mission) to check out Jewlia Eisenberg and Charming Hostess’ “The Bowls Project: Secrets of the Apocalyptic Intimate,” an odd blending of sustainable architecture, the domestic sacred, and haunting evocations of secrets held and shared. (Donohue)

Noon–5 p.m., free

Yerba Buena Gardens

Mission at Fourth St., SF

(510) 848-0237, ext. 119

www.jewishmusicfestival.org

 

MUSIC

Gipsy Kings

It might seem ridiculous to argue that the Gipsy Kings are underrated, but bear with me. Sure, they’ve sold millions and millions of albums worldwide, and sure, they contributed a key cut to the iconic Big Lebowski (1998) soundtrack (their music is also featured in Toy Story 3). Despite this, or perhaps because of it, they still don’t seem to get much respect. The Gipsy Kings aren’t anyone’s favorite band. People rarely argue about the extent of their cultural influence or whether they’re “important.” This is a shame, really, because their covers reveal an unexpectedly sly, parodic impulse, while their standard flamenco tracks are actually relatively innovative in their merging of traditional Spanish dance with more modern pop influences. (Zach Ritter)

8 p.m., $85

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

(415) 346-3000

www.thefillmore.com

 

MUSIC

Weed Diamond

Though Weed Diamond hails from Denver, its conspicuous name alone suggests a sentiment we San Franciscans can relate to. Despite an insistently lo-fi, reverb-soaked gamut — like putting a beautiful indie rock seashell to the ears — these guys aren’t afraid of an infectious chorus. They also aren’t afraid of paying due respect to their influences, especially in the trippy shoegaze and heavy-on-the-feedback noise pop elements. Now on tour with Dash Jacket and Tan Dollar, Weed Diamond evolved from the solo project of Tim Perry to a full five-piece band and has since played SXSW and up and down the West. It’s like a psychoactive bonbon: delicious yet intoxicating. (Lattanzio)

With Tan Dollar and Dash Jacket

4 p.m., free

Milk Bar

1840 Haight, SF

www.milksf.com

 

MONDAY 12

 

PERFORMANCE

“What’s Cookin’ With Josh Kornbluth”

Monday special at the Contemporary Jewish Museum café: Josh Kornbluth on wry. Popular monologist Kornbluth, fresh from his latest solo flight, Andy Warhol: Good For the Jews?, is once again hanging out on the border of fine art and cultural critique, only this time there’s matzo ball soup and a Cobb salad option. It’s also more interactive. From noon to 2 p.m. (each Monday over the next five weeks) Kornbluth will be offering conversation to museum patrons bold or clueless enough to enter his well-appointed lair. It’s as simple as that. But then, if you know Kornbluth, nothing is ever that simple. (Robert Avila)

Through Aug. 9

Mondays, noon-2 p.m., free (museum admission not included)

Contemporary Jewish Museum

736 Mission, SF

(415) 655-7800

www.thecjm.org 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. We cannot guarantee the return of photos, but enclosing an SASE helps. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Out of work techies, let’s get sexy!

1

The message came into City Editor Steve Jones’ voicemail box, but we all figured I should probably follow up on it. Sex conference! Well, kind of. We’re looking for webmasters for sex sites! said the excited publicist on the phone. I thought you might be interested in this exciting event! he said (please note; no quote marks. I do not take good notes on publicists’ voicemails). Well hell yes publicist, I said. Get it girl. I trusted in this so-called Cybernet Expo – which, incidentally, starts Thurs/8 – to yield visions of nerds chasing tail, gettin’ cray-zay, gettin’ jobs. You know, happy, hearty pastimes.

Tell me, oh iconoclastic publicist (tech convention publicists rarely contact us for help for promotion, go fig), who can best illustrate this fabulous phenomenon of randy code writers? Well Caitlin, he says, he says to me, let me track you down someone! A colorful interview, publicist friend of mine? Clearly, he says to me. Have you heard, Caitlin, about Saturday night’s convention-capping Armory party? My god, I had not! Well there’s that, says he the publicist. And you are invited. Well let’s get crazy! I thought contentedly, to myself.

Which is how we come to the part where I made the telephonic acquaintance of a one Terry Mundell, business development manager. Of Kink.com! Gotta be an oversexed, whip-cracking dervish of a man, right? How do you usually find webmasters, Mundell – set up a laptop in the dungeon, see who bites?

“We use Craig’s List, newspaper listings, referrals, conferences,” sayeth the man, who may or may not have been wondering about why he was talking to me about this. Are your techies… sexy techies? Sorry, sorry — sex positive techies? “Typically yes. For the people in production,” Bundell allows me. Well yeah, I’d guess that, because porn directors and cameramen tend to like watching sex. But “for web people, we do stuff in Java. We’ve always just been a dot com, because we’re a technology company,” Bundell sums up. 

Not sure how to caption this one from Cybernet Expo 2009 — hey look like they’re having a successful networking event? Fill in blank, shanks. Photo by J.Kedvessy

Wait, so – but things get wacky at Cybernet Expo, riiight? “There may be some models around, but I don’t think it will be a sexual atmosphere.” K. But the Armory party! You’re having a party at the Armory for the convention! Don’t tell me – “I’m organizing the party. Oh yeah, its going to be a fun. Drinks, appetizers, DJs, local area webmasters will be there, representatives from Hustler and Playboy.” 

So here’s the thing. Well, two things. First, I am an ignorant sensationalist. Second, Cybernet Expo is a job fair more or less like any other. There will be speed networking events, many seminars for learnin’ stuff entitled with things like “Wordpress: Not Just for Blogs” and the (probably?) deceptively titled “Adult Traffic: Where to Get It.”

No, no wait! “Representatives from Hustler and Playboy,” he said; what the hell is that? Money’s on a bunch of naked chicks who will do naughty things if you can code the html on their Myspace pages. Oh, and their keynote speaker is the semi-sleazy – I mean facilitator of the sex positivity of 18-year old women — Steve Lightspeed. Party on, computer guys and gals!

 

Cybernet Expo

Thurs/8-Sat/10, $149-$199

Golden Gateway Hotel

1500 Van Ness, SF

www.cybernetexpo.com 

 

More on the new cuddle porn: Jesse from “I Want Your Love”

1

A while back, I spoke to filmmaker Travis Mathews about his feature-length project, I Want Your Love. (While tha film is still in development, a demo clip is available for online viewing). In an effort to get another perspective on I Want Your Love, I spoke to Jesse, who appears in the film and in Travis’ other ongoing project, In Their Room. Jesse offered candid reflections and insight into pornography, sex in film, and staying hard throughout a shoot. Spoiler alert: “penis drugs.”

SF Bay Guardian: Before I Want Your Love, you worked with Travis on the intimate In Their Room project. How did you first get together?

Jesse: Travis asked me to do In Their Room, basically because we knew each other through a mutual friend. I remember he approached me and said he was looking for people who were just comfortable getting super expose about themselves in their own space. I’m a performance maker, anyway—it’s what I do. So I guess he just assumed that I would be comfortable with that.

SFBG: When he asked you to do I Want Your Love, were you at all apprehensive or was it something you wanted to do right away? It’s obviously a lot more explicit than In Their Room.

J: Well, it’s funny. It falls on two sides. On the one hand, I was not at all hesitant, because the project itself and the way it was pitched to me and the way Travis has been thinking about this project, is like a whole set of theories around the way sex operates in film that I’m super behind. Travis has this whole kind of sociosexual idea about their being a savvy and discerning audience that’s ready to see sex integrated naturally into the narratives that they see in film. You can see that more in European avant garde filmmaking, but not so much in the States for all sorts of systemic reasons. The reason why Travis set out to do this project was really interesting and fascinating to me, and I actually thought the story sounded really beautiful. The story of the feature is kind of this person who takes this big, intense, emotional inventory of his life in San Francisco because he’s forced to leave for any number of reasons. And that resonates with me. I’ve moved around a lot and I have a really sentimental connection to place. Place is a really big thing for me. So all that stuff was really great.

In terms of being hesitant about it being more explicit, the jury’s still out. I don’t think I really have a concept of what it means for me to be having sex on film. As a performing artist—I’m a choreographer in San Francisco, and my work is very curious about bodies and curious about bodily functions and responses and fatigue and posture and all these raw physical states. And so I work with nudity fairly frequently. So this to me is just one step further, in a sense. It’s just another exploration of the physical state. And I think I see it as that. But what I’m learning, especially with the release of the trailer for I Want Your Love, is that the way that I make something and that how it’s received by all these people who are seeing this are two very different things. And I think I might find reason to be worried in the future, but so far, I’m just kind of, deer in headlights. I don’t think I really have a concept of what it means for me to be doing this kind of work. I’ve never done it before.

Jesse from I Want Your Love

SFBG: You touched on a few things I wanted to talk about. But before we go into sex in film, I wanted to just focus on porn. What’s your take on the current state of pornography?

J: I have a lot of respect for an industry that employs as many people as it does and that, in a lot of ways, is transgressive and sex-positive. I think, especially in San Francisco, there are a lot of porn companies who are doing things that are not just about getting off, that are actually reshaping the way people think about sex. I mean, Kink.com has incredible politics. There are a lot of companies that have really great politics. But at the same time, I say I have a lot of respect for them because truthfully I don’t know a whole lot about the infrastructure of porn companies.

In terms of what I see when I’m watching porn and how it relates to Travis’ work, I don’t know if there’s a need for Travis’ work as pornography. I don’t know whether people want to keep their porn dirty and their films deep. I’m not really sure what people’s response to that will be. Apparently there’s been a response from a lot of people that I Want Your Love is like a very different and more full-bodied turn-on for them, because there’s something familiar and humble and flawed about the whole thing. But as it relates to contemporary porn, I don’t know. I’ve always just kind of seen porn as what it is, and it’s kind of like a fantasy place. I’ve never really wanted porn to be more realistic than it is for me, as a voyeur of porn. I guess it is what it is. I feel like my sexual relationships and my sexual partners and the world I’ve created there is very satisfying for me, in terms of reality. So I don’t really seek out reality. But there is a weird thing where people are projecting a lot of reality onto I Want Your Love. A lot of the comments on Butt are like, “Oh, it’s just so real. It’s like I know them. I’m in love with them.” It’s funny because, stylistically I understand that this is a little bit of a trick to make it seem more real. But there’s nothing more real about I Want Your Love than any other porn that you see, although I don’t know if we’re calling it porn.

Jesse and Brenden in I Want Your Love

SFBG: You talked about being new to this kind of exposure. What kind of response have you gotten? Between I Want Your Love and In Their Room, are you getting recognized by any strangers?

J: I mean, this probably touches on a lot of my personally psychology and insecurity, but I’ve had a really weird shadowy presence on both of these projects, which is very interesting to me. I was fascinated because on In Their Room, I received less attention or shout-outs or comments than almost anyone else in the film. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that’s a reflection of me being, like, a not attractive or not desirable figure in the movie, but there were a couple things I was curious about. One is that I had a much more sexually explicit scene than anyone else in the film. And I wondered if it was this kind of archaic idea of giving it up too soon, that I was damaged goods or something. Because it’s really interesting. I did receive notably less press or attention than almost anyone else in the film, which is funny.

And then the same goes for I Want Your Love. I mean, my scene partner in I Want Your Love, I think is a very cute, very prototypically attractive guy. For both of these films, I’ve actually been able to kind of—I don’t know if it’s a curse or a blessing. I don’t know if I should feel ugly, or how I’m supposed to feel. [laughs] But I have not actually been approached, talked about, blogged about really individually all that much. It’s always the other guys. I seem to be very neutral or unexciting. I don’t know. I just go into the studio and do what Travis asks me to do. But according to the discerning public, it’s always the others that are more interesting. [laughs]

SFBG: Let’s talk about your co-star a bit. Where do you begin building that rapport and chemistry when you’re filming an unsimulated sex scene with someone?

J: With Brenden, Brenden was someone that I was already having sex with. There was a really great, excited, very honeymoon-y chemistry between us. It was very distinctively sexually. We weren’t dating or anything like this. … Every time we would sit down and talk about new guys, it would be like, “Yeah, but honestly, I could fuck Brenden’s brains out right now and be thrilled about it.” There’s very raw, obvious chemistry. We already wanted to fuck—really, really badly.

SFBG: Well, do you think that adds to the realism people are talking about? Could they be picking up on the history between you guys?

J: Yeah, I guess so. Which makes me think about real porn and how they walk into a studio having never met their partner, and they have to just have it ready. Which then, brings up the idea of the penis drugs. Because Brenden and I, we totally have boners for each other, but then we took the penis drugs, because for a shoot, you have to do extraordinary things with your penis that you’ve never had to do in your entire life. And so, I wonder if it had been someone else, maybe I just could’ve taken a penis drug and I would have been fine.

SFBG: I wanted to touch back on the point you were making about sex in film and how that’s something you see more in European productions. Do you think American audiences are ready for this? Is it going to take more independent movies like Travis’ to push them in that direction?

J: I would say it’s difficult to comment on a question like that in the incubator that is San Francisco. We’re so colored by what the reality of the pervasive national idea is. That said, I think that we are moving toward being more ready for it. I think people need to see specific social cues of independent filmmaking in order to feel comfortable with this. I think if you hold their hand and show them things that make them feel like they’re watching—I can’t even think of an example right now. But if you give them little social cues in this work that remind them that they’re watching something that they would see at the Embarcadero Center or at YBCA—you know, people like to feel like they’re watching art. They like to feel like they’re there and they’re experiencing this thing, and they were a witness to this piece of art. So if you provide little ways for them to feel this way, I think they’ll swallow the medicine a little easier. A spoonful of sugar kind of thing.

The Daily Blurgh: Bros before trolls

0

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

For the love of God, iPad, or printed matter, please read former Guardian culture editor, and current lead editor of science and sci-fi wonderblog io9, Annalee Newitz’s eye-opening summary of the 5 ways the Google Book settlement will change the future of reading (one plus: “pulp science fiction will make a comeback in ways you might not expect”).


 “It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall.” 


Early master of photography actually insane cuckold killer: “This commission took [Edweard Muybridge] out of San Francisco at a convenient moment: He’d recently murdered his young wife’s lover, but squeaked by with an acquittal in court — one part of his defense had been that only someone already unbalanced would take the risks that Muybridge did in Yosemite, just to get a picture.”


Meanwhile, still-living photo-snapper The Tens got a peek inside the bowels of Kink.com (h/t Mission Mission)


The Awl preaches bros before trolls: “Instead of shaking your Internetty fist at all that angers you though, what if you ignored it and discussed things that do work, things that are wonderful, and encouraged others to do the same?”


 

These gorgeous creatures – children of video artist and endless font of inspiration Kalup Linzy — are hitting Berkeley Art Museum tonight with support from DJ Bus Station John, starting at 6pm. Get it!

 

 

Outdoors & Sports

0

BEST NONPROFESSIONAL SPORTS TEAM

SF Fog Rugby

The Fog is one of the only rugby clubs in the world that actively recruits people of color, gay men, and women — and somehow only incredibly hunky ones apply.

(415) 267-6100, www.sffog.org

BEST GYM

Gold’s Gym

It’s the gayest, classiest, most fresh-smelling gym in the city. Get buff. Get ripped. Get Gold.

Various locations. www.goldgym.com

BEST YOGA STUDIO

Monkey Yoga Shala

Bend, breathe, burn. Go bananas. Be like the monkey at Monkey Yoga Shala, the Bay Area’s premier simian yoga studio.

3215 Lakeshore, Oakl. (510) 595-1330, www.monkeyyoga.com

BEST DANCE STUDIO

ODC

Learn how to bust moves and join the Rhythm Nation with the professional booty shakers at ODC — or just watch them in amazing performances.

351 Shotwell, SF. (415) 863-6606, www.odcdance.org

BEST PUBLIC SPORTS FACILITY

Kezar Stadium

It’s not as glamorous as it was back in the day, but Kezar is still the best place to kick balls and soak up vibes left over from the Summer of Love.

755 Stanyan, SF.

BEST PERSONAL TRAINER

Hoop Girl

Shake off that flab, grind your pelvis, and work that ass with Christabel Zamor, the sexiest hula-hooping heroine in the world.

www.hoopgirl.com

BEST SKATE SPOT

The Embarcadero

Embarco is the best place in the world for street skating. Just don’t tell the cops.

Pier 1, Embarcadero and Market, SF

BEST PUBLIC POOL

Mission Pool

An impeccably maintained, old-school outdoor pool tucked into the heart of the Mission. The last of a dying breed.

1 Linda, SF. (415) 641-2841, www.sfgov.org

BEST SURF SPOT


Linda Mar, Pacifica: Best Surf Spot
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

Linda Mar, Pacifica

The water’s cold, the waves are rough, and the weather is screwy, but our readers love a challenge.

Cabrillo Hwy. at Linda Mar Blvd., Pacifica.

BEST PARK FOR HIKING

Tilden Park

Trek through winding trails full of trees and wildlife at the oldest and most beautiful park in the East Bay.

Grizzly Park Blvd., Berk. (510) 562-PARK, www.ebparks.org

BEST NUDE BEACH

Baker Beach

Rock out with your cock out or jam out with your clam out at the best nude beach in the West.

Off Lincoln Blvd., Presidio, SF. www.nps.gov

BEST CLOTHED BEACH

Stinson Beach

Amazing (if often fog-drenched) views, cool spontaneous sand sculptures, and tons of hidden nooks and crannies for a private feel.

1 Calle del Sierra, Stinson. (415) 868-1922, www.nps.gov

BEST NATURE SPOT FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES; BEST PUBLIC PARK

Golden Gate Park

Accessibility is key at this beloved multifaceted venue, which offers several services specifically for the disabled.

www.parks.sfgov.org

BEST PICNIC SPOT

Dolores Park

Panoramic views of the city, half-naked hotties, beer, sausage, and pot brownies. This ain’t your daddy’s picnic spot (well, maybe your sugar daddy’s)!

Dolores between 18th and 20th Sts., SF.

BEST DOG PARK

Fort Funston

Where else can a pup frolic in Pacific Ocean waves and then chill with his bitch on a grassy knoll when he’s done? Nowhere.

Skyline Blvd. at John Muir Dr., SF. www.fortfunstondog.org

BEST CAMPGROUND

Angel Island

Wind-sheltered and semiprivate, the campsites at Angel Island are the perfect remedy for the Fog City blues.

www.angelisland.org

BEST PLACE TO WATCH THE SUNRISE; BEST CITY VISTA

Twin Peaks

You can see everything from Twin Peaks: the sky, the city, the tourists, the tweakers!

Top of Twin Peaks Blvd., SF.

BEST PLACE TO WATCH THE SUNSET

Ocean Beach

The sun may rise in the eastern skies, but it settles in a fine location: just off the shore of the O.B.

Great Hwy. between Geary and Sloat Blvds., SF.

BEST PLACE TO SEE THE STARS

Mt. Tamalpais

Your roof might be awesome, but if your landlord catches you up there, you’ll be homeless in no time. Skip the eviction and head to Mt. Tam.

801 Panoramic Hwy., Mill Valley. www.parks.ca.gov

Outdoors & Sports

BEST CEREBRAL WORKOUT

OK, you know when you’re doing the elliptical at the gym, flipping idly through an US Weekly between fighting with some meathead over whether you’ve really been on the machine for 30 minutes? That’s your body getting stronger while your mind’s getting weaker. Combat your brain’s slow atrophy at vibrantBrains, the only gym devoted exclusively to the oft-ignored muscle inside your skull. Instead of sweat-drenched Nautilus machines, vibrantBrains is composed of computer stations with software to challenge different parts of your mind. Happy Neuron works out your cognitive and language skills, while Lumosity’s exercises work out your memory and attention capabilities. In between “workouts,” the vibrantBrains lounge offers tea, reading material, and a community of newly intelligent peers. Classes like “Minding Your Mind” and “Neurobics” are also offered. All software is proven scientifically to improve brain function, but vibrantBrains’ owners, Lisa Schoonerman and Jan Zivic, provide a personal touch that eases your wits into fitness.

3235 Sacramento, SF. (415) 775-1138, www.vibrantbrains.com

BEST DRINKING CLUB WITH A RUNNING PROBLEM

Banish preconceived notions about running clubs: people whose less-than-1-percent body fat is shellacked in sweat-wicking, high-tech fabrics; New Balance slaves to a stopwatch and heart monitor. Not so with the Hash House Harriers (or H3), a running club fueled more by beer and sexual innuendo than Gu and Cytomax. The Harriers’ motto is “A drinking club with a running problem.” A hash run is based on hare hunting, with the leading hasher laying out a trail that the rest follow. This entails more than improvising a route, however: the hasher must set up the keg and beer stops along the way. Punishments are doled out for not following the route, and they’re not just sore muscles. Down-downs, as they’re called, involve drinking all the alkie in your cup. Booze consumption along the way isn’t the only unorthodoxy; members choose some very interesting nicknames, which range from “Wet Nurse” to “Cum Guzzling Cockaholic.” If Bay to Breakers comes 51 times less a year than you’d like, join up now.

(415) 5-ON-HASH, www.sfh3.com

BEST WAY TO GO

When most people hear “go,” they think of the opposite of “stop” or that middling ’90s rave movie. Well, there’s a lot more to “go” than green lights and Katie Holmes. Take, for example, Go, the 4,000-year-old Chinese board game. Go, or “Eastern Chess,” involves two players facing off over a wooden board with small black and white stones as their weapons. The game, once used in military training schools to teach strategy, is challenging, complex, and addictive. Where can you go to Go in San Francisco? You go to the San Francisco Go Club, where you can enter Go tournaments, get Go ranking verification, receive Go lessons, or simply throw down a challenge (“You wanna Go?!”). Go-ing since 1935, this organization, headquartered in an intimate little Richmond District space, is perfect for Go fanatics and first-time Go-phers alike. Even if chess, backgammon, and checkers aren’t doing it for you anymore, don’t give up on board games — Go further.

500 Eighth Ave., SF. (415) 386-9565, www.sfgoclub.com

BEST PLACE TO POLISH YOUR STUNTS

Fear not, action stars. Just because you lost your stuntman (they’re first to go in a recession) doesn’t mean your movie has to suck. Head over to the Tat Wong Kickboxing Academy and learn those kung fu moves for yourself. Founded by Master Tat Wong — one of Inside Kung Fu magazine’s 100 Most Influential Martial Artists of the 20th century and host of TV’s “Kung Fu Theater” — the academy uses a combination of Chinese San Shou, American kickboxing, and Muay Thai techniques to instruct students of all ages in a huge former bank building on Clement Street. What does that all mean? It means that whether you’re an action star or an extra, you’ll be arrow-punching and tornado-kicking your way to tighter buns, mental discipline, and badass self-defense skills. And even if you’re not the next Jean-Claude Van Damme, Tat Wong’s cardio kickboxing classes may ensure you outlive him.

601 Clement, SF. (415) 752-5555, www.tatwong.com

BEST UPPERCUTS


Michael the Boxer: Best Uppercuts
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

If you thought You Don’t Mess with the Zohan was just another escapist summer film fantasy, think again. Ass-kicking hairstylists really do exist. Witness Michael Onello, the owner of Michael the Boxer, the only boxing gym and barbershop in the Bay Area. Michael is a third-generation barber and professional boxing trainer, highly qualified to dish out both buzz cuts and uppercuts. From the barber chair to the boxing ring, Onello’s SoMa shop is a blend of old-school service and new-school fitness. You can peruse Onello’s book, Boxing: Advanced Tactics and Strategies, during a hot lather shave and then, afterward, head into the ring to learn how to throw a haymaker. It’s boxing and barbering, all under one roof. But don’t let the Zohan comparisons give you the wrong idea. Michael’s not working — as a boxer or barber — for laughs. He’s simply the best double-threat in town. As Muhammad Ali said, “It’s not bragging if you can back it up.”

96 Lafayette, SF. (415) 425-3814, www.michaeltheboxer.com

BEST NET PROFIT

On a late-night talk show, five-time Wimbledon champion Venus Williams recently referred to herself as a “tennis nerd,” meaning that when she isn’t playing tennis, she likes to watch it. All Bay Area tennis nerds should know about the Centre Court Pro Shop at San Francisco Tennis Club. For once you won’t have to trek through a maze of equipment for other sports to get to the array of shoes, clothes, and racquets. And if you glance at the TV by the front counter, you’ll likely see a recording of a classic match. Casual onlookers who were wowed by the epic “Greatest Match Ever” between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer can show their allegiance to the players associated with the sport’s renaissance by buying some new Babolat or Wilson gear. The shop has a ton of demo racquets, so any player — from weekend hacker to daily tennis nerd — can figure out through trial and error (and fun) which stick works best for hitting winners and upping their game.

645 Fifth St., SF. (415) 777-9010

BEST GAME IN TOWN

When you’re winning, it doesn’t matter where you watch. “The Catch” in ’82 could have made prison walls disappear. Super Bowl XXIX (Niners 49, Chargers 26) gave that boiler-room sublet in the Tenderloin charm. Yes, winning throws a glow on your surroundings, but when you’re losing — the 49ers have finished below .500 for the last five seasons; the Giants, for the last three — it’s a different story. You want comfort. You want character. You want beer. Thankfully, there’s Green’s Sport’s Bar on Polk. It’s got all the essentials: 17 high-definition TVs, 18 draft beers, and vintage Sports Illustrated swimsuit editions on the walls. Friendly staff, fanatical patrons, and an interior covered with flags, jerseys, pucks, pictures, and pennants — your game at Green’s is a guaranteed “W” regardless of the score, and a perfect reminder that just because your team’s losing, you don’t have to be a loser.

2239 Polk, SF. (415) 775-4287

BEST EXPLOSION OF AQUA

We’re perhaps a little too, er, unbalanced to stand upright enough on a surfboard and guide it through the roiling waves, but that doesn’t mean we’re not suckers for hotties in wetsuits. Often you’ll find us curled up with a cup of joe in the dunes of Ocean Beach or Pacifica (or, hell, southern Baja — we’re enthusiasts!) appreciating fine-bodied curler-tamers from afar and merrily offering freshly laundered towels and the pitiful results of our amateur clambake to those who return from the breakers unbroken. But enough about us. This award goes to Aqua Surf Shop for not only outfitting our heroic tsunami-herders with affordable boards, suits, and accessories, but also taking the whole surfwear trend in charitable directions with glamorous fashion shows at 111 Minna that benefit the Edgewood Center for Families and Children and feature the work of several primo local stylists and music makers. With a new Haight Street location to complement its original Ocean Beach store, Aqua keeps growing and growing, proving that surfers really are the gift that keeps on giving.

2830 Sloat, SF. (415) 282-9243; 1742 Haight, SF. (415) 876-2782, www.aquasurfshop.com

BEST TRUE SCHOOL SKATE COMPANY

Skateboarding may be the coolest sport in the world, but its popularity has come with a price: the loss of authenticity and soul. The subculture used to be underground and dangerous, but thanks to corporate buyouts, heavy MTV coverage, and the X Games, it’s become as innocent as lacrosse. Luckily, Deluxe, a.k.a. DLX, the parent distribution company for Real Skateboards, Thunder Trucks, Spitfire Wheels, Krooked, and Antihero, keeps it real. With a focus on localized production — all boards, trucks, wheels, and clothes are actually made right here in the city — and a dedication to a distinctly San Franciscan brand of skate culture (flannels, beers, and raw street), Deluxe has managed to maintain some integrity as an alternative for the small sect of people who like to skate but hate the mall. Deluxe pros like Mark Gonzales, Dan Drehobl, and Peter Ramondetta are as far as you can get from corporate whores like Tony Hawk and Bam Margera, and the products Deluxe makes bear almost no resemblance to the shit they stock at Westfield Centre.

1111A 17th St., SF. (415) 468-7845, www.dlxsf.com

BEST GIANT FITNESS CLUB THAT ATE ALAMEDA

The Bladium isn’t joking when it bills itself as “big club, big energy.” Situated in a former aircraft hangar on an abandoned naval base, the 120,000-square-foot sports and fitness club has stellar views of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet and San Francisco. Inside, airy dance studios, two indoor soccer fields, an in-line hockey rink, a rock climbing wall, a boxing ring, basketball and volleyball courts, and a kids center mean there are plenty of ways to get hot and sweaty. Did we mention the well-stocked bar and grill where you can offset any potential weight loss from all that working out? The club’s belief in cross-training as the best way to stay healthy translates into plenty of exercise options for one low monthly fee. But beware the darling clothing store situated inside the club. That’s where you may lose the shirt off your back, in exchange for a racy lacy sports bra — all the better to show off your nascent abs.

800 West Tower Ave., Bldg 40, Alameda. (510) 814-4999, www.bladium.com

BEST TWO-WHEELED COMMUTE

All the transportation experts say that when it comes to riding bicycles through big-city streets, there is safety in numbers. So if you’re among the majority of San Franciscans who still don’t pedal their way to work, there’s no better day to try it than Bike to Work Day, which occurs each May. This year, for the first time in San Francisco history, official traffic surveys that day counted more bicycles than automobiles during the morning commute on Market Street, a particularly astounding feat given that a court injunction has prevented the city from creating any new bike lanes or making improvements for the past couple of years. The day also features free coffee and other goodies from “energizer stations” (often staffed by very attractive “energizers”) around town and a Bike Home from Work afterparty, where you can flirt with the steel buns set and toast your merry mileage.

www.sfbike.org

BEST NON-KINKY ROPE SKILLS


SFC Double Dutch: Best Non-Kinky Rope Skills
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

San Francisco has never been known for its wholesome use of rope — check Kink.com for a taste of “normal” SF-style rope play — but that’s all changing now that the Double Dutchesses are back on the scene. The DD girls, four supersexy city girls with mind-boggling rope skills, made a big splash a few years ago with their quirky jump rope routines and blood-drenched performance art skits. But despite DD’s efforts, the great double dutch resurgence never quite took off, probably because choreographed jump roping is hard as hell. The girls laid low for a while, working diligently on their routines, but now they’re back. Their new jump rope instruction organization, SFC Double Dutch, is dedicated to spreading the joy of jump rope. So untie your bondage slave and sign up for classes at CELLspace or Studio Garcia before they fill up. Uptown, downtown; everybody’s gettin’ down.

214 Clara, SF. (415) 618-0992, www.sfcdoubledutch.com

BEST SWINGIN’ ON A STAR


McKinley Park: Best Swingin’ on a Star
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

You might not have had the need — or the opportunity — to plan an over-the-top, no-holds-barred romantic date recently. Let’s face it: it’s hard to get a date in this city, let alone get one you’re actually excited about. But just when you’re least expecting it, someone wonderful lands in your lap, and you find yourself frantically trying to come up with something that will impress. May we suggest McKinley Park, a hidden gem atop Potrero Hill. It’s an ideal date stop: the swing set at the edge of the sleepy playground stunningly overlooks the entire city. Soaring through the night air, you feel as though you’ll launch into the stars. It’s even better to bike up to the park, despite the major hill climb required, as the rolling hills sloping down toward Third Street provide the best cycling roller coaster this city has to offer — with an ocean view.

20th Street at Vermont, SF

BEST BIG LEBOWSKI

Even though the Presidio is gradually entering a slow hostile takeover by corporations (vanity museums, Lucasfilm) and big parking lots, it’s still San Francisco’s throwback to the past. The farther you get from the fancy park gates, the further back in time you travel. Near the coastal bluffs, time becomes completely irrelevant, making the Presidio the perfect place to reenact scenes from the greatest slacker movie of all time: The Big Lebowski. With a bowling ball, some beers, and a few other geeky friends, the Presidio Bowl becomes your personal set for faux nihilism and cutting repartée. Twelve lanes and a bangin’ snack bar (bacon-and-egg cheeseburgers, anyone?) sate you while the doobie wears off. And who can’t appreciate the value of an endless fountain of warm, imitation nacho cheese? Sadly, you’ll have to make the film’s emblematic White Russians yourself — the Bowl only serves beer, wine, and malt liquor. But there’s nothing wrong with ordering a glass of half-and-half on the rocks and doctoring it with your flask, is there?

93 Moraga, SF. (415) 561-2695. www.presidiobowl.com

BEST CYCLOCROSS-DRESSERS

If you don’t do a double take when you see a six-foot-four female impersonator screaming at a Muni driver on Market Street because he rear-ended her ’57 Chevy, congratulations. You’ve officially arrived as a proper San Francisco citizen. Where else is it considered commonplace to see a trolley hit a tranny? Yet even the most seasoned SF residents might turn their heads at this: grown men, dressed in skintight spandex and frilly lingerie, sprinting through Golden Gate Park with bikes hiked over their shoulders. This occasion, the Outlaw Cyclocross Race, is the unofficial annual opener for Northern California’s October–February cyclocross race season, in which dozens of hardcore, or ridiculous, cyclists cross-dress to avoid an entry fee. Zooming off in a cloud of dust, the froofy men (and a few tie-wearing women) race through a closed-circuit loop filled with steep hills and insurmountable logs. This slightly nonlegal event has kept itself well-hidden from permit-demanding eyes for almost 15 years. To find it, you’ll have to listen in the fall for strident yodels and ripping lace.

BEST HEAD START

You celebrate the same birthday over and over. You’ve begun to contemplate Botox. And let’s not even talk about your waistline: Your muffin top runneth over. In our youth-centric, waif-y culture, where are the breaks for the older or plumper folks? The Double Dipsea Race is one. This 14.2-mile footrace, a round-trip between Stinson Beach and Mill Valley held in June, is age-handicapped: the oldest runners are given up to a 25-minute advantage over a scratch group of younger pups. The race has a few more swerves from convention. Women over 140 pounds and men over 200 can take special prizes. And runners who frequent those North Bay trails would do well to take note of the race’s permissible shortcuts. The race offers these corner-cutters because founder Walt Stack wanted to encourage women and older folks to participate. The course is still grueling — a 2200-foot nongradual elevation gain, uneven, rocky footing, and yes, the infamous 600-plus Mill Valley steps. Yet it offers a gorgeous and breathtaking (if you have any left to take) vista of the Pacific.

www.doubledipsea.com

BEST HIGH BACKSIDE OLLIE COMEBACK

There was a time when San Francisco was ground zero for skate culture. Spots like the Justin Herman Plaza, Hubba Hideout, and Pier Seven cranked out pro after pro and bred a scene more stylish and full of big-city attitude than the world had ever seen. It was great for the city’s skaters who enjoyed fame, money, and industry-wide respect, but the corporations that owned the plazas, ledges, and staircases were unanimously pissed off. Ledges were capped, security guards were hired, and special laws were created to make sure San Francisco became as undesirable for skaters as an empty swimming pool for Olympian dog-paddlers. Most of the SF skate scene may have vanished since the attack, but it never died. The new Portero Del Sol Skatepark is proof. New pros, up-and-comers, and established vets like Max Schaff and Karma Tsocheff have been tearing that shit up since the cement dried back in April.

Utah and 25th St., SF.

BEST STEEL CITY BRO-DOWN

If you’ve ever met someone from Pittsburgh, you’ve met a Steelers fan. Steel City natives are serious about sports. San Francisco has a surprisingly large number of Steelers bars, where transplants and trend-followers throw back brewskis at 10 a.m. on football season Sundays. But Giordano Bros. sandwich shop in North Beach makes you genuinely feel like you’re back in the ‘Burgh itself. It’s not uncommon to hear the hoots of former elementary school classmates running into each other, beer is available in buckets — and authentic Primanti Bros.–style sandwiches are served. These wonders are stacked with your choice of Italian meat (try the hot cappicola) and slathered with cheese, oil and vinegar, and french fries between thick-sliced Italian bread. (Add boiled egg for the full experience.) Four large TVs ensure everyone can see the game. When the Steelers win, Giordano’s proprietors pass around Iron City, a brew found only in Pittsburgh. Because, in Pittsburghese: “Every one of yinz Stillers fans gets a victory swig dahn ‘ere.”

303 Columbus, SF. (415) 397-2767, www.giordanobros.com

BEST BODY SLAMS

The folks at Fog City Wrestling want you to watch a luchador slam a Tom Cruise impersonator into the floor. They want you to see a Samoan take-down team (combined weight: 1,100 pounds) take on the “Reno Punks” in a swirling, convoluted drama of independent pro-wrasslin’. Sweaty, in-your-face, “maybe knock you over if you’re in the front row” wrestling has come back to San Francisco after what promoters Caesar Black and Steve Armani claim has been a 30-year absence. Fog City’s shows are packed with so many acts, highlights, and subplots that things get raucously confusing. With a full-size ring and professional sound and lights, it brings a high level of showmanship with a big ol’ plate of athleticism on the side. Wrestlers like Rikishi, the Mexican Werewolf, and Mister Primetime pull big-show moves — flying back flips, body slams, and pile drivers — just like them whut you see on the tee-vee.

www.fogcitywrestling.com

BEST FLYCATCHIN’

As a San Francisco resident, it’s your born (or inherited, or adopted) duty to be a Giants fan. It doesn’t matter that baseball is boring or that scandal rocks the team every year that they don’t completely suck. But just going to a Giants game can be as sporty as playing baseball — and you don’t even have to enter the ballpark. Grab a pony keg and some friends, don your orange fright wig, set up camp on the stone benches across from the waterway by AT&T Park, and while away the afternoon or evening watching the kayakers on the bay wait to catch fly balls. You’ll almost be able to see the big screen where the game is projected. Or, if you actually care about what’s going on inside, press your eyeballs up to the right of the bicycle-parking check-in and you’ve got the best field-side seats in the park. Why pay $6 per Bud to watch the Giants lose when you can drink your own beer, listen to the cheers and jeers, and enjoy some amateur watersports?

City Living

0

BEST LOCAL BLOG

N Judah Chronicles

Crazies, crashes, coins! Public transportation is way more exciting than the freeway. Share your tales of Muni woe (and whoa!) with blogger Greg Dewar.

www.njudahchronicles.com

BEST LOCAL WEB SITE

BeyondChron.org

Politics, current events, and culture coverage for people smart enough to distrust “the Voice of the West.” BeyondChron.org is the FUBU of local news sources.

www.beyondchron.com

BEST TATTOO ARTIST

Freddy Corbin, Temple Tattoo

Corbin’s work can be found on the arms and necks of hipsters from here to China. Intricate, original, and flawless. In a word: gangsta.

384 17th St., Oakl. (510) 451-6423, www.templeoakland.com

BEST TATTOO SHOP

Black and Blue

The renowned female artists at B&B may not be able to pee while standing (we think), but they’ll man up to the needles any day. The best tattoos in town.

381 Guerrero, SF. (415) 626-0770, www.blackandbluetattoo.com

BEST POLITICIAN YOU LOVE TO HATE

Gavin Newsom

Is it his creepy smile, his perfect hair, or his questionable policies and personal life that irritates everyone so much? Whatever it is, the dude fucking sucks.

BEST POLITICIAN

Gavin Newsom

Er, time out. Newsom’s not that bad. He’s kind of sexy in a Zoolander sort of way, and he did stand up for gay marriage. Plus, he’s related to Joanna. Thumbs up, dude. You win.

BEST LOCAL NONPROFIT

Homeless Prenatal Program

Being homeless sucks, but homeless and pregnant? Come on! Luckily, HPP has been assisting homeless mothers-to-be with their situation since 1998.

2500 18th St., SF. (415) 546-6756, www.homelessprenatal.org

BEST EMERGING ARTIST

Nanci Price Scoular

Scoular’s abstract painting style is like an onion, revealing layer after layer of the artist’s struggle to belong.

www.pricescoular.com

BEST ART COLLECTIVE

Liberation Ink

Liberation Ink designs T-shirts and accessories for liberal arts majors, cute activists, and hippies with fashion sense. All profits support local grassroots organizations.

(415) 294-3196, www.liberationink.org

BEST TOURIST SPOT LOCALS SHOULD VISIT

Alcatraz

Wading through hordes of blissfully ignorant, clam-chowder-chomping tourists is never much fun, but sometimes the destination is worth it. Alcatraz is such a place — the best, in fact.

www.nps.gov/alcatraz

BEST LOCAL AUTHOR

Broke-Ass Stuart

Stuart’s city guidebooks may fly off the shelves these days, but the dude’s still broke as shit. It doesn’t stop him from having fun, though, and it shouldn’t stop you either.

www.brokeassstuart.com

BEST LOCAL ZINE (PRINT)

The Loin’s Mouth

Read about the ups and tragic downs (plus anonymous sexcapades!) of Tenderloin dwellers every month in The Loin’s Mouth.

www.theloinsmouth.com

BEST LOCAL ZINE (WEB)

Big Top Magazine

Circus freaks, sideshow performers, exhibitionists, and straight-up weirdos. Big Top Magazine gives a voice to them all. Finally!

www.bigtopmagazine.com

BEST LOCAL RECORD LABEL

Six Degrees

Dedicated to the sweet and sexy sounds of international genre-bending, Six Degrees offers the best in contemporary music from across the globe.

www.sixdegreesrecords.com

BEST LOCAL PUBLISHING HOUSE

McSweeney’s

Like books? Pirates? Clever writing with a socially conscious twist? Dave Eggers and McSweeney’s wants you!

www.mcsweeneys.net

BEST TV NEWSCASTER

Dennis Richmond

In a perfect world, all news anchors would be like newly retired Richmond: cool, composed, and confident enough to rock the same mustache through decades of facial hair trends.

www.ktvu.com

BEST LOCALLY PRODUCED TV SHOW

Check, Please! Bay Area

Regular Bay Area residents review San Francisco’s finest restaurants. No pretense, no expertise, no bullshit. Genius!

www.blogs.kqed.org/food

BEST RADIO STATION

Energy 92.7 FM

Indie rock’s cool and all, but sometimes you just wanna bump Rihanna, Britney Spears, or Gunther. Cut a rug at Energy 92.7, the ass-movingest radio station in the Bay.

www.energy927fm.com

BEST STREET FAIR

Folsom Street Fair

More cock than a chicken fight! More ass than a donkey show! Break out those chaps and grab some lube when the sprawling granddaddy of leather events hits in September.

www.folsomstreetfair.org

BEST DOG-WALKING SERVICE

Mighty Dog

Most dog walkers stop after a stroll, but Mighty will take Fido to the beach, give him a trim, and maybe even introduce him to some hot tail.

1536 Alabama, SF. (415) 235-5151, www.mightydogwalking.com

BEST PET GROOMER


Little Ark
Grooming Shop: Best Pet Groomer
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

Little Ark Grooming Shop

Dogs make nice child substitutes, but they can get dirty as hell. Clean ’em up at Little Ark, the best groom shop in town.

748 14th St., SF. (415) 626-7574

BEST VETERINARIAN

Pets Unlimited

Sick pets suck. They whine all day, smell nasty, and repel potential lovers. Get them fixed up at Pets Unlimited.

2343 Fillmore, SF. (415) 563-6700, www.petsunlimited.org

BEST CAMP FOR KIDS

Camp Galileo

Art, science, and outdoor activities for students from prekindergarten to entering fifth grade. Summer camp for creative types.

(415) 595-7293, www.campgalileo.com

BEST DENTIST

Dr. Natasha Lee, Better Living Through Dentistry

Drugs and alcohol will do the trick temporarily, but if you really want a better life, fix your grill at Dr. Lee’s.

1317 Ninth Ave., SF. (415) 731-9311

BEST DOCTOR

Dr. Scott Swanson, Parkside Chiropractic

Need a backiotomy? Head to Parkside Chiropractic, where Dr. Swanson will snap your spine back into action.

2394 31st Ave., SF. (415) 566-7134, www.parksidechiro.com

BEST MASSAGE THERAPIST

Joshua Alexander, CMT

He will listen to your body and honor what he hears with a plethora of techniques, including energy work modalities ranging from Swedish and deep tissue to shiatsu and polarity.

Castro and Market, SF. (415) 225-3460, www.joshuaalexandercmt.com

BEST MECHANIC

Pat’s Garage

Cars may never be as environmentally friendly as bicycles, but they get substantially closer at Pat’s, San Francisco’s premier green auto shop. Plus, organic coffee!

1090 26th St., SF. (415) 647-4500, www.patsgarage.com

BEST PLACE FOR A HAIRCUT

Dekko Salon

If you’re looking for a truly individualized experience, get your hair styled at swanky Dekko, San Francisco’s most luxurious hair and art gallery.

1325 Indiana, SF. (415) 285-8848, www.dekkosalon.com

BEST DAY SPA

Blue Turtle Spa

Cruelty-free skin products and beauty services for your worldly vessel. Animals shouldn’t have to suffer just so you can look pretty.

57 West Portal, SF. (415) 699-8494, www.blueturtlespa.com

BEST SHOE REPAIR

Anthony’s Shoe Repair

There’s nothing worse than showing up to a party in a scuffed-up pair of kicks. Anthony will restitch, resole, and stretch your shoes back to freshness.

30 Geary, SF. (415) 781-1338

BEST TAILOR

Cable Car Tailors

Throw your thrift store finds in a bag with some oversize slacks and wait for CC Tailors to work their magic.

200 O’Farrell, SF. (415) 781-4636

BEST ROOMMATE REFERRAL SERVICE

Craigslist

Where else can you find someone actively seeking a “sex-positive, 420-friendly, artsy-fartsy new housemate who likes cats and cooks vegan”?

www.craigslist.com

BEST LOCAL ANIMAL RESCUE

San Francisco SPCA

Rescuing distressed pooches and wayward felines since 1868, this SPCA outpost offers a stunning array of humane services.

2500 16th St., SF. (415) 554-3000, www.sfspca.org

BEST LAUNDROMAT

Brainwash

Drink beer, eat food, and wash duds with stand-up comedians, SoMa punks, live bands, and swingers from nearby One Taste Urban Retreat Center.

1122 Folsom, SF. (415) 861-3663, www.brainwash.com

BEST BICYCLE MECHANIC

Bike Kitchen

Give a man a bike; he’ll ride until it breaks. Give him the tools to fix a bike (the Bike Kitchen’s raison d’être); he’ll ride for life.

1256 Mission, SF. (415) 255-2453, www.bikekitchen.org

City Living

BEST PIRATES ON THE DIAL

We love the independents, and it doesn’t get much more independent than pirate radio. West Add Radio, on 93.7 FM, features some of the most adventurous musical programming in the city — from minimal techno crew Kontrol and Green Gorilla Lounge’s M3 to Cobain in a Coma, a show about music, celebrity gossip, and homo drug culture with a cult following, and Pancake Radio, with prolific DJ Ryan Poulsen. The advantage to flying under FCC radar? Anything goes — the seven dirty words, explicit lyrics, inappropriate banter, obscure kraut rock — if you’re lucky enough to pick up the signal. Otherwise, you can access the live stream and podcast archive online. (Hurray for the Internet.) In addition to its radio programming, West Add has become known for its parties, most significantly the monthly Italo-disco Ferrari at Deco Lounge, but also quirky nights such as “Merry Crass-mas,” a tribute to CRASS. West Add has also started releasing the free zine WAR in collaboration with Aquarius Records. Radio’s not dead!

www.westaddradio.com

BEST DRIVEWAY OF DESTINY

Driving in these eco-conscious times may be unfortunate, but since 2002, when artists Harrell Fletcher and Jon Rubin stenciled fortunes into each of its parking spaces, the North Beach Parking Garage has offered a curious kind of hope. Some fortunes are cookie classics (“Opportunity is fleeting”). Others are enticingly bawdy (“There is a party inside you” abutting “Your lovers [plural] will never wish to leave you”). Some contain road rage management tips (“It is often better to not see insult than to avenge it”) or reality checks (“Your trouble is that you think you have time”). The best of ’em trigger intriguing dilemmas for the superstitious — do you cast a shadow over your day by parking in “A whisper separates friends”? Do you wait for “You are not a has-been” to become free? If you need to come up for air, hit the garage’s roof: its lovely view of Saints Peter and Paul Church and the Transamerica Pyramid (along with nearby Chinatown clotheslines) will wipe your mind clear of ontological philosophizing.

735 Vallejo, SF. (415) 399-9564

BEST AMAZING JOURNEY INWARD


The Melvin M. Sweig Interfaith
Memorial Labyrinth: Best Amazing Journey Inward
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

The ancient mystical tradition of the labyrinth lives on in front of Grace Cathedral with the ostentatiously named Melvin M. Swig Interfaith Memorial Labyrinth. Laid out in terrazzo in the meditation garden to the left of the cathedral entrance is a replica of the medieval 11-circuit labyrinth on the floor of Chartres Cathedral. A labyrinth is not a maze; there is but one path, and it leads to the center. Yet as with so many other things in life (childhood, religion, partying), the point is the journey. The walk through the labyrinth is surprisingly long and circuitous, one well suited to embodying your preferred metaphor. It’s difficult not to be contemplative as you slowly wend your way through the three stages of the labyrinth: purgation (the walk in), illumination (standing at the center), and finally, union (walking out). You may not have achieved perfect spiritual balance by the time you exit, but you can’t help feeling slightly more enlightened.

1100 California, SF. (415) 749-6300, www.gracecathedral.com

BEST MICROWAVE TOSS

Most people just throw their broken electronics in the trash. If your conscience won’t let you contribute to the 220 tons of e-waste dumped annually in the United States alone, consider hauling the dot matrix printer you’ve been guiltily hiding in the basement for the past 15 years to an electronics recycling service. Green Citizen boasts of its ability to recycle “anything with a plug.” CEO James Kao acknowledges that the actual output of reusable material is often small — consider alkaline batteries, which must be carefully broken down to get at a mere 3 mg of zinc. But the larger advantage is the safe disposal of the toxic substances within your cast-off gadgets, which can leach into the soil if left in landfills. Green Citizen even assigns a unique serial number to every item it recycles, so its various parts can be traced all the way to their final destinations. There’s a small fee for certain items, usually well under $10, but you’ll be a bit more free of guilt. Now about all that consumption …

591 Howard, SF. (415) 287-0000, www.greencitizen.com

BEST NO-NONSENSE KNOT REMOVAL

Forget the soothing new age music, bubbling indoor waterfalls, and arcane aromatherapy. Sometimes you’re broke, your back is full of knots, and all you want at the end of a rough week is a no-nonsense deep-tissue massage. At Jin Healing for Women a 60-minute full body will set you back $39 — or $30 if you buy a six-hour package. For that price, who cares if they don’t serve cucumber water or slather you in organic clay? The massage style falls somewhere between shiatsu and Swedish: the masseurs use oil, acupressure, and plenty of strength. The best part of the massage is arguably the hot towel treatment at the end. Some may complain that the place is too noisy — it’s not uncommon to hear the receptionist answering the phone or people talking outside — but it’s nothing that earplugs or an iPod can’t block out. While Jin Healing for Women is advertised as serving women only, some have found that men are not turned away if accompanied by a female friend or family member.

999 Powell, SF; 3557 Geary, SF. (415) 986-1111

BEST BUDGET SHRINKS

It’s not easy being blue — especially if you’re short on green and your health insurance doesn’t cover mental health services. Or if you don’t have health insurance at all. Luckily, the California Institute for Integral Studies offers “mind-body-spirit” counseling and psychotherapy on a sliding scale based on your income. The friendly CIIS therapists are graduate students and postgraduate interns working under the supervision of an instructor. With five counseling centers across the city, each with its own specialty, CIIS has expertise in a wide range of “therapeutic orientations,” including somatic, transpersonal, psychodynamic, and gestalt, as well as more conventional modes of psychotherapy. The holistic approach and alternative fee system make CIIS an ideal counseling center for a city like San Francisco.

www.ciis.edu/counseling

BEST BEATS KEEP BOPPIN’

North Beach has come a long way since the days when Lawrence Ferlinghetti et al. drank gallons of cheap red wine at Caffe Trieste. Though it’s now more frat boy than the best minds of a generation starving, hysterical, and naked, North Beach does sometimes remember its poetic beat heritage. For a weekend each May, Kerouac Alley — recently repaved with cobblestones and stone tablets engraved with quotes by Western and Chinese poets — is home to dozens of emerging and established artists showcasing their recent work in the open air for Art in the Alley. Live music, painting, poetry, and sculpture bring back the creative bohemian buzz that enveloped North Beach before the blonde beer haze did, and the art is always on display at fab sponsor Vesuvio bar for a couple of weeks before the festival. Perhaps best of all, at the end of the alley is surreal karaoke bar Bow Bow’s, where bartender Mama Candy serves a mean Tokyo Tea. After some heady art and a couple of those, you’ll be shouting lines from Howl yourself.

Kerouac Alley, between Columbus and Broadway, SF. www.vesuvio.com

BEST [EUPHEMISM] WAX

Women’s products and services are all about euphemism. Douche becomes a feminine cleansing product; a period becomes “celebrating one’s femininity.” And of course, the bikini wax, or Brazilian, is really a way to get hair off your cha-cha. Lonni of Lonni’s Punani dispenses with all niceties with the candid name of her Potrero Hill waxing service. Her motto? “Keeping San Francisco smooth one pussy at a time.” The name and motto may be blunt, even crass, but the end results will indeed leave a woman’s naughty bits smooth and ingrown-free. Lonni, a certified aesthetician and a pastry chef with a degree in sociology, forgoes mood lighting and new age music for bright environs, a rocking soundtrack, and fingers quick enough to make you forget she’s ripping hair off your most sensitive regions. (House calls are also offered.) And she doesn’t just stick to the punani: “manzilians” are happily performed as well.

1756 18th St., SF. (415) 215-7678, www.lonnispunani.com

BEST PUPIL PAINTER

Master artists don’t always work on canvas or paper. Steven R. Young, BCO, uses little plastic orbs as his canvases. And his work never appears in museums: you see it on people’s faces, and most of the time, he’s so good you never know it’s there. Young paints eyes — false eyes, replacements for people who have lost a real eye to accidents, disease, or surgery. The ocularist gets referrals from the top surgeons in the Bay Area, but his studio hardly looks like a doctor’s office: he has the TV blaring much of the time, and he jokes around with his customers, particularly kids. In the end, though, he’s all business as he replicates, by hand, with tiny, fine brushes, the exact look of a customer’s companion eye, restoring much comfort and confidence. His shop also handles the fabrication and custom fitting. The results can be uncanny — we’ve known people who went to Young for a prosthesis, and even from very close you couldn’t tell the fake eye from the real one.

411 30th St., Oakl. (520) 836-2123, www.stevenryoungocularist.com

BEST DRUG-FREE ALTERED STATE


Kelly Vogel at Float: Best Drug-Free Altered Stat
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

Sometimes other people are just too much to bear. And it’s always their fault, isn’t it? The guy at the liquor store forgets to stock your brand of cigarettes. Some yuppie in a fancy car nearly runs you off the road. Your manager fires you, your landlord evicts you, your friends diss you. Don’t you wish you could just make them all disappear for a while? Well, if you’ve ever seen the movie Altered States, you know all about sensory deprivation chambers, those weird water tanks psychology students use to study brain chemistry and sleep cycles. In a deprivation chamber you are utterly alone. Your body is suspended in warm water, your ears are submerged so you can’t hear a thing, and it’s totally dark, odorless, and soundproof. The entire world melts away, and you’re left with raw brain waves. Outside of a ketamine trip, it’s the most detached experience humanly possible. Lose yourself at Float, then, an art gallery with a room full of deprivation tanks.

1091 Calcot Place, Unit 116, Oakl. (510) 535-1702, www.thefloatcenter.com

BEST LOOK TIGHT, HAIR DID

Everybody’s meetin’ Down at Lulu’s — for new clothes and a new hairdo. Co-owners Seth Bogart (of raunchy electro-rap band Gravy Train!!!) and Tina Lucchesi set up shop two years ago and describe the Down at Lulu’s ambience as “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls takes a field trip to the candy factory.” Which is another way of saying that this is a place for hot-blooded people who aren’t afraid of color or taking a dare. They’ll cut you — and you’ll like it! They’ll bleach you and they’ll blow you — dry — and you’ll come back for more! If you’re a girl, you can find the purse you love while you’re waiting for your dye job to set. If you’re a pouty-lipped boy with shaggy hair, ask them to style you like Matt Dillon circa 1979 and you’ll be sure to send a rebel army of crushes over the edge. Down at Lulu’s, that’s where it’s at.

6603 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 601-0964, www.downatlulus.com

BEST REVOLUTION ON WHEELS


Clancy Fear of Pedal Revolution:
Best Revolution on Wheels
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

You know, the hippies weren’t just dirty, fatuous potheads with annoying slogans and bad taste in clothes. They were also big into causes. You say you want a revolution? Well, c’mon — we all wanna change the world. There’s got to be an easier way than adopting a baby from Mali, you know? I mean, you’re gonna have to feed and water that kid for, like, 18 years — without the benefit of Brangelina’s army of nannies. How about this for a solution? Not only is Pedal Revolution a full-service bike shop, with both new and used rides, but it’s also a nonprofit that helps at-risk youth gain valuable skills to keep them off the streets. It accepts tax-deductible donations of bicycles, and for $30 a year you can become a member and work on your bike at the Community Membership Workbench, which will give you some skills and save you a bundle on repair costs. Also, the shop’s got really cool logo T-shirts, which means you can show you care without, you know, growing dreadlocks and playing hacky sack in Golden Gate Park.

3085 21st St., SF. (415) 641-1264, www.pedalrevolution.org

BEST STROBOSCOPIC ZOETROPER

Burning Man has inspired and elevated some amazing Bay Area artists over the years, but Peter Hudson, a.k.a. Hudzo, has become a star both on and off the playa using a unique medium: stroboscopic zoetropes. Hudzo is a San Francisco carpenter and stagehand who has designed sets for the San Francisco Opera, Kink.com porn flicks, and the upcoming Milk movie. His first piece for Burning Man, Playa Swimmers, used strobe lights and precise molds of the human form to give the appearance of figures swimming in the desert sands. He’s returned every year with steadily more ambitious projects, which culminated last year in Homouroboros: a bicycle- and drum-powered carousel that conjured up the vision of a monkey swinging from limb to limb, then taking a bite from an apple delivered by a snake slithering down a vine. Installations in San Jose, Minneapolis, and other cities followed. Now Hudzo is busy putting together his next piece, Tantalus, working with a huge group of committed volunteers out of his SoMa home.

www.hudzo.com

BEST PURIFICATION SCRUB-DOWN


Imperial Spa: Best Purification Scrub-down
GUARDIAN PHOTO BY CHARLES RUSSO

Housed in a fortresslike former bank building with a forbiddingly windowless exterior, Imperial Spa is easy to mistake for a more, ahem, sensual retreat than it is. This traditional Korean spa, however, turns out to be a model citizen, complete with hot and cold pools; an array of sauna rooms, including an ultratoasty “yellow clay fomentation” space; and its own unforgettable twist: a “purification” body scrub that essentially takes off the top layer of epidermis. Women lie on plastic-lined tables with little to hide behind apart from a teensy towel draped over the booty, while industrious ladies in black bras and panties soak them down, then proceed to zealously scrub every single part of the body with what feels like a scouring pad. And that means every part — parts that you never imagined being attacked with such vigor. Don’t be afraid; don’t be very afraid — you’ll never feel silkier than when you emerge, after an application of milky essential oils, cleaner than you’ve ever felt. Men are also welcome, although their purification scrub is administered by a man, minus the bra and panties.

1875 Geary, SF. (415) 771-1114, www.imperialspa.biz

BEST TIBETAN FREEDOM FIGHTER

It’d be far too easy and predictable for the Guardian to give Chronicle columnist C.W. Nevius a sarcastic Best of the Bay award for spending the last year beating up the homeless and their advocates in a succession of articles. But Nevius reached a new level of hilarity April 10. When the controversial Olympic torch made its way to San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom was so worried pro-Tibetan demonstrators would clash with supporters of Beijing and the Olympic Games that he clandestinely diverted the torch’s route at the last minute. The result, according to Nevius, is that the swelling crowds of people who were defending China near the ballpark, where the torch was originally expected to pass, didn’t threaten the critics of China’s human rights record. In other words, Nevius seemed to imply that Newsom saved free speech. Uh, yeah. All the red flags in the world are no match for the colossal figures who appeared in San Francisco to support Tibet and condemn Beijing — including actor Richard Gere and motherfucking Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu, you might recall, sleeps with a Nobel Peace Prize around his neck. The pro-Tibet movement doesn’t need Gavin Newsom. Nice try, though, Nevius.

BEST MOVING ONWARD AND UPWARD

Ever-lurking danger in the streets means that many city kids barely leave their own block, let alone experience the pleasure of long bike rides. But thanks to Cycles of Change, East Bay youth are learning how to venture through the urban jungle and beyond safely on two wheels. The 10-year-old collective, headed by Maya Carson and Grey Goykolevzon, draws inspiration from the famed Bikes Not Bombs project and other like-minded organizations. Run in the basements of approximately 13 Alameda County schools, COC takes kids on training rides and shows them how to obey the rules of the road and navigate safe routes from home to school. Serious bike club members pedal up into the hills on longer rides and also learn marketable skills like bicycle repair and how to run their own after-school programs. The organization, soon to be a nonprofit, would love you to donate any unwanted nonrusty, functional bikes to its bike shop in Alameda.

(510) 595-4625, www.cyclesofchange.org

BEST GIRL-TO-GIRL SUPPORT

It takes a girl to understand the issues other girls face today regarding relationships, body image, pregnancy, and parents who don’t understand, or can’t help, or worse, abuse them. It also takes a girl who’s worn those shoes to know how to help another girl get where she wants to go. For the past 10 years, the young women who run GirlSource have been training local low-income teens for their future, by teaching them how to build a Web site, digitally edit photos, take leadership roles, and express themselves through writing. The results are impressive. After receiving SAT prep and counseling on all the teen issues that can thwart potential co-eds, most of the girls participating in the program go on to attend college, where GirlSource continues to support them. Some of them come back to offer peer counseling to new girls coming up, thus completing an important cycle in creating better community.

1550 Bryant, Ste. 675, SF. (415) 252-8880, www.girlsource.org

BEST BLING RECYCLING

Before you run down to Best Buy for a new laptop or television set, check out Midtown Loan, San Francisco’s most respected and experienced (50 years in the biz!) pawnshop and cash-advance boutique, for better deals. Conveniently located on beautiful Sixth Street, right where the Civic Center and Tenderloin neighborhoods join up with SoMa at Market Street, Midtown Loan stocks only the finest used jewelry, timepieces, diamonds, tools, and electronics. But that’s not all. Midtown Loan is a working person’s dream come true: a place where you can actually trade your unwanted luxury items for cold hard cash and even get a cash advance on your next paycheck while you’re at it. Got an extra MacBook Pro lying around? A Rolex you never wear? Throw the whole bundle into a dirty backpack and run down to Midtown Loan before your snooty neighbors catch on.

39 Sixth St., SF. (415) 362-5585, www.midtownloan.net

BEST TORCHBEARER FOR THE ’60S

The Unity Foundation, a lively nonprofit, was founded in 1976 to keep the flames of the l960s alive and “promote world peace, cooperation, and unity.” Its founder and president, Bill McCarthy, is a classic ’60s entrepreneur, renowned for producing the stunningly successful 20th- and 30th-anniversary Summer of Love celebrations in Golden Gate Park. Unity accomplishes its ambitious mission through cultural and educational events, media campaigns, and a monthly television program on SF Access, channel 29, called Positive Spin, which is produced by McCarthy himself. Unity hosts annual Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for children in the Mission District, organizes a weekly street-cleaning program, and has thrown three Unity Fairs in the Mission. The foundation also puts together special public service announcements for the United Nations and presents UN-specific segments on its TV program. McCarthy recently set up his own camera crew to get exclusive coverage of a speech by UN Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon at San Francisco’s World Affairs Council. The United Nations Association, a grassroots UN support group, has recognized Unity with its top national citizenship award.

744 Treat, SF. (415) 550-1092, www.unityfoundation.org

BEST WAY TO SUSTAIN YOURSELF

Isn’t it time you stopped just eating healthy and started eating with a conscience? Eat with the Seasons can help you do just that. The community-supported agriculture program, developed a few years ago by farm-family descendant Becky Herbert, delivers locally grown, sustainably produced, high quality organic foods to a drop-off point near you. In conjunction with farms located in San Benito and Santa Cruz counties, Eat with the Seasons assembles personalized produce boxes stamped and sealed with your name on them. Every week you choose what seasonal fresh produce you feel inclined to graze on, how many cage-free eggs you want to fry up, the amount of fair trade coffee you can slurp down, and how much grass-fed beef you fancy barbecuing. Then the Seasons folks collect it all, wrap it up, and deliver it to various drop-off locations in the Bay Area. That means next Sunday you can sleep in without worrying about being late to the farmers market snatch-and-grab.

(831) 245-8125, www.eatwiththeseasons.com

BEST KIDS IN THE ALLEY

Owing to an unfortunate blip in city zoning laws, alleyways less than 32 feet wide don’t count as — or get spruced up as — streets, and for years Chinatown’s alleys were dark, dirty, and dangerous. Enter Adopt-an-Alleyway, whose youthful volunteers, all from local high schools and colleges, beautify and monitor the neighborhood’s walkways, issuing regular “alleyway report cards” to the local press. AAA also runs the Chinatown Alleyway Walking Tour, which squires you along the back streets under the guidance of locals aged 16 through 23. You’ll get a dose of sightseeing and some interesting nuggets of history — such as the fact that Waverly Place was once known as Fifteen-Cent Lane because of its multiplicity of cheap, queue-braiding barbers, and that Spofford Alley was home to Sun Yat-sen’s secret revolutionary headquarters. You’ll also get honest opinions about an aging neighborhood from young people interested in civil rights and housing issues, and who provide an emotional connection and a real sense of place to tourists, of all people. You may, however, also get a good-natured lecture on litter (meddling kids).

(415) 984-1478, www.chinatownalleywaytours.org

BEST SERENITY FOR YOUR BUCK

When you walk into the lovely surroundings of the Mindful Body holistic health, fitness, and well-being studio in Pacific Heights, the first thing you notice is the silence. The receptionists speak like calm kindergarten teachers, and you find yourself moving more carefully and opening doors as if they might break. The place oozes relaxation — even the bathrooms, equipped with shower stalls and clean robes, smell ultra-aromatherapeutic. “Through a consistent practice of ‘mindful’ or focused activities, we learn how to tap into our inner intelligence and make choices leading to a life of integrity, fulfillment, peace and harmony,” says founder Roy Bergmann. OK, then! As long as it comes with a back rub. Yoga classes for $15 (with price breaks for memberships and packages) and $70-per-hour massages are definitely a draw here, and the services offered, including the not-as-scary-as-it-sounds Chinese organ massage, or chi nei tsang, are top-notch and myriad. But it’s the highly qualified and serenity-minded staff that really make the Mindful Body a bargain. The friendly teachers, facilitators, and masseurs are worth their weight in Zen.

2876 California, SF. (415) 931-2639, www.themindfulbody.com

BEST SYMPHONY OF INSTRUCTION

In an ideal world, every public school in America would have a music program, complete with appreciation classes, live performances, instruction in playing instruments, and a full curriculum of classical, contemporary, and multicultural styles. Until this utopian vision is realized, though, at least we have Adventures in Music, the San Francisco Symphony’s fantastic community education program. Operating in partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District, the program has been working with students in first-through-fifth grades for five years, training teachers to integrate music into their classrooms, providing kids with instruments and educational supplies, presenting participatory in-school performances four times a year, and bringing classes on a field trip to Davies Symphony Hall for a special concert. AIM encourages students to learn musical concepts and terminology, to become familiar with the sight and sound of different musical instruments, and to understand critical listening as well as music as a medium of artistic expression. And yes, AIM’s education bridges musical genres, ranging from Western classical to traditional Chinese.

(415) 552-8000, www.sfsymphony.org

BEST QI TO HIGHER LEARNING

Western medicine is great for acute problems — like, say, restarting your ticker after a heart attack. But for chronic, systemic, or difficult-to-diagnose ailments, the Eastern approach still seems to have the market cornered on treatments that actually work. (This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.) Acupuncture, acupressure, herbal remedies, medical qigong, and a variety of movement and body work techniques ease the pain of sleep disorders, headaches, chronic fatigue, and joint injuries for many. Which is why we love Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine College, a Berkeley institution that not only trains future practitioners but also provides consistent, affordable clinic services to the community. Student workers are skilled and well supervised — but if you’re still not comfortable with them, you can work with a pro for a slightly higher price. The relief you may find from your migraines or your tennis elbow, though, will be priceless.

2250 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 666-8234, www.aimc.edu

BEST DIY DEMYSTIFICATION

They say that once you learn how to ride a bike, you’re pretty much set for life — until the tire pops, your bar tape frays, and the shifting gets a little funky. A bicycle repair class can be a daunting thing, but Dan Thomases’s Bike Maintenance in Three Parts,” offered every three months or so, clears an essential path toward demystifying your rock hopper or 10-speed. The three-part series is run out of Box Dog Bikes, a Mission shop co-owned by Thomases, and takes you from repairing flats to replacing cables and trueing wheels. The Sunday-evening classes are cheap, and more important, small — making for lots of individualized instruction and talk therapy between you, Thomases, and your bike. Thomases says he was inspired by his dentist dad, who schools his patients on preventative maintenance. “I’m hoping the classes will give people an idea of what it takes to be responsible for your bike.”

494 14th St., SF. (415) 431-9627, www.boxdogbikes.com

Kink launches slave society website

2

Text and photos by Steven T. Jones
peteracworth.jpg
Kink.com founder and CEO Peter Acworth

BDSM porn powerhouse Kink.com today launched a new website, TheUpperFloor.com, in which the top floor of its iconic Armory Building headquarters is transformed into a hierarchical community of masters, mistresses, and slaves and all levels in between, with Kink founder Peter Acworth at the top of the pecking order. And the Guardian was there to toast to and take in the debaucherous live-streaming debut.

While the domination-submission theme runs throughout Kink’s many websites, this one is especially intriguing for its intention to develop into a 24/7 community, with participants playing essentially permanent roles and the whole thing going out live to viewers, as today’s three-hour debut did to about 1,000 subscribers (initially, TheUpperFloor will be taped broadcasts and live events available to subscribers).
lillia.jpg
Lilla Katt was bound with rope and bamboo poles by Lochai

Acworth told us the concept realizes his original conception of what the Armory could become, turning BDSM fantasies into something like real life. “From the first time I saw the Armory was for sale, I couldn’t help but think of the Story of O and other stories,” he said, citing stories of women trained as sex slaves in dungeons and other BDSM fantasies. “So this sort of realizes that dream.”

Ecosexual: F*cking Machine seeks deflowerment

0

Juliette Tang continues her indepth look at local ecosexuals

Martin Cooper, an overachieving SFSU graduate with a background in art and engineering, created a provocative device earlier this year for his senior art project called “The Mean Green Fucking Machine”. He received an A in the class.

A fucking machine in the tradition of those at Kink.com, the Mean Green Fucking Machine is over 9-feet in height and is powered by a water wheel. An interesting aspect of this machine that cannot be ignored is the water requirement, but while this might be perceived as a limitation, Cooper (as well as I) believe this specificity might attract a while new clientele: the kind of person who is drawn to the aquatic element and its relation to the pleasures of torture. Underwater sex has its fans, and some might find use for this machine as a way to fulfill latent waterboarding fantasies. Just a thought.

Cooper is careful to admit that the machine isn’t wholly green — it wastes the water it’s powered by — but he states that improvements will be made on subsequent creations. According to his artist statement, “…sporting an 8 inch realistic dildo, and spraying water eight feet in every direction, it is a spectacle that cannot be ignored. It cannot help but spark the imagination of its viewer, confronting them with their own views on sexuality, whether they are titillated or repulsed by what they see.” Having seen this behemoth in person, I attest that these photos do the machine no justice. Cooper’s machine conjures images of medieval dungeons, kitschy steampunk gizmos, and the handiwork of my favorite Marvel Comics’ character, the Tinkerer. It’s looms but, perhaps because it’s rendered from bicycle parts, it isn’t intimidating. To me, this is a good thing; if any fucking machine could be cute, this would be it.

Sadly, Cooper’s toy is a virgin at present, but its creator is receptive to the idea of deflowerment. Are there any takers out there? Will someone, anyone, please sxually compromise this toy?

Check out a video of the Green Machine in action here.

Kink glitches the matrix

0

By D. Scot Miller

kink1109.jpg
Kink.com’s Van Darkholme, Peter Acworth, and Princess Donna in the Armory boiler room, photographed by Pat Mazzera for our 2008 “Kink Dreams” cover story.

I’ve always been fascinated with the Kink.com building on 14th and Mission.

A former armory, and reproduction of a Moorish castle, it looks like a parochial school for wayward souls. Often I’ve wondered what goes on in this monolithic old-world structure, seeming more suitable for doling out justice than ecstasy. I checked out a few of Kink’s family of Web sites and recommend all you surfers out there do the same. There’s an aura around the building, the history, and what it now houses that epitomizes what San Francisco was, is, and can be that I’m behind with everything I’ve got.

Of course, there’s BDSM with Hogtied.com, MenInPain.com, and TheTrainingofO.com. Woe unto the cynic within me who has become jaded by BDSM. Though the people are enjoying themselves and others, maybe too many trips to the old Power Exchange (and sub-station) and Folsom Street Fair in my youth have taken their toll.

The ones I find fascinating are WiredPussy.com, TSSeduction.com, FuckingMachines.com, and UltimateSurrender.com.

Of human bondage

0

culture@sfbg.com

529-madison.jpg
Swingin’ with a star: Madison Young, photographed by Pat Mazzera

San Francisco is America’s capital of kink. Consider Sunday’s Folsom Street Fair (www.folomstreetfair.org) as a flagship holiday and the Armory, occupied by Kink.com, as a kind of sexual City Hall, and there’s little dispute.

But it may seem peculiar for a city so committed to gender and sexual equality to be the patron city of BDSM: a complicated acronym that stands for bondage and discipline (BD), domination and submission (D/s), sadism and masochism (SM). In crude terms, BDSM relationships are marked by deliberate and sometimes extreme inequality, where a submissive party voluntarily forfeits partial or complete physical, psychological, and emotional control to a dominant one. Although "switching" does occur, D/s — the Dominant (capital D) and submissive power dichotomy — may seem to be everything our traditional concept of liberal empowerment and classical feminism rail against.

But while it might be difficult for some to grasp, BDSM — which includes a broad spectrum of sexual acts including (but not limited to) bondage, corporal punishment, electrostimulation, piercing, branding, suspension, golden showers, and asphyxiation, as well as general play relationships like age play, pet play, medical play, and cross-dressing — is controlled by a strict code of behavior referred to as "SSC," or "safe, sane, and consensual." San Francisco even has its own BDSM nonprofit, the Society of Janus, which was founded in 1974 to promote safe adult power exchange.

529-fivestar.jpg
Ropes aficionado Fivestar, photographed by Pat Mazzera

And unlike that other U.S. capital, Washington, D.C., where women are systemically outnumbered in the decision-making process, in San Francisco’s kinky community, strong and sexually empowered women are well represented — if not always well understood.

Women in BDSM, unfair as it seems, often receive some of the harshest criticism from a varied opposition. D/s women frequently find their lifestyles attacked by religious groups, academics, psychologists, and sexual conservatives, as well as much of the midsection of the United States. Whether stigmatized as self-loathing antifeminists or insatiable man-eating jezebels — or dismissed as insane — much misinformation has been spread about women (gendered, self-identified) who operate within the community.

However, the strong, independent-minded D/s women of San Francisco will have the vanilla (their term for those who do not engage in BDSM activities) know that BDSM is not what you think. Indeed, BDSM: It’s Not What You Think! premiered last year at the Frameline Film Festival. Frameline, the longest-running film festival dedicated to LGBT programming, featured a cast of prominent figures in the San Francisco leather community, many of them women.

For the women of bondage in our city, many of whom maintain 24/7 D/s relationships, BDSM is considered a liberating force. The following profiles are shout-outs to just some of these women, each representing a different facet within the BDSM spectrum. Most have participated in the community for more than a decade — and all really, really love what they do.

In San Francisco, the old Rousseauian adage "Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains," could easily be rephrased as: "Woman is born free, and everywhere she uses chains to get off".

529-madison2.jpg
Madison Young, photographed by Pat Mazzera

MADISON YOUNG, THE INGÉNUE

Madison Young refers to herself as the "kinky girl next door." With blue eyes, strawberry blonde hair, and a translucent, Kidmanesque complexion, Young is one of the most recognizable performers in the adult entertainment industry, though perhaps more recognizable to those who enjoy inflicting pain on women tied with rope.

"I found a Kink.com posting on Craigslist," Young says. "I had been involved in kinky sex before then, and was really into things like fisting and golden showers and light bondage. But I had never really done flogging or anything around rope bondage. Peter [Ackworth] was the first person who ever tied me up, and I fell in love with it instantly." Since then, she’s become famous, adored by fans for her raw, honest performances and for her incredible toughness.

And Young is really, really tough. Run a simple Google Image search and you’ll find photos of her subjected to things that would make a Navy Seal weep — like being suspended from one elbow by a single rope strung from the ceiling, with her legs pulled apart as far as legs can go. Young is one of the few working models who can withstand what is known as a "category five suspension," bondage positions so grueling they can only be endured for mere seconds. "I have a really high pain tolerance," she says. On a scale of 1 to 10? "Out of the models that exist, I’m a 10."

A self-identified masochist, Young’s interest in bondage is uniquely centered around rope. "I’m not really into metal restraints, scarves, zip ties, or anything like that. It has to be rope."

Young is also among a small but growing number of women who are writing, directing, and producing porn, and runs her own production house called Madison Young Productions. She also finds time to run Femina Potens, a female-focused art gallery located in the Castro.

www.madisonbound.com; www.feminapotens.org

529-Midori.jpg
Midori, photographed by Constance Smith

MIDORI, THE SENSEI

Midori, the artist formerly known as Fetish Diva Midori, is adamantly opposed to being portrayed exclusively within the confines of BDSM. "A lot of people, sure, see my bondage stuff. But that’s just one of many, many things that I do."

That may be so, but all the same, you can’t talk about San Francisco’s women of bondage without including a legend like Midori. While she might claim "I don’t distinguish S-M, because it’s just all sexuality," she is a huge personality, respected sex-educator, and popular author in the realm of BDSM. Her sought-after bondage workshops include weekend-long intensives on "rope bondage dojo," a type of bondage she developed and trademarked.

For Midori, growing up in Japan has had an enormous impact on her work, and her heritage manifests itself not only her rope bondage specialty in but also in her academic interests. She published a collection of S-M stories titled Master Han’s Daughter based in a Tokyo of the future and developed a course on contemporary sex culture in Japan. She also has written instructional books like The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage and Wild Side: The Book of Kink and taught sex education courses all over the world.

Although stunning, this one-time fetish model and former professional dominatrix is wary of her status as a sex symbol. "If people appreciate my writing and enjoy my classes and get something out of it, and dig my work because of my art and my activism and stuff that I do, hey, that’s great. I think I’m, like, way past the age of being the pretty something, because after all I’m well in my 40s. There are certain people in my private life, well, I hope they think I’m sexy. But beyond that, I hope people appreciate my work because of its content."

www.planetmidori.com; www.ropedojo.com

529-Simone.jpg
Simone Kross, photographed by Constance Smith

SIMONE KROSS, THE ROLLING STONE

The perceived life of a traveling dominatrix is alluring: exotic getaways, extravagant dinners, five-star hotels transformed into makeshift dungeons. But the reality is not easy.

Says Simone Kross, a traveling pro-domme: "The perception is maybe that I am wealthy and I have clients flying me around and it’s really exotic and glamorous. It’s really not. It’s hard work, and I pay my own way. The clients and sessions help me fund getting from one place to the next, but it’s not as glamorous as it may seem. At least not for me."

Kross has no illusions about her frequently grueling work. While working out of hotels, she runs her advertising on Eros Guide, a large online erotic service listing. "I can get busy to the point where I might not see the outside of a hotel room for three or four days. After I finish my sessions I can be pretty tired, order room service, and go to bed. I could be doing sessions from one in the afternoon until 10 at night."

An added stress is traveling with heavy gear. "The biggest problem is weight requirements, because you have to keep it under 50 pounds," she says. What could be so heavy? "You’d be surprised," she says. "Leather and metal, D-rings, rope, whips. I don’t even use half the gear I pack, but you never know what someone requires for a scene. The shoes also tend to weigh quite a bit."

Explaining a suitcase full of floggers, rope, gags, whips, and harnesses to airport security might seem awkward, but Simone says "they have checked my bags because they are a little heavier, but no one has given me any problems."

You can see Kross, a gorgeous brunette with cheekbones that appear perfectly convex from every angle, in action on Men in Pain, a chapter of Kink.com.

www.simonekross.com

529-Natasha.jpg
Natasha Strange, photographed by Constance Smith

NATASHA STRANGE, THE PRINCESSA

Now that the age of feudalism has passed, not many women can admit to having a coterie of ladies-in-waiting, so Natasha Strange’s "pink posse" — cross-dressing clients who have offered their services to her — is quite the blast from the past. And their title is not in name only: these ladies (or "sissy boys") actually do wait on Natasha.

For instance, Sissie Sandra’s responsibilities include walking Strange’s dog and running errands, duties that Sandra faithfully blogs about on a site called "Sandra in Waiting." Who knew moving someone’s car to avoid a street- cleaning ticket could be so erotic?

To her ladies-in-waiting, Strange is "the Princessa": a draconian ruler (they wouldn’t have it any other way) whose Marie Antoinette-esque whims become the word of law. With her wide blue eyes and long wavy hair, she resembles a cupcake Glinda the Good Witch, and it’s not hard to see why her pink-clad sissies have grown attached over the years.

Strange lives a charmed life. Her career began at Fantasy Makers, a fetish house in Oakland, when she was 25. Through her relationships with dedicated clients, her talents as a mistress, and sheer luck, she has fallen into a life many young dominatrices can only dream of.

She doesn’t take that luck for granted. "I have been really, really lucky to establish myself with a clientele that is really devoted to me," she says. "I don’t have to go out and hustle nearly as much as I did when I started out, even in this economy."

While she isn’t taking new clients, Strange hasn’t retired as a dominatrix just yet.

"I don’t think good dommes really retire. They sort of fade away. They take their favorite clients and they go. That’s probably what I’m starting to do. I haven’t advertised anywhere in two years. I’ve taken 90 percent of my website down. But I still have my tight-knit little group of subbies and sissies."

www.kittenwithawhip.com; sandrainwaiting.blogspot.com

529-Val.jpg
Val Langmuir, photographed by Constance Smith

VAL LANGMUIR, THE ACTIVIST

If you’re not living a BDSM lifestyle, it’s unlikely that you’ve heard of the Exiles and the sizable contribution they have made to the San Francisco BDSM scene.

This group, an educational organization (for women) that teaches safe BDSM (between women), had several lives before becoming the organization it is today. Says Val Langmuir, co-coordinator, "The Outcasts was the name of the former group. It originated in 1984 and ceased to exist in 1997. The Exiles was founded in 1997 by former Outcasts and immediately held its first program: Guns, Knives, and Choking, Oh My."

While it appears as if these women enjoy flirting with death, hardcore BDSM is the reason the Exiles exist in the first place: they want to make sure women know how to engage in it and survive. Their classes have included controversial topics like "Brutal Affection: Punching, Kicking, Slapping, and Sex," "The Art of Hazardous Age Play," and a program educating attendees on breath play, or what Langmuir describes as "how not to kill yourself when engaging in erotic asphyxiation." Langmuir moved to San Francisco 12 years ago from London, where she protested the horrifying Spanner Operation in 1990 that saw 16 Manchester gay men arrested and thrown in jail for participating in BDSM. Since then, Langmuir has been dedicated to advocating the right to participate in BDSM.

She has been involved with the Exiles since its inception. "We have meetings in the Women’s Building the third Friday of every month. Usually at each meeting, I’ll see at least one new face."

www.theexiles.org

529-Selina.jpg
Selina Raven, photographed by Constance Smith

SELINA RAVEN, THE MRS. ROBINSON

A former Catholic schoolgirl who attributes her sadistic tendencies to "all of those Sunday mornings spent contemputf8g the bloody figure of Christ," Raven began her pro-domme career in a structured, hierarchical way: she apprenticed. "There aren’t a lot of other women who are practicing BDSM as professionals who went through the process of apprenticing themselves to an older mistress. There’s only one other woman in SF right now, Eve Minax, who has actually done things in a more traditional manner."

Now Raven is not only one of the most established mistresses in San Francisco (and a 2007 Guardian Best of the Bay winner), but something of a mentor to up-and-coming dommes. Perhaps it’s because Raven benefited personally from the tutelage of an older mistress, Sybil Holiday, that she "always resolved to be a friendly face in the community, in being that person who I wish was around when I was 18: a little wicked but armed with good information and good experiences. That’s why I see myself as Mrs. Robinson."

A popular guest lecturer at UC Berkeley and sex educator at the Academy of SM Arts, an organization based in Menlo Park with workshops around the Bay Area, Raven is a happily-settled Oaklander with a supportive leather family. "I have my slave, and I have my former apprentice. And her boy lives with us too. I do not lack for love and companionship, but it’s not in the traditional hetero-normative form."

www.selinaraven.com

529-Eve.jpg

EVE MINAX, THE TRANSFERRED QUEEN

"I love diapering," says Eve Minax. "Age-play is a huge force in my life."

AB/DL, which stands for adult baby/diaper-lover, is a paraphilia most people tend to find either comical or disturbing. Minax disagrees. "Diapering in and of itself isn’t about age play as much as it is about getting somebody into a primal state — that baby state, that place before you’re actually living, thinking, feeling, in civilization."

In terms of maternal figures, Minax — who is six feet tall in heels, with short spikes of orangey-red hair and a fluty, theatrical voice — looks more Auntie Mame than Mommy Dearest. That is, if Auntie Mame looked like she could flog you into an intensive care unit. (In fact, the first time I met Minax in person, her right wrist was in a cast. She sprained it while flogging a client too enthusiastically.)

And speaking of intensive care, Minax is known as much for her medical play as she is for age play — in case you’re on the market for a rectal exam.

After eight years of working in San Francisco and living in Chicago, Minax finally made the decision to make SF her home base last year, much to her own delight. "I come from Chicago. I’ve lived in Paris. I’ve lived in Melbourne. But San Francisco is the mecca for alternative sexuality. All everyone ever talked about was San Francisco! It was almost like having a religious experience. I wanted to wait until I was about to retire, but then finally I was like: fuck it, I’ll just move here."

Minax’s current projects writing a cookbook of "food and BDSM pairings", such as "pork ribs with a side of rubber gimp".

www.mistressminax.com

Editor’s note: This list is by no means exhaustive. There are an impressive number of women making an impact on San Francisco’s BDSM scene. In particular, we’d also like to give a nod to Cleo Dubois, Sybil Holiday, Madame Butterfly, Luncida Archer, Mistress Morgana, Fivestar, Maitres Madeline, Janet Hardy, Hollie Stevens, and Princess Donna.

Book sluts unite: The Rumpus’s sex-music-comedy night

0

By Juliette Tang

stephene0609.jpg
Local author Stephen Elliott modeling purple fishnet stockings, from Alison Tyler’s blog

Stephen Elliott is not one to hide his overtly sexual side. Nor, for that matter, are any of the writers and performers lined up at the “Sex, Music, Comedy Night with Jill Sobule” to be held next Tuesday, July 7, at the Make-Out Room (3225 22nd St). The event is co-sponsored by Kink.com and The Center for Sex and Culture, and proceeds will support The Rumpus, an online magazine about culture – predominantly indie and alternative in nature – spearheaded by Elliott himself.

The event is solidly sex-themed and will feature readings by former sex workers turned authors Zak Smith, Michelle Tea, Kirk Read, and Madison Young, who will be reading selections from her upcoming bondage memoir. A comedy performance by Kyle Kinane, a film from Wholphin, burlesque by Mariel a la Mode, music by Sig Hafstrom, and special guest musician Jill Sobule round out the night.

Stephen Elliott, the night’s host, promises lots of sexiness for your money’s worth. “Jill Sobule is sexy. Everyone participating in the event is sexy. Doing an event with Kink.com is sexy, and introducing people to Zak Smith is really, really sexy, because he’s an incredible artist who chose to make porn. This is the first time we are having an event with a real sex theme so all the authors are or were sex workers. And I was a sex worker as well, so you even get a sex worker host.”

Kinda Kink.com

0

johnny@sfbg.com

It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood — won’t you be my neighbor? That classic American question is all trussed up and ready to go thanks to "Safe Word," a new exhibition at Chris Perez’s gallery Ratio 3 that peeks inside a nearby Mission District space: San Francisco’s lively new gargantuan factory of BDSM imagery, Kink.com.

An all-too-rare site-specific appraisal of urban landscape and activity is intrinsic to this show. Even before Kink.com took over the 200,000-square-foot San Francisco Armory, the landmark’s fortress-like appearance and mammoth scale cried out for this kind of creative response. Back in 2003, reviewing a show of mixed media cubic works by Will Yackulic at the now-defunct gallery Pond, I used the block formations in Yackulic’s art and Pond’s across-the-street proximity to the Armory as an opportunity to take stock of the structure formerly known as San Francisco National Guard Armory and Arsenal, a neo-medieval brick goliath that was fully erected in 1914 and registered as a historical landmark in 1978.

At that time, the Armory was long dormant, but three years later, Kink.com purchased the site to use it as a production studio. While Kink.com’s location and activities have, unsurprisingly, generated a vast variety of local reportage, the five contributors to "Safe Word" don’t attack or celebrate the company — and its curious macrocosmic 21st-century update of old Hollywood’s studio system — so much as use its complex notions and representations of literal site and virtual space as trampolines for their own artistic imaginations.

In comparison to the clutter and overload characteristic of many group shows, "Safe Word" spreads nine works by a handful of artists across Ratio 3’s roomy confines in a manner that prevents any one piece from going neglected. To some degree, the standout works are those one first encounters upon entering the gallery. On the immediate right are four oil-on-panel paintings by Danny Keith that depict screen captures of grappling men from NakedKombat.com and UltimateSurrender.com. In Keith’s paintings, two torsos become one — not through the penetration shots one associates with hardcore porn, but through beast-with-two-backs-and-one-head physical images that momentarily occur during wrestling bouts. The compelling puzzle of these human pretzels is that Keith’s carefully selected and at times broodingly emotive visions bypass or subvert or transform the power games present in the titles of the source material. (In contrast, an orange-hued painting by Francine Spiegel remains elliptical as a visual response to Kink.com.)

Amanda Kirkhuff’s two graphite drawings (one on a large sheet of paper, another on a wall) are confrontational. On the far side of the room from Ratio 3’s front door, they greet viewers with (in one case) human-scale and (in another) larger-than-life full-frontal female nudity. Kirkhuff’s The Oldest Profession is like a 21st-century female answer to de Kooning. Thanks to a tit mountain and triangular patch of pubic forest, the piece’s faceless female torso flirts without sentiment with monumental abstraction — less obviously, and more wittily, Kirkhuff uses the magnified pixel or fractal block patterns of video in a manner that evokes Kink.com’s brick façade. Kirkhuff’s The Burden is the closest thing to a self-portrait in the show. Its subject meets the viewer’s gaze with a casual strength and defiance. Viewed within the context of Kirkhuff’s past hilarious renderings of pop culture icons and monsters such as Monique and Dr. Laura, these works prove she’ll likely excel in a solo show context.

Two pieces within "Safe Word" reconfigure material from Kink.com. Takeshi Murakata’s installation Because I Know How to Relax, I Can Work and Play Better matches woman-on-woman BDSM video with new age relaxation audio. There’s a comic frisson between the imagery and the verbal instructions: when the voice-over asks one to imagine a hand reaching inside one’s body, a semi-literal corollary takes place on screen. And connections between BDSM and meditative practice becomes quite clear. The idea is a bit glib and easy, though. More evocative is Anthony Viti’s looping five-minute video Mission & 14th, a card-shuffle barrage of fast-forward on-the-set screen captures of men and women at work and at play before and around the camera. At the same time that Viti’s piece demystifies or ignores the rigid barricades that characterize Kink.com activity, it also — like Keith’s paintings — defies the rules and perhaps rigidity associated with BDSM. Here, desire isn’t bound or laying down the law. Instead, it manifests as a polymorphously perverse blur.

SAFE WORD

Wed–Sat, 11 a.m.–6 p.m.; through Aug. 8

Ratio 3

1447 Stevenson, SF

(415) 821-3771

www.ratio3.org

SF Weekly keeps getting spanked

2

43009spank.jpg

By Tim Redmond

And the poor boring people there don’t even enjoy it.

Violet Blue weighs in today with some harsh commentary:

It’s just sad when “alternative” papers can’t be more trustworthy or accurate as the New York Times when it comes to the one thing they’re supposed to excel at: accurately representing local culture. And having a clue about San Francisco values.

And now local artist Matthew Williams has come up with an anti-SF Weekly shirt (unfortunately, some people might think NSFW is cool).

It’s been hard to find any substantive response from Matt Smith to all of this; he just complains about “anti-free-speech pornographers (as if protesting a news media column is an attack on free speech).

But in some ways, the thing I find most offensive is his suggestion that it’s appropriate for a newspaper reporter and columnist, who takes shots every week at other people, to duck calls from the press. I make it a policy to call people before I write anything critical about them (Smith apparently didn’t talk to any Kink.com models before saying that they were, in effect, degrading themselves for money out of economic desperation.) Smith says he deleted my phone message without even listening to it.

That’s just really, really lame. You work for anewspaper and you talk shit about other people, you should be willing to defend yourself, in public. When the Weekly calls me — even if I know it’s a hit piece — I always, always talk to them. That’s what you do in this business.

Unless, like Matt Smith, you just want to hit and run and hide.

Hot sex events this week: April 29-May 5

0

Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

sexevents_0429.png

————-

>> Latex Fashion School
Polly Pandemonium of the Moral Minority hosts this class in Latex clothing construction, which includes not only learning to sew with the fabulous fabric but how to spot a well-made garment. The course might seem pricey, but you’ll leave with materials and instructions to make your wardrobe even steamier.

Thurs/30, 7-10pm. $200.
Mission Control
2519 Mission, SF
kinkysalon.com

————-

>> A Touch of Pleasure
Sex educator and porn star Madison Young hosts this event featuring art and installations like steam-punk vibrators, Kink.com fucking machines, and a display of antique sex toys, all in honor of National Masturbation Month.

Sat/2, 7-10pm. Free.
(Show runs Thurs-Sun, 12-6pm, through May 31)
Femina Potens Art Gallery
2199 Market, SF
www.feminapotens.org

———-

>> IXFF: The Second Coming Tour at the Masturbate-a-thon
Oh lordy, it’s voyeur heaven. The Indie Erotic Film Festival kicks off its national tour of last year’s best shorts with a stop at the Center for Sex and Culture Masturbate-a-thon: as though watching featured masturbators compete to get themselves off wasn’t titillating enough. All proceeds benefit the Center. (If you want to compete in this year’s film festival, visit www.gv-ixff.org.

Sat/2, 11am-close. $15-25.
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF
www.maturbate-a-thon.com

SF Weekly’s anti-porn prude

22

By Tim Redmond

422kink.jpg

The New York Post — whoops, it was actually the SF Weekly — was shocked and horrified by the concept that a state-funded training program might help video tech folks who work at kink.com. Here’s the lead:

California taxpayers have paid $46,791 so that employees of the San Francisco pornographer Kink.com might produce more perfect web-based depictions of motorized dildo impalements …

I don’t need to go on.

The thing here is, so what? Kink.com is a legitimate, legal San Francisco business that employs 100 people, treats them and pays them well, has transformed a wasteland of an empty building into a going concern … and I think it’s great that the people who work there (who also happen to be part of the film and media industry in San Francisco) got to use a state job-training program.

This is good for the local economy. “We are training San Francisco’s workforce for the film and televison industry,” said Kink’s Ilana Rothman. “People who have worked for us are winning awards at film festivals.”

The story is remarkable in its prudishness, and it takes the insulting tack of implying that the models who work at Kink are somehow forced into their jobs. “We couldn’t be more explicit about how safe and consensual our work is,” Rothman told me. And every indication I’ve gotten from every Guardian staffer who’s visited Kink and talked to the workers agrees.

The real scandal here is that Matt Smith personally busted Kink and cost a good employer its training money.

Ask a Porn Star: Sex with Stephen Boyer

6

In Which Super Sexy Porn People Answer Questions — each week — From Bay Area Locals
Mediated by Justin Juul

stephen0312a.jpg

Fielding your questions this month is local writer/porn star, Stephen Boyer. Check out some of his movies/pics here and an excerpt from his upcoming novel here. Read our 2008 interview with Boyer here, and the last installment of Ask a Porn Star here.

James N: Do you enjoy the sex you have on camera or do you just sort of block it out and then count the money?

Boyer: I enjoy it for the most part. I got into the industry to pay rent. Then I started branching out more with my sexuality. Then I found Kink.com and a world full of toys I could explore and that is when sex got really fun and interesting. The great thing about porn, for me, was that it allowed me to try sexual positions and feel sensations that required toys that I couldn’t afford because I was poor. Doing it on video both paid my rent and gave me the opportunity to have sexual experiences with attractive contemporaries.

Elan F: What is the one thing you hate the most about sex?

Economy kills porn’s hard-on

0

528-cover.web.jpg
Kink.com owner Peter Acworth

By Steven T. Jones

The San Francisco Chronicle today reports (way back on its Business page) on how the recession/depression and free Internet porn sites (which often steal content from paid sites) are hurting the porn industry, which will in turn hurt San Francisco’s economy.

Among the revelations is that homegrown success story Kink.com last month laid off 13 employees and scuttled plans for some new sites after a major expansion at its San Francisco Armory headquarters just last year.

Just like the newspaper and music businesses, the porn industry will need to find ways to continue to monetize its content. Maybe the bankers aren’t the only industry that could use a government fluffer these days.

Hot sex events this week: 2/11-2/18

0

Compiled by Breena Kerr — with a little romance, for the occasion

tatiana0209a.jpg
Mistress Tatiana talks bondage on Mon/16

>> Romance For the Rest of Us with Marcia Baczynski
Ever wondered what to do when your partner asked you to “be more romantic?” According to relationship coach Marcia Baczynski, real romance is not what you think. For anyone who wants to plan an original Valentines day or put more V-day in their day today.
Thu/12, 7pm-8:30pm, $20 sliding scale
The Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF.
415-255-1155
www.centerforsexandculture.com

————

>> My Sucky Valentine!
Thomas Roche invites other San Francisco’s funniest underground writers to share their Valentines holiday horror stories of February 14th foibles and love gone awry. Don’t just sit at home and be jaded- go to this event and turn your V-day disgust into laughter and passion for the spoken word.
Fri/13, 7pm-10pm, $10-$20 sliding scale at door (no one turned away)
The Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF.
415-255-1155
www.centerforsexandculture.com

————

>> Bound Gods Video Party Plus- Male Dungeon Party
Van DarkHolme, producer/director of Kink.com hosts a screening, signing, reception and part-ay that includes BD/SM porn viewing upstairs and “fully equipped” (ie also with lots of willing volunteers) dungeon downstairs. A few volunteer spots are still available — to inquire, email brochlex@comcast.net.
Fri/13, 8pm-1am, $10 for membership, Partners get in free
1277 Mission St, San Francisco
415-626-1746
www.sfcitadelmen.org.

Kink dreams

0

› molly@sfbg.com

When it comes to BDSM porn peddlers Kink.com, apparently size does matter. At least, that’s how it seems now that the steamy studio has purchased the 200,000-square-foot San Francisco Armory. Suddenly, everyone wants to know: What’s the carnal concern going to do with all that space?

The answers are more diverse and ambitious than one might expect — ranging from creating a racy reality show to starting a perfectly PG-13 public community center. And thanks to the lascivious and lucrative imagination of Kink.com founder Peter Acworth, it might all be possible.

CONCEPTION AND CONTROVERSY


Though Kink.com has been producing independent niche fetish sites like Hogtied.com, WiredPussy.com, and FuckingMachines.com for the Folsom Street Fair crowd for more than 10 years — first from Acworth’s rented Marina District apartment and then from the Porn Palace on Fifth and Mission streets — it wasn’t until Acworth purchased the historical landmark in the Mission District, and was met with opposition, that the provocative porn empire really made it onto the public’s radar screen.

The armory, which was a training ground for the National Guard prior to its decommissioning 30 years ago, has been the center of controversy before. But that was mostly in-fighting between potential developers. Stringent zoning requirements and necessary but cost-prohibitive renovations discouraged buyers, leaving the Moorish behemoth on 14th and Mission streets vacant and outside public scrutiny.

But everything changed when Acworth got involved. His intended commercial use, for shooting scenes for all of Kink’s Web sites, complied with planning codes. And he didn’t need to do expensive renovations before he could start using, and profiting from, the building: what could be more perfect for bondage shoots or movies about women fucking machines than dungeons in disrepair? The only thing more ideal than the structure itself, according to Acworth, was its location in the heart of America’s most fetish-friendly city. "You couldn’t have dreamt up a more perfect place than a castle in the middle of San Francisco," says Acworth, who purchased the armory for $14.5 million in 2007 and started operations in January of this year. "It’s like divine intervention."

Acworth had to contend with a different kind of intervention — from a neighborhood group called the Mission Armory Community Collective, which opposed Kink.com as a potential neighbor. Though careful not to condemn porn per se, the group said it feared that the company’s presence in an already troubled neighborhood would introduce more problems. Even the Mayor’s Office, potentially bending to pressure, issued the following statement: "While not wanting to be prudish, the fact that kink.com will be located in the proximity to a number of schools give [sic] us pause."

But the sale quietly went through, and even as protesters stood outside, Kink was already filming new scenes for its subscription sites. Since then, the protests have largely died down. As the company removed graffiti from the brick facade of the armory, fixed windows, and generally improved the appearance of its stretch of Mission Street, neighbors began stopping by to congratulate Acworth — or to ask for a tour. (Incidentally, the public is invited to tour the armory on second Fridays. E-mail info@kink.com for an appointment.)

On a September afternoon, the building — mostly nondescript from the sidewalk except for the castlelike rooftop — seems quiet and innocuous. Three boys skateboard on the steps outside, stopping to talk to a woman walking her dog. The only people entering the doors, which are always locked and manned by a security guard, look as though they could’ve been going to the grocery store or the gym, wearing shorts, T-shirts, and sandals. In fact, on first glance inside, the place is almost disappointingly tame.

Acworth himself hardly looks like a porn kingpin. He’s sweetly attractive in an unmenacing, mainstream way, with an easy smile and casual style. His office, a room near the entrance to the armory, is large and comfortable, but bears no hint of his livelihood save for one tasteful bondage statue. Next to his desk are water and food bowls for the armory’s two live-in cats: Rudy and Lala. His assistant, a young girl in a minidress, leggings, and hoop earrings, looks like she could be working at American Apparel. Even the desktop pattern on Acworth’s Dell computer screen is vanilla: rolling green hills beneath a blue, blue sky. This sense of normalcy seems to be Kink’s main point.

528-cover1.jpg
Van Darkholme, Peter Acworth, and Princess Donna in the Armory boiler room. Photo by Pat Mazzera

Acworth remembers getting turned on as a child in England by scenes in movies where women were tied up — and wondering if this signaled violent tendencies within himself. It wasn’t until adolescence that he discovered the relief (and release) of bondage porn. At the same time, he was already a burgeoning entrepreneur, a child who grew vegetables behind his house and tried to sell them to his parents. By the time he read a magazine article about a man making millions from Internet porn, as a Wall Street–bound doctoral student in a Columbia University finance program, it seemed almost inevitable that Acworth would find a way to marry his two lifelong interests: bondage and business. When he founded Kink.com in 1997, the idea was not only to jump on the dot-com money train, but also to demystify and promote fetish porn as an acceptable form of sexual stimulation.

Now, each of Kink.com’s Web sites is geared toward a particular fetish, run by a Webmaster who’s not only an expert on that particular kink but also has an interest in it, just as Acworth started Hogtied.com, which features women tied up, and Fuckingmachines.com, which showcases women having sex with machinery, because that’s what turned him on. These Webmasters act as director, producer, human resources manager, and often participant as well as Web developer.

"It’s hard to guess what people want," he explains, pointing out that it’s easier to make what you know.

Which means models aren’t actors. Just as directors are expected to be interested in the fetish they’re promoting, so are participants expected to enjoy the scenes they’re in. This isn’t about fake-breasted women pretending to like a face full of come. In fact, Acworth has had trouble in the past working with models from Los Angeles, trying to get them not to act. Kink’s sites feature actual people enjoying a private play party that just happens to be taped. Videos are intimate, personal, and disarmingly real — models talk to each other before, during, and after their sessions, just the way they would in their own bedrooms. They’re encouraged to smile on camera. Whether it’s shocking a woman with electric instruments or forcing a man to eat from a dog bowl, you get the sense that these people would be playing out these scenarios anyway — Kink just provides a salary, benefits, and a really nice location.

THE KINK CASTLE


As for the building itself, Kink has just begun to scratch the surface of its possibilities. The first floor, perhaps the most institutional-looking of the four, houses offices for Acworth, the marketing team, the production team, and the break room, which features a pool table, a disco ball, an espresso machine, a drum set, and a DJ booth (all for parties as well as employee use). Directly opposite the front doors is the Drill Court, a monstrous space that looks something like an airplane hangar crossed with a European train station. This is the space Acworth hopes will become the Mission Armory Community Center (which would unintentionally bear the same acronym as one of the groups that protested Kink.com’s purchase of the armory), a public venue available for sporting events, educational seminars, film festivals, and someday maybe a Folsom Street Fair party. According to MACC coordinator David Klein, a developer who has no affiliation with Kink.com, that dream is a long way off — with plenty of renovations, public meetings, and applications standing between here and there. In the meantime, the Drill Court serves as an occasional event site (such as for the Mission Bazaar craft fair earlier this year) and an employee parking lot. Currently, the most public location is the Ultimate Surrender room, where small numbers of members are invited to sit in bleachers and watch women wrestle each other to the ground on large mats — the winner, of course, gets to fuck the loser.

The armory’s basement is by far the most interesting area. "It’s a wonderland of sets," says Acworth, and it’s hard to argue with him. Some rooms seem perfect as is, such as a former gymnasium whose floor has long since been removed to reveal gothic-looking structural planks punctuated by intimidating bolts. All it took was adding a platform in the center of the expansive room and a pulley above it to make it a perfect bondage set. Next door is an army-style communal bathroom, another favorite as-is set. Other rooms on this floor are a completely furnished 1970s New York loft; a padded cell with an observation room connected by a one-way mirror; a former hermetically sealed gunpowder room that’s been outfitted with all sorts of rings, hooks, and rope pulleys; an office connected by a cage to the "Gimp Room," where ceiling chains hang like some kind of Donkey Kong homage; a hallway storage room chock-full of expected (whips, chains, clamps) and unexpected (mops, long-handled brushes with hard bristles, small boxes with smaller holes in them) toys; the large prop room, where human-shaped cages, monstrous doghouses, and machines like the back breaker and water-torture wheel are kept; the laundry room, where shelves are lined with douches, enemas, latex gloves, and sanitized sex toys; and the former shooting range, which has a Pirates of the Caribbean feel, complete with a river running through it.

And that’s just the start of it. Just when you think every nook and cranny has been used — including an oddly shaped corner off the production gallery that looks like a 19th-century psychiatric ward — you’ll discover a hallway that’s virtually untouched. Hardly any construction has been done on the third or fourth floors, including the officers’ quarters, which occupy one turret. Even the roof, with its castle-y details and flags, seems like a perfect potential shooting location.

528-cover2.jpg
Kink’s porn palace, the San Francisco Armory. Photo by Pat Mazzera

Kink already has plans for several new sets: the military clean room, a stark ’50s-era space, slated for FuckingMachines; an abandoned electrical equipment room for WiredPussy, where dead vintage electrical equipment will line the walls; an Alcatraz-esque prison gallery for BoundGods.com; and an expanded DeviceBondage.com room, which will be clad with cultured stone to look like the basement of an old castle.

Reps won’t say just how much it costs to maintain the armory or to shoot a scene, but Acworth told 7×7 magazine last year that profits were upward of $16 million. And spokesperson Thomas Roche says that the cost of a shoot, including sets, makeup, wardrobe, video and still photo staff, and editing, would be prohibitive if Kink weren’t doing lots of them. Luckily, the armory allows for a volume of shoots that makes it feasible — sometimes four or five in a single day. And it’s good variety for viewers too, who get used to seeing the same sets over and over in various porn films — even ones by different companies.

FLIRTING WITH THE FUTURE


Perhaps the most advantageous thing about moving into the armory, though, has been the increased possibilities for Kink’s growth. With so much space, an almost infinite number of sets can be created without tearing any old ones down. Since multiple shoots can go on at once, multiple sites can be developed and maintained. And buying the building has started attracting directors, models, and Web developers on a scale Acworth hasn’t seen before.

"It was initially difficult to find people," says Acworth, who conjectures that it’s not just the publicity from the building but also the exciting prospect of working there that’s turned the tide. "Now they’ve started to approach us."

One of those who approached Acworth was Van Darkholme, a Shibari rope bondage expert, a porn performer, and the proprietor of fetish film studio Muscle Bound Productions, who was living in LA. Darkholme saw an article about Acworth and the armory in a magazine and contacted him immediately, hoping to get involved. The Vietnam-born Darkholme, who seems almost starstruck by Acworth’s genius, was shocked not only to hear back from Acworth himself, but to be offered a job at the helm of Kink’s new gay bondage site: BoundGods.com.

"What Peter does is so avant-garde and so fresh, I just wanted to come in and mop the floor," says Darkholme, who moved to San Francisco in April and launched his new site Aug. 1.

Darkholme’s BoundGods takes Kink’s principles of intimate, conversational, playful, and mutually enjoyable interactions and applies them to his particular brand of gay sexuality: lean, muscled studs. In one video, a man is tied up in the army-style bathroom at the armory while another fucks him with a large black dildo. In a similar scene, anal beads are gradually pulled from the bound, naked man — much to both participants’ obvious pleasure (though interestingly, neither are hard). Darkholme makes appearances in many of the videos, often as the dominant character — a striking contrast to the camo-shorts-and-T-shirt-wearing, somewhat shy individual I interview at the armory.

He’s clearly proud of the product, not only because it’s well produced but also because there’s almost no competition in the gay market.

"I hate to generalize, but most of what I see out there falls into this trap of gay men putting on leather and grunting and groaning," says Darkholme. "It’s visual, but doesn’t have as much dialogue. What we do is very real and very intimate, with a realness in what they’re saying."

The site marks Kink’s first serious foray into the gay market — a step the company couldn’t quite take while limited by space and resources at the Porn Palace. But set builders are already hard at work constructing an Alcatraz-esque prison gallery for new Boundgods shoots. And the creation of a sub-brand, KinkMen.com, promises more gay-focused fetish sites to come. (Incidentally, Kink tried a gay site several years ago with Butt Machine Boys, which is still online at www.buttmachineboys.com but not listed on the main Web site. Acworth said the site never took off, partly because of lack of budget and partly because, unlike Darkholme, the director wasn’t speaking to his personal interests.)

For now, though, Darkholme has his hands full with BoundGods. His immediate goal is to find and train 12 new dommes for the Web site — a tougher feat than might be expected. "Femme dommes can dish it out and can really take it," he says. "There’s a small percentage of men that can do that." In fact, during some of his first shoots, filmed in Budapest, his bevy of gay models and porn stars were shocked when Darkholme finally opened up his bag of toys.

"They looked at me like the circus had come to town, or like I was going to make one of the Saw movies. Their hands were shaking," he says.

So when Kink sets up its demonstration booth at Folsom Street Fair (Sept. 28, www.folsomstreetfair.com), Darkholme will have two purposes: recruiting talent (both people he can train and experts who have something to teach him) and publicizing his new brand.

"I want to say, ‘We’re here, we’re queer, we want to be part of your community!’" he laughs.

But Darkholme won’t be alone at his booth. Among other popular Kink stars like Isis Love, new director Lochai, expert rigger Lew Rubens, and porn stars LaCherry Spice and Natassia Dream will be WiredPussy.com creator Princess Donna, who’s launching her new pet product, PublicDisgrace.com, next month. The site will feature blatant public bondage, punishment, erotic humiliation, and explicit sex between models and, potentially, passersby.

The veteran domme is filming most scenes in Europe, where attitudes (and therefore laws) about sex are more lax. In fact, while shooting a scene on a public street in Berlin, the crew was stopped by a couple of motorcycle cops who said only, "If you cause an accident, you’ll be liable," before going on their way. In the shoot, a half-naked girl is tied to a park bench, made to carry a dog bowl while on a leash, fondled by her female master, and fucked by a man.

"It’s the adrenaline rush of potentially getting caught," says Acworth, explaining the site’s appeal and recipe for success. The site will also feature a slew of new faces. Plus, it’s the perfect time of year to launch a new fetish site. "Sales pick up when the kids go back to school," Acworth says.

There also plenty of developments in the works that don’t follow the start-a-new-fetish-site model. For starters, Kink is moving to a Flash format, where the delay is only 2 seconds instead of 20. The new technology means that users can actively participate in scenes via chat rooms, where they can give instructions to dommes and watch their demands be carried out. Members of Kink.com can already do this on DeviceBondage.com, but Acworth hopes to switch to a per-minute billing system so even more viewers can participate. At the moment, the site is structured so you must be a member of a particular site in order to watch videos; Acworth would like to move to a single-sign-on system where you can join Kink.com and have access to any of its member sites.

Perhaps the most ambitious technological plan for Kink’s future, though, is the development of an online Web community that will be called Kinky.com. Following the Web 2.0 trend of user-based content, Kinky.com will allow members and models to maintain user profiles, interact with one another on message boards, blog, and even date. Yes, it’s a way to stay up-to-date with Internet trends and to provide an experience that pirated video sites can’t, but Acworth says it’s also a natural outgrowth of the kind of porn he creates.

"In contrast with straight porn, which people want to consume in private, this is a community people want to be a part of," he says.

Which leads us to the project closest to Acworth’s heart: the reality show.

THE REAL WORLD: KINK.COM


In the spirit of community and BDSM as a lifestyle, Acworth wants to transform the armory’s top floor into a series of Victorian/Georgian-inspired rooms where couples will live and fuck on camera 24-7. Participants will be given hierarchical positions — from maid to master of the house — and live according to the rules of domination and submission. Acworth’s already started designing the grand dining room, inspired by the sets in Remains of the Day, including candelabras, elaborate draperies, and, of course, a long, long table. "I consider it the pinnacle of where everything comes together," he says.

The dream is still at least a year off: he’ll have to figure out payment and subscription details, renovate the nearly untouched top floor, and recruit couples who want to live their kinks on camera. But he’s hoping he’ll soon have more time to devote to the project. With more than 100 employees and a huge building to maintain, Acworth’s role has shifted from almost entirely creative to almost entirely administrative. He misses the early days, when he found models on Craigslist, tied them up in his rented Marina apartment, interacted with them himself, and then posted the shoots. (You can still see these early shoots online.) Soon he’ll promote an employee to chief operating officer, which will allow him to back off the business side and devote himself to the reality show.

So did he ever imagine his little project would get so big? Absolutely not, Acworth says. If he’d had any inkling, he adds, "I would’ve been terrified." But it only seems natural that the little English boy who used to try to sell his parents’ own vegetables back to them would eventually have an eye for business — and that his interest in fetish porn would lead his business instincts here.

As for how his parents feel about his chosen profession, Acworth says they’re not exactly vocally supportive, but they don’t condemn him either. His mom, a sculptor, has started creating pieces that feature couples in coital or bondage positions, and may start to sell them on the site. His dad, a former Jesuit preacher, says only, "As long as no one’s getting hurt and there are no animals, I guess it’s all right."

Ultimate Kink Surrender (NSFW)

0

wrestle1.jpg
The wrestlers in action.

I ride my bicycle past the Armory just about everyday and I’ve always wanted to get inside for a tour, particularly since this magnificent, historically significant building was purchased by fetish porn purveyor Kink.com. So when the company invited me to attend Friday night’s taping of its Ultimate Surrender erotic wrestling matches, I couldn’t resist.

It might have been the weirdest event I’ve ever covered, except for the fact that it seemed so, well, normal. Only in super freaky San Francisco do we take in stride hardcore, kinky porn being made in a building once used as the staging ground for soldiers headed to war and National Guard troops suppressing local labor and social justice movement actions.

Attendees (mostly invited journalists and Kink subscribers) were treated to an open bar and got a chance to mix and mingle with the four young women who participated in this three-round tag team wrestling match, all porn actresses with an athletic side, all very sweet and charming and fairly matter-of-fact about the spectacle in which they starred.

San Francisco lovin’

0

Valentine’s Day date ideas
V-Day shopping guide
Complete V-Day events listings

› culture@sfbg.com

Oh! What a web of tangled flesh we postbohemian, rapidly gentrifying, pandemic-aware, pre-spray-on-condom and mint-flavored chewable RU-486 San Francitizens weave! Folks still trot out the ol’ misty-eyed cynicisms: romance is dead, sex is boring, love is impossible, "I’m too fat"…. But that doesn’t stop ’em from doing it until their knees ache when they get the winky come-on (or hoping for Mr. or Ms. Right to ease the tax burden). Sure, in the age of the Internetz, sex is now a shopping trip — just log on for huge fake tits (aisle four), smart-mouthed ghettosexuals (aisle six), muffin tops gon’ wild (aisle nine), or guys who inject a gallon of saline into their shaved balls (clean up, aisle five). No need to be a bitch or a ho — you’re already both on the webcam, dude. Don’t forget your password.

But still. Love exists, right? Christina Aguilera tells us so. And love leads to sex. Or to real sex. Or the other way around. Something. And don’t even ask about the whole monogamy thing! Can’t it all be easier? Aren’t we robots yet? No, not yet. For good or ill we live in a magical place where impulse meets emotion in technology’s dark corner and heads upstairs with it to a small room marked "free love" ($29 an hour) — leaving behind a trail of used rubbers, hopefully. Below we delve into the sex-and-romance pros and cons of some especially San Franciscan things. Maybe it’ll help make things a little clearer. Maybe!

BEING A STRAIGHT GIRL


Carrie Bradshaw, Marissa Cooper, and Dr. Meredith Grey have their trumped-up Trumps, Shin-die schlubs, and Doc McDreamys, but what do so many straight, single women get in the Bay bohemia otherwise known as America’s gay mecca? Commitmentphobic Peter Pan–ders, crusty granola cronies who only cruise twentysomethings, workaholic geeks who seldom see the light of day (apart from the blazing orbs of Burning Man), and windburned adventurers with a never-ending thirst to mountain bike, lick that downward dog, and hike the closest REI. Face it: single straight sistahs have the toughest lot in this town. A 2004 San Francisco magazine story estimated that unmarried straight 20- to 44-year-old SF men outnumbered their female counterparts by about 12,000. But I bet most eligible gals feel — nay, know — that the ratio is weighted in the dudes’ favor. It doesn’t help that years of STD- and AIDS-inspired social conservatism seem to have spurred peeps and perps to hook up early and less often — despite our fair city’s freewheeling rep when it comes to sex roles, relationships, and gender politics. San Francisco’s single chicks sometimes find themselves wondering, "Whatever happened to dating? Where did everyone go? Is it my breath?" When one male friend told me his ex’s claim that she’s dating multiple fellahs in various NorCal cities, my bullshit detector started honking. Tell it to all the attractive, smart, independent, and nubile femme singletons I know who are sitting home Saturday nights.

Pros: Never having to worry about getting macked on at guycentric sports events, shows, and construction sites. Women are always free at the Power Exchange. There’s sisterhood in desperation. You can always join a girl gang and accost hapless men walking alone in dark parking lots. That yawning bore across the table is looking better every sec.

Cons: Dating. Shooting down poseurs who are into shopping for the pick of the litter. Resigning yourself to your anemic online-dating shopping options. And how depressing is it to go to a sex club by yourself? That yawning bore across the table is looking better every sec. (Kimberly Chun)

BEING A STRAIGHT GUY


I worked security at the Endup for four years. As a straight guy, I found myself jealous of my gay compatriots out there on the dance floor, nuts to butts, letting it all hang out. Obviously, gay men have committed, complicated, and drama-filled relationships too. But boys will be boys, and it seemed things were so much simpler and, pardon the pun, more straightforward for gay guys in San Francisco. Less of a mating ritual and more mating. It’s the classic straight guy’s lament: if women acted like dudes, I’d be getting laid right now. Or, as Michael Dean once said in a Bomb song, "The girl that I miss is just me in a dress." Still, after 15 years in San Francisco, I’m starting to see the bonuses of being single, straight, and not so young in a city known worldwide for Rice-a-Roni, sourdough bread, and buffed-out, hunky young gay guys.

Pros: At 35, I may actually be starting to enjoy dating. No one’s lugging around that "my heart was broken, and I can’t go through that again" cross anymore. We’re all adults here, and like the young, restless, and gay, we’ve gotten in touch with our biological needs. Thirtysomething Bay City rollers know they need to get off and they don’t have to meet their soul mate to do it. Sure, the roller coaster of love is one hell of a ride, but sometimes it’s enough to get Indian food, hit a bar with a good jukebox, rent a movie, go home, and fuck.

Cons: People really do get married. Which means the thirtysomething dating pool shrinks and you can end up dating someone younger. This might seem like a pro, until you try to make a pop culture reference on a date and hear crickets chirp. There’s not a lot of eye-to-eye going on when your love interest ejects Mania, by the Vibrators, to put on Green Day. (Duncan Scott Davidson)

BEING A QUEER


Oh, the burden! Straight guys think you get laid more than them. Straight girls think you get laid more than them. Both of them think you like turtlenecks and cologne. It’s horrifying! And history! Here you are over the rainbow, in the fiercely romantic-looking burg all those haters in high school screeched at you to move to, and you’re scrounging for any bit of affection you can find among the forest of online profiles and the coral reef of lopsided haircuts. Plus you’ve got billboards screaming "AIDS!" in your face on every corner. It’s enough to drive a lonely fag to the gym or a dyke to the (one) bar, if that weren’t just as fucked-up a defense mechanism as huddling with your old Smiths EPs and a tankard of Merlot in your cubby. But c’mon, at least you can walk home from your trick’s house….

Pros: Be all you can be! Journey of discovery! There’s a new opportunity around every corner. The hottest FTMs on the face of the planet. Boys aren’t wearing so much product as in 2002. Being the envy of the gay world. Invisible lipstick lesbians. Trash drag. Crystal meth played out (pretty much). Domestic partnership laws (if only …). Gay love is real (ask your serial monogamous friends). Hey, at least it’s not Chelsea!

Cons: Too many to choose from. No need to grow up. Too many bottoms. Ever-present feeling you should get more tattoos — or is that trying too hard? Everyone wants to be your fag hag. Monogamous or "negotiated"? Holier-than-thou activists, hotter-than-thou street life. "What if I’m really straight?" Knowing everyone’s as shy as you but not being able to do anything about it. (Marke B.)

OUR PLAYBOY MAYOR


What a difference a few screaming headlines make. Throw in a Scientology siren, underage cocktail gulpers, and a couple plowed society babes with fiercely straightened fright wigs and outta-hand cheekbones — and ya got yerself a mayor! All we need are some flesh-eating pigs and anesthesia-free surgery to dub this the return of the wild, wild, perhaps very wild, especially when tanked, west — a Deadwood of sorts, if that didn’t imply a kind of flaccid fumbling. Nonetheless, let’s call it the latest in a grand tradition of San Francisco’s romantic and sexual politico-explorers from days of yore — from Harvey Milk to Willie Brown — that we have Mayor Gavin Newsom finally unchained from his legal-eagle Victoria’s Secret model missus and free to allegedly cruise Cow Hollow’s finer drinking establishments after hours, as rumor has long had it. Oh, the list is long and ever growing: encompassing the CSI: Miami starlet and the city mag editor eager to vet her boy’s cover pic alike. Now comes the real test of testosterone: whether Newsom can summon that ironclad Clintonesque charm to weather the latest scandal. My question for the Gavinator: what are you doing for Valentine’s Day?

Pros: The ever-changing cast of hotties at parties and photo ops sure dresses up society pages. No more tacky Harper’s Bazaar fashion spreads. Plenty of heavily gelled, aerodynamic-looking helmet hair. The notion of a Scientologist mayor clears rooms. We can now use that hallowed line, "Is that your Plump Jack — or are you just excited to see me?" Feeling privy to the secret life of frat boys. He’s never boring.

Cons: Kennedy comparisons are starting to grate. Clinton comparisons are starting to chafe. And there’s too much chafing in general. The ever-changing cast of hotties is starting to resemble a sale crowd riding the revolving door at Neiman. Paris Hilton?! And we won’t be shocked to see Britney Spears stumbling out of a mayoral Four Seasons suite next. He’s so predictably not boring that it’s starting to get tiresome. (Kimberly Chun)

OLD HIPPIES


You see them everywhere but mainly on the Muni and at medical marijuana rallies. Some of them look saintly but a little crazed, as if they see a spaceship in your hair. Others resemble your sexy-yet-matronly high school French teacher, smiling indulgently but always ready to rap your knuckles with a day-old baguette if you get your future perfects wrong. Still others seem like they can’t wait to explode with rage at … well, anything, really. All of them are lovable in a historical light. When they’re off their meds — not so much. They’re living monuments to the golden age of free love, and, as medical science advances and rent-control laws stand, they’re not going away anytime soon. (Can young people afford to move here anymore anyway?) They also have a world of sensual knowledge to impart.

Pros: Mother figures, father figures, lusty lovers, spiritual guides — these Baudelairean kickers against the pricks can do it all — and they bake a mean hash brownie to get it all started. Plus: years of experimentation have made them freaky. You may have to crank up the solar defibrillator, but they’re experts in how to "get your motor running."

Cons: Occasional bad-trip flashbacks. Always slightly wary. Strawberry-scented oxygen tanks. Pillow talk = Allen Ginsberg stories. Hairy. Half tantric. Forgot if they put out candles. Ponytail or braid can get caught in teeth. (Marke B.)

BURNING MAN FLINGS


Burning Man is a sexual and emotional cauldron. Liberally mix together a world of sensory delights, a spirit of reckless abandon, beautiful exposed bodies everywhere, sudden sandstorms that send you scurrying into the nearest tent or trailer, countless peak experiences, exposure to a myriad of lifestyles and communities, and 40,000 people with time on their hands, goodwill in their hearts, and lust in their loins, and it’s no surprise that people end up hooking up left and right. This place oozes sexual energy while stripping away our emotional defenses and leaving us exposed to Cupid’s arrows.

Pros: Whatever you want, it’s here, often with no strings attached. When people come back from the playa all blissed-out and saying how it changed their lives, that’s usually not just the drugs talking. People do things they wouldn’t do in the everyday world — and then they do it again and again. And if you follow the sound advice of veteran burners to leave your expectations at home and just be open to the experience, then you’re also in the ideal place to not just get laid but truly find love. Believe it or not, I know of lots of lasting, loving marriages between people who met on the playa.

Cons: All the things that make Burning Man so conducive to sex and romance can also create problems. People get emotionally splayed by the often overwhelming nature of daily life on the playa. They’re vulnerable to everything from small slights that get exaggerated to the predators who invariably exist in any town. Couples get tested. Singles can at times feel lonely and desperate. Everybody has a few hard mornings after. And as a practical matter, dust gets everywhere — and I mean everywhere. (Steven T. Jones)

LUSTY LADIES


The Bay has a long and luxuriously twisted history of female sexual empowerment, full of Brights, Queens, Dodas, Califias, Blanks, Chos, and other sparkling heroines of don’t-do-it-and-die philosophy — some of whom have gone on to become heroes, even. The two major, classic phalanxes of gyno-horno-positivism to have arisen from the mists of all that groundwork are the Lusty Lady and Good Vibrations. The Lady, currently a worker-owned stripper co-op, has been baring a broad variety of intelligent, worldly-wise physical types for almost 30 years, and Good Vibrations, a women-centered chain of erotica shops that offer a plethora of workshops and training sessions for both women and men, has helped make vibrators the Tupperware of the new millennium. Despite the ubiquity of silicone enhancements and Girls Gone Wild antics in today’s culture, the Lusty Lady and Good Vibrations try to keep it real by focusing on the pleasures inherent in strong, natural femininity. In an era when guys are being forced like never before to question their physical attributes and sexual virility, thanks to size-queen porn and erectile dysfunction spam, the gals — who’ve had to deal with that kind of shit forever — may have a bit of an upper hand, self-image-wise, thanks in part to these two affirming San Francisco institutions. Not that it’s a competition.

Pros: Lusty Lady’s the best place to take your gay friends for a fabulous girls’ night out. Everything I know about labias I learned from Good Vibrations.

Cons: I have to hand-wash all my plates because my dishwasher’s usually full of Good Vibrations dildos. I have to hand-wash all my clothes because I spend all my quarters in the booths at the Lusty Lady. (Marke B.)

PORN AND TECHNOLOGY


Right up the Peninsula from Silicon Valley, we find ourselves in techie heaven. Most of the global advances in online technology burst first and foremost from our fertile area. The bust and boom that locked the Bay in a violent coital grasp in the early ’00s exhausted us, but Web 2.0’s got us all atingle again. This time we’re sure we won’t make the same mistakes. We’ll keep it social, we’ll keep it personal. Most of all, we’ll keep it sexual. Thanks to advances in digital production and online distribution — and our wondrously pervy nature (not to mention our desirable market) — the porn industry in San Francisco has exploded. The city is now home to a majority of the biggest gay porn companies and quite a few straight and fetish ones.

The most barefaced manifestation of the lucrative intersection of porn and technology is the purchase of the ginormous Armory in the Mission by fetish header Kink.com to house its offices, studios, and online operations. (Personally, I can’t wait for them to open a Kink Café in there as well. St. Andrew’s croissandwich, anyone?) This may be a harbinger of things to come. We’re not exactly holding our collective breath for Bang Bus to take over the LucasArts HQ in the Presidio or for the former Candlestick Park to be rechristened Naked Sword Arena — but hey, it could happen. Alas, the fortuitous marriage of porn and technology may be about to hit the skids. Hi-def can reveal a whole lot of ass pimples and nipple lifts — Blu-ray killed the porn star? Then again, it might just provide more employment opportunities for digital touch-up artists. "Hey, man, what’s your new gig?" "I’m rastarizing Busty Fillips’s underarm stretch marks — full-time, plus benefits." Local HMOs are lining up.

The ever-rising tide of digital wonders raises more sensual — and sensitive — boats than porn, however. While no one’s yet perfected the vibrator–cell phone (what ringtone would I put on that? Oh yeah, Beyoncé), rest assured that some little tech elf is working fiendishly away in his or her bright pink laboratory to bring that dream to fruition. Which brings us to the new iPhone. It may not be dildo-ready, exactly — watch that touch screen! — but some of its romantic applications were immediately apparent on its unveiling here in January. What other piece of handheld technology allows a person to be rejected in so many different medias at once? Now when you want to break up with someone, you can call them, text them, and e-mail them all at the same time. Plus, you can share a break-up song on iTunes with them and even throw in a YouTube clip of yourself gently weeping to show how torn up you are inside (clip must be less than 10 minutes in duration and not imitative of copyrighted material). Send a slide show! Skype an e-card! Use PayPal to buy them a "Just Got iDumped" mug on eBay! The possibilities are infinite.

Now if only there were software that could mend a broken heart. Sigh.

Pros: Online hookups? No problem: anywhere, anytime. You don’t have to be physically present to enjoy an entire relationship. Everyone’s a winner: people unable to afford the latest gadget or upgrade get to feel more real. Soon everyone in the city will have a job at Kink.com.

Cons: Much of the Bay population is more interested in staying up all night with a two-liter of Coke, a cold pizza, and a roomful of servers than a warm body. Web 2.0 has brought a horny flood of freshly flush Googlers, Tubers, Diggers, ‘Spacers, and Mac heads on the make to already packed and overpriced Mission bars (watch for those hybrid Tundras parked on the median). You will literally go blind if you jack off to video iPod porn in the bathroom stall at work — that screen’s so small! Soon everyone in San Francisco will have a job at Kink.com. (Marke B.)