By Juliette Tang

Punning and naughty Photoshopping can be extremely funny, extremely horrible, or both at the same time. A bad pun can empty a room, but a good bad pun always elicits a laugh. Similarly, while naughty Photoshopping is juvenile and distasteful, you can't help but admire the cleverness of a really good digitally altered photograph, regardless of content.

Porn is an industry that fully embraces parallel punning -- Muffy the Vampire Layer, Chitty Chitty Gang Bang, A Rear and Pleasant Danger, Romancing the Bone, etc. -- and suffice it to say, some of these puns are pretty adroit. The meme-generating folks at B3ta asked people to post their own Photoshopped porn posters based off actual movies, and the slightly NSFW 30+ pages of puerility are a must see for those who like their humor lower than low-brow. Personally, I can't get enough of these. Assablanca, The Crotchmen, Hymen Popper and the Chamber of Semen, Lawrence of a Labia, Metropenis, Iporkyalips Now... sexual punishment never felt so good!

Posted by SFBG at 01:31 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Rachel Sadon

Banned in the USA, despite our love of bang ... and burnt rubber

Oh TreeHugger. You’ve made my day.

Not only did the ever-relevant green blog send up the 10 Best Condom Ads Banned in the US, but they pointed out the very real societal value in effectively publicizing contraception. Intellect, wit, and raunch -- what more could you possibly ask for in a blog entry (or a Friday night)?

Author Brian Merchant points out that green living is about more than just composting and hybrid cars; overpopulation is straining the planet’s resources to an unsustainable level. Not only are Americans the world’s leading polluters, we also have an unusually high rate of unplanned pregnancies. And there are a lot of people that really loathe talking about contraception, much less see it advertised effectively.

It is unclear whether the ads were restricted by a regulatory agency or self-censored by marketers in the US (the article just says they were rejected for being “too sexually explicit”). Regardless, it’s pretty clear that our notoriously prudish compatriots would get more than a bit uppity at these exercises in tongue-in-cheek advertising.

Fortunately much of the rest of the world isn’t quite so unreasonable.

Continue reading "Those hilarious banned condom ads ..." »

Posted by SFBG at 12:46 PM | | | Comments (0)

By D. Scot Miller

Reviewing sex for the Guardian is a blast! Straight up. I get to peruse pornografica for pay. How sweet is that? It's my hope to begin exploring my sexual self for all the world to see! OK, that's kind of scary too, but a good kind of scary. Throughout the gamut of emotions I plumb while "doing" sex in my own writerly way, the one I most despise is boredom Sex should never, never-ever, be boring. When the mind glazes over with ennui around good-ol' ruttin', it's time to check-in; step up your game.

This is what I find in a lot of the erotica/porn writing I review. Nothing kills a moment like cliche'. And nothing says cliche' better than tired/lazy language. A poorly placed piece of trite breaks the spell of seduction and turns the whole affair into just another pick-up line. But I'm here to help, I really am, and I 've come up with 10 terms that writers should avoid at all costs when writing sex. Drumroll please:

Continue reading "10 terms to ban from erotica FOREVER" »

Posted by SFBG at 04:59 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Marke B.

We're more than maybe just crazy here at the Guardian over Bay band -- and breakthrough post-sexual heartthrobs -- Girls. Well, they're incredibly sad-funny-catchy single "Lust for Life" just got the hardcore video outtake treatment, penis microphones and Hunx cameos and all ... Watch and revel in true San Francisco loveliness ...

(via our friends at The Sword)

Girls will be cramming out Bottom of the Hill on Nov. 21.

Posted by SFBG at 04:11 PM | | | Comments (0)

By D. Scot Miller

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.

Continue reading "Kink glitches the matrix" »

Posted by SFBG at 03:47 PM | | | Comments (0)

Hightlight photos by Jack Lukic. Text and video by Juliette Tang

Cow Palace from Juliette Z Tang on Vimeo.

MySpace celebrity turned reality television sub-lebrity Tila Tequila was apparently at the Perry Mann's Exotic Erotic Ball and Expo this past Saturday, though by the time I arrived, she was no where to be found. Likewise, Coolio was there was well, but in the hour window into which I glimpsed (00:00h to 01:00h) I saw not one spindly braid (though it is comforting that in certain circles, he's still deemed relevant).

Instead, what I encountered inside Cow Palace was a mix between a state fair, a strip club Halloween party, and a WWE match.

Continue reading "Reflections on the Exotic Erotic" »

Posted by SFBG at 03:07 PM | | | Comments (11)

By Juliette Tang

I watched Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell (2004) for the first time tonight, initially out of boredom because it was on my "Watch Instantly" Netflix queue, and because I remembered, off-handedly, a remark the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek made about Breillat at an Authors@Google lecture that I happened to catch on YouTube last year, in which he discussed Violence, his latest book at the time.

The section of the lecture in which Zizek discussed Breillat was, more specifically, on the topic of censorship (at around 34 minutes into the video) and the ways in which censorship relates to what Zizek termed our "rules of discretion". According to Zizek, what we term our "inner life" -- i.e. our sense of personal narrative or interior gospel -- is really just a "zero level ideology", or the misinterpretation of our interiority (a mere discursive formation) as a kind of real, external reality (for those who are interested, Zizek delves into this in much more detail in his latest book First as Tragedy, Then As Farce). Amazingly, to illustrate his point, he chose the metaphor of pornography.

In order to operate in the ways that it intends, porn is absolutely obliged to participate in self-censorship of this "inner life," or a censoring of any real or implied emotional discourse or narrative. Porn censors itself emotionally, or narratively so that it can be free to act explicitly, physically, in ways that narrative would hinder. A trade-off, in the crudest sense, of the emotional world for the sensual world.

As Zizek puts it, with hardcore porn, "You cannot have it both ways. You can see it all but the price you pay is to sabotage emotional involvement. In the sense of having an engaging story and so on so on... In gonzo sex you see a camera man, and the camera man tells to the actors, 'move like that,' and a woman who is being screwed slides to the camera and asks 'am I ok like this' and they make fun... I think this is the high point of censorship. They are afraid of even a minimum of narrative."

Continue reading "On Catherine Breillat's "Anatomy of Hell"" »

Posted by SFBG at 12:36 PM | | | Comments (0)

By D. Scot Miller

(L to R) Jessica, Tracy, Carmen, and Diva's owner Steve Berky.

Our amazingly prescient editor Marke B. wrote, "my continual intuition [is] that totally hot trans porn people are the apex of the now", and his powers of observation are on point, as always, because totally hot trans porn people (THTPP) are indeed, THE hotness.

The phenomenal element of this is that it has taken so long for the mainstream to catch on. I've officially made it my mission to shed some light, and possibly, some clothes, on the true front lines of sex and gender. Onward, I say, onward!

Relegated to Maury Povich and Jerry Springer, I suspect that THTPP have been overlooked because, as Dan Savage has said, "this is a totally straight male pursuit," and you know how straight males can get, especially when it comes to cock. You won't find these guys -- or their dollars -- at the next drag show at your local cabaret. No, my friend, they hang out at Diva's, famous for the best and most beautiful in the world of "Female Illusion." And owner Steve Berky is their best friend.

Continue reading "Diva's Celebrates 25 years of avant garde sexiness" »

Posted by SFBG at 04:19 PM | | | Comments (2)

By D. Scot Miller

EROTIC COMICS 2: A GRAPHIC HISTORY FROM THE LIBERATED '70S TO THE INTERNET
Tim Pilcher
(Abrams ComicArts)

The lord works in mysterious ways.

My impassioned plea to the publishers of Best Erotic Comics 2009 to please expand their tasty tome inspired something in the ether, and my request for a bigger erotic comic collection as come to me in the form of Erotic Comics 2: A Graphic History from the Liberated '70s to the Internet.

Tim Pilcher, author of Erotic Comics: A Graphic History from Tijuana Bibles to Underground Comix has pulled together a comprehensive and illuminating retrospective on the genre, its relevance, and how it has both mirrored and transformed our sexuality.

Barry Blair's hot ambi-nymphs

From the pre-code days of Wally Wood's Weird Sex Fantasy and the tantalizing soft-core of the early days of Heavy Metal Magazine, Pilcher brings both sub-genres and individual artists into focus, creating a time-line that not only examines the art, but the supporters and detractors of pornography, free-speech, and free-love.
Alan Moore -- the genius behind Watchmen, V is for Vendetta, and (along with partner Melinda Gebbie) the $75 slip-covered piece of indulgent psycho-sexual sensuousness that is The Lost Girls -- writes a pro-porn polemic worthy of The New Yorker (or this fine blog) that catapults us into high-weirdness and beyond.

Moore and Gebbie's Blake-meets-Darger sextravaganza, The Lost Girls

Like many of you out there, for the longest time I thought adult comics were reserved for 40-year-old virgins.

Continue reading "Spank-tastic ambiguous nymphs butter the muffin" »

Posted by SFBG at 11:27 AM | | | Comments (0)

By Justin Hall. Check out his awesome guide to erotic comics in this week's Sex Issue here. Below is another extra special one-hander.

HARRY AND DICKLESS TOM
Brad Rader
(self-published)
www.flamingartist.com

This erotic graphic novel is both brilliant and completely unique. I certainly don’t know of any other gay porn comic that features such huge, well-drawn, splash pages of vaginas.

Two homophobic truckers are crossing the country screwing fags in truck stops and then beating them up, when the Goddess decides to teach them a lesson. Tom wakes up one morning with his dick replaced by a vagina, and his relationship with his buddy Harry, himself, his family, and the rest of the world is changed instantly. His new pussy humanizes him and when he finally gets his dick back, he finally knows how to really use it.

Harry and Dickless Tom is a very personal book by an extremely talented cartoonist. “My sole erotic release [when I was young],” writes Rader, “was my jerk-off sketchbooks. I would draw in them for hours, making love to the pages with pen and ink, pouring my angst, lust and longing into images I hoped and feared the world would someday see, and that I might somehow realize.” Rader has worked on everything from Batman to King of the Hill, and he puts his considerable illustration abilities to use with this book, drawing each section of it in the style of a different famous cartoonist. It starts off with an homage to Herge’s Tin Tin and winds up imitating Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates. In every style, though, Rader makes sure that his odd cast of characters stay sexy, especially Tom, the balding, bespectacled, daddy muscle bear with a pussy. Check it out at Raders’ site www.flamingartist.com.

Posted by SFBG at 01:02 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Justin Hall. Check out his awesome guide to erotic comics in this week's Sex Issue here. Below is an extra special one-hander.

ALI BABA Y LOS 40 MARICONES
"Ali Baba and the Forty Faggots"
Nazario
(La Culpula, 1993)

Nazario, the godfather of underground Spanish comics and a dissident artist during the dark times of Franco, is best known for Anarcoma, his deadly, cock-loving, tranny detective. But while her adventures are truly breathtaking in their bizarre, violent and sexy extremes, Ali Baba is the work of a more mature and sophisticated cartoonist. Like similar underground, gay, pervert artists John Waters and Almodovar, the early works are exciting, but the later stories are better made.

Ali Baba is a series of interlocking stories about the goings-on at the Ali Baba bar and the three apartments above it, all filled with outrageous maricones based on the denizens of Nazario’s home Barcelona. The artwork is wonderful, incredibly detailed and textured but cartoony all the same. Unlike most erotic cartoonists who draw the same man of their dreams over and over, Nazario is clearly interested in many flavors of menfolk, from young twinks to hairy daddies to chubby fems to square-jawed hunks, all of them having good, hot sex. Sex in his hands is primal, captivating and uncontrollable, and his characters dive right in.

Unfortunately, Nazario’s comics are hard to come by in English. There have been a few attempts at translations, but all of them are well out of print. He’s still kept in circulation by Spanish comics publisher La Cupula, however, so check out their collection at www.lacupula.com.

Posted by SFBG at 02:45 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Louis Peitzman

Paul Festa grooms in Let Me Tell You John Cameron Mitchell.

The Good Vibrations Independent Erotic Film Festival finally went down (tee-hee!) last week. September 17’s competition at the Castro Theatre brought out the best, brightest, and naked-est in a series of shorts that will hopefully help to redefine the future of the genre. For those of us tired of the overproduced crap that usually passes for pornography, the screening was a breath of kinky fresh air.

It helped that the event was hosted by four lovely ladies: Good Vibes sexologist and chief cultural officer Dr. Carol Queen, Peaches Christ, Lady Bear, and Hugz Bunny. Sitting on a couch in front of the stage, they commented on the films with wit, insight, and just the slightest bit of sass. Stressful for the filmmakers, I’m sure — who wants to have their erection judged by a drag queen? — but entertaining for the rest of us.

There were 11 films screened, and rather than dissect them all (because that would be bo-ring), allow me to highlight my four faves.

Let Me Tell You John Cameron Mitchell (Paul Festa)
Festa’s short film is actually an edited version of an audition tape he submitted for John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus (2006). Despite its origins, it works well as a stand-alone. And yes, I’m probably biased by a slight crush on the director and star, but this is legitimately successful work. What I like most about Let Me Tell You is the way it sexualizes the mundane — who knew shaving one’s head could be so erotic?

Narcissister, with hot lunch

Narcissister’s Hot Lunch (Narcissister)
I’m going to be honest: I’m actually a little creeped out by Narcissister. For those not familiar with her work, it involves a half-mask and other fake body parts. (Well, I think they’re fake. If real nipples could produce ketchup, I’d be pretty impressed.) Still, there is something hypnotizing about her dance moves and the comedy she works into the finished product. Bonus points for her use of “Hot Lunch” from Fame (1980) here.

Continue reading "Skin flicks: 2009 IXFF wrap-up!" »

Posted by SFBG at 01:32 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Mistress Eve Minax, a professional dominatrix, sex educator, and food lover based in SF. Read her previous sexcipe here.

This recipe ("The Quickie") was inspired by a quick spanking, bondage and fucking session the other night. Quick and easy, you still have time to process, read, or watch a movie, happily sated in sex and food.

Burger with almond butter served on salad of mesclun greens, strawberries, avocado, and spicy citrus melon

Ingredients:
1 lb Grass fed ground beef
salt, (high quality or smoked)
fresh ground pepper
garlic clove
Raw almond butter
Mesclun greens
Half pint strawberries
Avocado
1 fresh melon
two lemons
ground cayenne pepper
2 tbsp olive oil

Method:
Chop the garlic clove and combine it with the ground with the salt and pepper and set aside.

Grab your subject and lift her skirt or drop his trousers and put them across your lap for a lengthy, fine, slow, well delivered spanking, (take classes if you want to know more!). When their ass is warm and rosy and both of you are turned on, have them go to the bed, strip, and lay like an X. Bind the arms and feet nice and wide and outstretched, add a blindfold. Tell them something dirty to think about.

Return to kitchen, (within eye and ear shot).

Continue reading "Sexcipe: No-carb burger salad with spanking" »

Posted by SFBG at 04:23 PM | | | Comments (1)

By D. Scot Miller

BEST EROTIC COMICS 2009
Last Gasp, 1995
Edited by Greta Christina

The cover art by Junko Mizuno alone makes Last Gasp's Best Erotic Comics 2009 worth the price of admission. His gothic-Sanrio-sex-kittens getting into all kinds of weird mischief, involving sleeping-spray and whips among other things, is just one example in this well-pieced and well-paced collection.

There's something for everyone in this one, but I have my favorites:

Cephelapod Products weighs in with an homage to the bawdy "just for larfs" period of the 1940s and '50s, and returns with the look and feel of the 60's underground "Zapp" comic days that is so dead-on that I feel like I'm in the back of the record shop.

Toshios Saeki reaches even further back to early Japanese erotica to do that sexy double-entendre thing with the word "fantasy." Saeki does the best tentacles in the biz, and he creates passionate embraces that make even the most supernatural seem like the most natural.

A long-time favorite of mine, Christy C. Road, brings "Reclaim Yourself: Revolution On A Battery Operated Phallus," which it actually is. Whether it's a bicycle or a buttplug, Road's lines, color and emotion feel like liberation to me. Delicious, shameless sex is part of the revolution, better believe it. Even/especially when you're by yourself.

Belasco's Brothers of New Essex

In that same vein, Belasco (best known for his "Brothers Of New Essex" graphic novel) opens "Th'Floodgates," the most poignant, concious, and healing story in the book. Comic book sex can be about sex as a healing energy of succor and an expression of love too. Who knew?

But it ain't all love-taps in here. Best Erotic Comics 2009 is rough, soft, frightening, and soothing with each turn of the page. Whips, guns, pixies, paronoia, and perverison inter-mingle here, if the thunder don't get you, the lightning will. Are these truly the best erotic comics 2009 had to offer? Hardly. With manga and web-based comics being published everyday, it's time for Last Gasp to consider making 2010's edition much, much bigger.

Posted by SFBG at 11:35 AM | | | Comments (1)

By D. Scot Miller

WE DID PORN: MEMOIRS AND DRAWINGS
(Tin House Books)
by Zak Smith

I admit it. I was fully expecting to hate Zak Smith's book about his alt-porn experiences. Yes I was. Trendoid motherfucker gonna tell me about porno? What's this artsty-fartsy, probably spoiled, uber-talented white boy artist got to say to me about fucking somebody?

Turns out, quite a bit.

I have to say that after the first chapter of this engrossing tome, Zak Smith had changed my life forever. He made me overcome my fear and predjudice of hipsters - something that Miranda July and Dave Eggers could not do - and listen to his tale of making alt-porn and living gonzo in alt-porn world. Not the best writer in the world, Smith makes up for his Hunter Thompson parroting with honesty and constant lucidity.

Zak at work as "Zak Sabbath," alt-porn star

"The most hideous thing about pornography," he says early on, "is that it works. On you."

Continue reading "'We Did Porn': Zak Smith gets sticky" »

Posted by SFBG at 10:46 AM | | | Comments (1)

By Louis Peitzman

Festivities for the fourth annual Good Vibrations Independent Erotic Film Festival (aka IXFF) are now underway -- but the main event is a film screening Thurs/17 at the Castro. What follows is the first installment in a series of interviews with filmmakers from the fest.

Filmmaker: Petra Joy
Film: Hardback

San Francisco Bay Guardian: What was the inspiration for your film?
Petra Joy: I wanted to show the power play between this real life couple. Even though she is usually more dominant and he is the (hunky) submissive, their sexuality is fluid and flows freely. The resprect each other and it turns them on to pleasure each other in body, mind and soul.I also wanted to break the big taboo of women penetrating men and celebrate the prostate as a highly erogenous zone.

SFBG: What did you hope to accomplish with it?
PJ: I wanted to show that s/m sex does not have to be extreme and role patterns not cast in stone. Just becasue he licks her feet does not mean that she will not enjoy to be penetrated by him. I hope to inspire women and men to experiment more and make their fantasies come true - far away from all the definitions of gender roles and classifications of sexuality they are often hemmed in by.

Continue reading "Sexy celluloid: Good Vibrations Independent Erotic Film Festival artists speak!" »

Posted by SFBG at 06:29 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Marke B.

The Steven Scarborough-directed "Trunks 2" won the auspicious 2006 Maleflixxx Gold VOD Award

This just in from the Facebook:

"Jeffrey Escoffier will offer a profile of San Francisco's historic role in the creation of the gay porn industry. There will be video show of the highlights of San Francisco's erotic film making. His guest will be Steven Scarborough, one of gay porn's great directors and who helped establish its economic foundations."

Scarborough helped bring porn into the condom age with his work at Falcon and then Hot House, so this may be pretty interesting. He's also a cutie:

Bigger than Life
Thu/17, 6-9pm, free
GLBT Historical Society
657 Mission St, Suite 300
www.glbthistory.org

Posted by SFBG at 03:29 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Juliette Tang. Photos by Jack Lukic

Art of Restraint, a quarterly event held at Femina Potens Gallery (2199 Market St), was quite a tranquil affair, given the subject matter of all the artist performances. A well-heeled audience, many of whom had "Do not photograph" stickers adhered to their gallery finery, milled around drinking champagne and wine while bondage artists Fivestar, Judy Minx, Madame Butterfly, Midori, Lochai, James Mogul, and Madison Young performed one after the other in a calm, albeit kinky, manner. The somber atmosphere was reinforced by the music accompaniment, most of which was ambient and mournful. Ms. Young and Mr. Mogul's performed to the sad, falsetto trilling of Sigur Ros, a band whom I have never before listened to in the context of bondage arts but which in retrospect seemed a strangely fitting choice for this real-life couple.

Continue reading "Tied up: A second look at Art of Restraint" »

Posted by SFBG at 03:23 PM | | | Comments (0)

Text and photos by Ariel Soto

A mix of rope, art, and champagne filled the tiny gallery at Femina Potens this weekend as part of an erotic bondage showcase called "The Art of Restraint." Along the walls were provocative pieces by local artists and dotted amongst the guests were performers demonstrating different techniques in tying knots and self- suspension. But the most surprising element of the evening to me was the variety of voyeurs: there were the obviously well-experienced folks decked out in leather and fishnets, but then there was a sprinkling of suburban moms wearing three-quarter length khakis accompanied by their husbands. These spectators were also the ones wearing the "Do Not Photograph" stickers on their shirts, so you'll just have to trust me on this one. Pretty kinky, right?

Continue reading "Pics: 'The Art of Restraint' at Femina Potens" »

Posted by SFBG at 04:56 PM | | | Comments (0)

By D. Scot Miller

FURVERTS
By Michael Cogliantry
(Chronicle Books, $12.95)

Yeah. OK. I was one of those people who thought that Bugs Bunny looked hot in drag. There was something about the way his bucked teeth looked with lipstick, the way his large, mascara eyes gave a come hither look that gave me a tingle. And when his disguise would inevitably come off, often exposing his cotton-tail to Elmer Fudd, my pre-adolescent self would get a goose.

Like so many of my generation, we had no idea what we were feeling or how it would translate in adulthood. For me, large eyes and buck-teeth grab my attention. Others became Furverts.

A Furvert is turned on by furry costumes - Bugs Bunny's tail - and Michael Cogliantry has created a board book, originally titled The Furry Kama Sutra, that captures these furry lovers in flagrante delicto in various mundane settings: A bear blows a bunny in the living room, a lion boffs a rooster in the garage.

"Birds do it, bees do it, but no one does it like furries do it."

Chronicle Books took a chance on this one. Formatting it as a board book, looking so much like the kind babies chew on, and filling it with woodland creatures in compromising positions touches on a disquieting element, though it's difficult to explain just why. My copy came with a plastic cover sporting a sticker saying, "Paws off! Not suitable for kids," and yet it, like the fur-play chronicled, appeals to the kid in you. Ick.

All-in-all, this is harmless and quirky little curio with no explicit photos. The poses themselves range from silly to sappy and the settings, from the depressing no-tel motels to the press-board basement, make the furry rutters all the more hilarious.

Posted by SFBG at 11:41 AM | | | Comments (1)

By Juliette Tang

God damn. Eric Wareheim (of Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job) has directed a music video for Major Lazer that makes me want to find someone willing to pretend that my ass is a turntable and get down. Watch the above video (and make sure you watch it until the end because 3:14 is, I believe, the most hysterical part of the whole thing).

We've been following the Jamaican daggering craze for a while now, but never would we have thought that the venerable Eric Wareheim would take a stab (hah) at interpreting this cultural phenomenon. For those who are unfamiliar, "daggering" is a style of Jamaican dance that basically simulates crazy rough sex. Like, the kind of acrobatic sex only Jamaican daggerers and Cirque du Soleil performers are capable of. One of the moves, called "sky daggering," literally involves dancers flipping and catapulting themselves onto one another in ways that scare me. Due to the increasing popularity of this form of dance, it's caused some public controversy, and the Jamaican government has even launched a campaign against "daggeration" and music associated with it are banned from Jamaican airwaves.

Continue reading "Daggering: Eric Wareheim shows us how it's done" »

Posted by SFBG at 05:08 PM | | | Comments (0)

By D. Scot Miller

Unless Greyhound grows wings, I'll never be a member of the mile-high club. For those that don't know, the mile-high club sports members who have gotten a little somethin'-somethin' 30,000 feet in air. Membership is just one trip to that chemical-smelling cubicle that most airlines call bathrooms. Cleis Press editor Rachel Kramer Bussel puts a much better spin on the prospect in her anthology The Mile High Club: Plane Sex Stories. One-flight stands, kinky passengers, fantasy stewards, and cozy couples commingle when free to move about the cabin.

The standout piece for me is Thomas S. Roche's, "When Your Girlfriend Wears A Very Short Skirt." I've been seeing Roche's name in anthologies for years and often found his work not daring enough for my taste. Imagine my surprise when the word "cunt" was just sitting there! I never use that word. Not much of a fan of it either - I prefer pussy - but Roche dropping it in the middle of his piece was like a wolf showing off his teeth for the first time. Maybe he'd used it before, but this time I was shocked, appalled, and impressed.

Alison Tyler flexes her prodigious erotic muscle in "Planes, Trains, and Banana Seat Bicycles." "I could tell he was groaning, but I couldn't hear a sound besides the roar of the plane" Her title character says, "And I realized I don't ever want total quiet. I don't need darkness. Lights at the end of the runway are among my favorite sights." Talk about jazzy analogies! I can dig it.

Now for the bumpy landing: Erotic writing, second only to sports writing, can easily turn into a cliche-ridden morass. "His manly arms," "her dripping pussy" -- in many ways erotic lit hasn't made it past Victorian tumescence and tribadism. This is not to say that many of the passages in this fun book avoid this hazard, just that the ones that don't fizzle the sizzle for shizzle. Mix it up more next time.

Posted by SFBG at 06:10 PM | | | Comments (1)

By D. Scot Miller

A note from D., our new SEX SF contributor: "This is my first installment on the SFBG's Sex SF blog. I'm pretty sure that anyone who knows me half-suspected that I was a freak. Ease your suspicions friends, I am."

I just finished reading Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys: Professionals Writing on Life, Love, Money, and Sex. by David Henry Sterry and R.J. Martin, Jr. (Soft Skull Press), a servicable account of sex-work and sex-play from professional providers of all genders, classes and orientations.

There are many standout pieces, Carol Queen's "Blowjob City," a poem by Anonymous called "Hermaphrodite," and my dear friend Sadie Lune's piece "Envelopes" come to the forefront for me. Installments by stalwart symbols like Nina Hartley, Xaviera Hollander and Georgina Spelvin give a comforting credibility to the collection. Sterry, no stranger to sex writing himself -- his first book "Chicken" lived on the NYT bestsellers list -- proves to be a more than competent editor and curator and for those who want to know what it's like in "The Life," this anthology is a good place to start.

With that said, the last thing you want in your sex, and I believe that I'm speaking for just about everyone, is dryness. Sex is wet, slippery, and messy, at least the sex I like, and sometimes trying to explain our sexual selves can be an arid and depressing affair. Many of the entries in this anthology, unfortunatley, fall into that category. There's just too much "blow-by-blow" and not enough "blow". Many of the entries are simply not sexy when it is clear that they are trying to be. And with all the talk of "sex-positive empowerment", its Mochalove out of Oakland, saying, "The next time I hear some rich white bitch tell me how great being a ho is, I'm gonna smack 'em upside they righteous head," that I most connected with and whose story I most wanted to hear.

Posted by SFBG at 08:33 AM | | | Comments (0)

By Kevin Langson

The prurient pleasure film Graphic Sexual Horror cannot be accused of failing to live up to its title. In fact, it's safe to say that discussion or protestations (and anyone who's not catatonic is bound to have something to say) that follow this solid porn-ocumentary will be related to the rather contentious content. This fair-minded glimpse into the pain-glorious performances and behind-the-scenes procedures of the now defunct hardest of the hardcore bondage Web sites is simultaneously titillating and reflective, admiring and critical.

Insex.com founder Brent Scott, in explaining the academic ostracism at Carnegie Mellon that led to his new career as a high priest of porn, says this: "If they don't let me teach their kids, I'll corrupt them," which seems an apt encapsulation of his renegade artistic arrogance. This account is assuredly enriched by his candidness and self-criticism. He praises, sometimes adores, his female models and expresses sincere regret when his neglect leads to a malfunctioning water tank that could have inflicted injury. At the same time, however, he is chauvinistically demanding and insensitive to his model's vulnerabilities. Essentially, he represents the ambivalence of extreme bondage — the murky convergence of liberated consensual sex and exploitation.

Clips of artistically presented live feed performances featuring such intrigues as blue-purple strangulated breasts and hot pepper being applied to genitalia, are intercut with interviews to give a sense of the models' experiences. For bondage enthusiasts and the morbidly curious, there are visuals to gawk or gasp at throughout, but the tone becomes more conflicted as the film addresses the dilemmas of Insex models, as illustrated by the young woman who whimpers incredulously as her face is slapped. Face-slapping was her one hard limit (defined as activity forbidden by a model), but she struggles to play along because of the shame and lost fortunes a refusal begets.

GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR Thurs/16–Fri/17, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, www.ybca.org -- Click here for showtimes and more details

Posted by SFBG at 09:32 AM | | | Comments (0)

By Juliette Tang

Yesterday saw an interesting piece in the New York Times on the slow disappearance of plot-based porn flicks in favor of films comprised solely of sex scenes, without any narrative structure, that can easily be broken up and presented online. According to the Times, the DVD sales and rental industry was $3.62 billion in 2006 (a number estimated by Paul Fishbein, president of the AVN Media Network) but has fallen as much as 50% since then. Rather than solely filming feature length, plot-based movies, like Pirates XXX, which was released in 2005, studios are focusing more attention on filming vignettes instead -- series of sex scenes that occasionally share a theme, like "Girls 'n Glasses".

While some are alarmed at the changes afoot in the industry, it's a fact that studios are focusing less and less attention on making feature DVDs and that interest is only going to decrease from here. In this NYT video, Steven Hirsch, chief executive of Vivid Entertainment, states that while it wasn't that many years ago that all of Vivid's income was dependent on DVD sales, now, less than half of their income is generated from DVDs, largely due to the nature of the internet. Vivid now offers an online membership that users can subscribe to, that allows them to view video clips and photos simply by logging in.

Written on the body: Raging Stallion's Ink Storm offers a different definition of "porn script"

I sent an email to Ben Leon, a director at Raging Stallion Studios, a major gay porn studio located in San Francisco, and asked for his perspective on these changing trends. The NYT article doesn't discuss gay porn, which has historically been much less attached to the plot-paradigm than straight porn. [You couldn't fit much more on those old Super8 one-reelers! -Ed.]

He made an interesting point linking the new web model of porn with the uptick of interest in fetish material, which the NYT article didn't really touch on either. Said Leon, "I also think that porn is changing as the culture changes. A new trend in porn is a heavy swing toward fetish material. This trend is not that different than the wider trend toward making internet content. The new fetish stuff and the internet sites are marketed to a very specific audience. This specialization is both a widening of the market but also a contraction in certain ways. Like mass media-as it becomes more pervasive it also becomes much more targeted. People are now able to find the information (or porn) they want filtered through whatever bias or glass they choose."

Continue reading "All sex, no plot: The new porn?" »

Posted by SFBG at 01:57 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Marke B.

I'm gonna count this as a local story -- because, hey, Google's right down the peninsula. And I'm gonna count this as research -- because, hey, it's my job. While casually looking up photos, for work, associated with the new kinda boring HBO series "Hung" -- about a lengthy middle-aged hustler which takes place in my hometown Detroit, at least a suburb of it, and has served for critics who should know better as nothing but a big ol "shit on the Motor City" punching bag -- I was pleasantly surprised to find that this image came right up at the top of my safe-mode-off Google Image search this morning:

Continue reading "Chicks with dicks on top (NSFW)" »

Posted by SFBG at 01:15 PM | | | Comments (2)

By Juliette Tang

An entire classroom of 5th graders from the Elk Grove region, near Sacramento, will find themselves inexplicably having hot-for-teacher fantasies or, what is more likely more likely, nightmares, within the next few years. As reported by CBS yesterday, Crystal Defanti, a 5th grade teacher at the Isabelle Jackson Elementary, accidentally gifted her students with her own homemade pornography in a DVD that was supposed to be an end-of-year 'memories' compilation. She definitely gave her students something to remember. The DVD started with a menu screen featuring several different videos taken during the school year. The menu items ranged from classroom footage to um, footage of Ms. Defanti completely naked on a couch, crotch-to-the-camera, with her legs sprawled open. Defense experts say that because the whole thing was an embarrassing mistake, Ms. Defanti will likely keep her job and not face any legal consequences.

I think the question that weighs more heavily on our minds isn't whether Ms. Defanti should keep her job or not (I mean, the poor woman's embarrassment is punishment enough) but rather, "How the fuck does one edit a movie for fifth graders and accidentally put their own porn on it?" Because, seriously. Even the most computer illiterate among us know that autobiographical X-rated movies should exist on their own password-protected flash drive somewhere hidden far away from where it might accidentally be stumbled upon.

Continue reading "Hot for teacher?" »

Posted by SFBG at 12:52 PM | | | Comments (3)

By Juliette Tang

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.”

Continue reading "Book sluts unite: The Rumpus's sex-music-comedy night" »

Posted by SFBG at 10:57 AM | | | Comments (0)

By Juliette Tang

Just in time for your big gay Pride weekend, the talented artists at the HomoChic collective have launched their and improved site, now complete with an online store where you can get your very own designer poppers top. Created by SF's Leo Herrera and NYC artisan Blue Bayer, these simultaneously classy and slutty swine-themed poppers tops are available in 14K gold plate or sterling silver, and come with a little chain so that you can conveniently wear your poppers around your neck (the coke necklace from Cruel Intentions is so ten years ago). Says Leo Herrera, co-founder of HomoChic, ""This piece of gay history is the best thing to happen to messy sex and sweaty dance floors since the pump lube bottle & the hanky code." Herrera sat down with the SFBG to talk about the history of HomoChic, the innocent fun of poppers, and what it's like to be a "chubby chasing feeder twink".

SFBG: Can you describe, in your words, what HomoChic is? (And it's absolutely gorgeous gorgeous, by the way). From my perspective, HomoChic is a little bit of everything, from photography to video to design to music to writing to fashion. From a creator's viewpoint, what are you going for with the site?

LH: HomoChic.com is an artist collective, production house, and as of June 09, an online store for prints and gay artifacts. We produce events, films, costumes and images with a focus on gay anthropology and history. We are also planning on representing artists and performers through online promotion and commerce.

SFBG: How did HomoChic take off?

LH: HomoChic has taken off because of our focus on gay history and repackaging it in a way that isn't too focused on looking toward the past (i.e. AIDS activism, "traditional" Pride) to shape ways of taking the Gay Movement to the future. At the same time, we are finding the resources and opportunities to create more of our own projects, so it's something gay men of all ages can identify with. HomoChic started with myself, Jacob Sperber (co-founder of HoneySoundSystem) and my gay brother Allan producing art pieces that revolved around events and vice versa. Whether it is an after-party for an art show, or a film piece produced specifically to be a trailer for a nightlife event. The notion of Chic has always been associated with being a homo. As a lot of us, especially the younger generation, assimilate, we become too focused on being part of mainstream culture and forget that for a long time, the industries have looked to us to show them what's cool and sellable, not the other way around. Think Madonna's Vogue, or disco for example.

SFBG: How were you inspired to make your lovely pig-topped poppers bottles?

Continue reading "Designer drugs: HomoChic unleashes piggy poppers" »

Posted by SFBG at 01:13 PM | | | Comments (1)

By Juliette Tang. Check out Madison in this our Hot Pink List 2009!

Madison Young: renaissance porn star. She is most famous for being an adult entertainment performer and director, but she's also a writer, blogger, sex educator, artist, and the founder of San Francisco's Femina Potens Gallery, an art space dedicated to bringing visibility to the artwork of female, queer, and trans artists in our community. For Madison's work as an advocate of queer empowerment in our community - and for personally making sure (via her www.madisonbound.com Web site) that we have plenty of access to hot queer BDSM - we're showcasing Madison in our upcoming Queer Issue (this Wednesday!) in honor of Pride Week.

Madison recently sat down with the San Francisco Bay Guardian to discuss her work in pornography, the philosophy of Femina Potens, and the importance of art and advocacy in our community.

SFBG: You founded Femina Potens in 2001. How did you come up with the concept of the gallery, one that advances the art of women, queer, trans, and kink communities in SF? Why do you personally feel it is important for these artists to have a space to express themselves and showcase their work?

MY: I always knew that I wanted to create a physical space for artistic growth, collaboration and community connection. When I moved to San Francisco in 2001, I realized the focus that I wanted that space to have due to a lack of existing physical spaces for women and trans community dialogue around art and sex. Femina Potens fills that void. We have created an accessible and visible physical space in the heart of the Castro where the voices of visual, literary, and cinematic artist are being heard. We are breaking down barriers between the artist and audience, creating interactive art works, blurring the lines of gender and alternative sexual cultures, and creating a space for artistic growth of emerging artists who are exhibiting or reading side by side with queer literary and artistic legends like Michelle Tea, Annie Sprinkle, Carol Queen, Inga Muscio, Daphne Gottlieb and more. Its important for us not only to have transitory festivals and events at other organizations spaces but for our community to have a physical space where their work is celebrated. Creating spaces like Femina Potens allows women and trans community an honest reflection of their experiences and their lives. It also encourages more people in the community to exhibit their work. Our audiences range in gender and sexuality, attracting a crowd that is drawn to cutting edge art, alternative sexuality, avant-garde performances, and flocks of tourists who are interested in the "San Francisco Experience".

SFBG: What sparked your interest in art? How would you describe your level of involvement with the general artistic community?

MY:I grew up in a very small conservative farm town and then the suburbs of Ohio. I always felt like an outsider. I was constantly trying to stretch my wings for something more. I was instantly drawn to theater and art from my first elements of exposure to this world. In a life where I felt unable to to express myself emotionally, I found art in its many forms to be the purest most honest expulsion of what was going on inside of me. Art was a way to connect to others and to communicate. Art was a way to get out of my head and into my body. I convinced my mother to let me attend a performance art school in downtown Cincinnati for my junior and senior year. That is where I truly found myself and knew that art would always be a part of my life. I often tell people that the first sexual experiences that I had were those that happened on a stage in a black box theater. That is where I first was able to let myself go and to energetically connect in an intimate way with another person.

SFBG: Do you think there are noted artistic, political, or ideological differences between the work exhibited at Femina Potens and that of more mainstream galleries?

Continue reading "Madison Young: our favorite art slut" »

Posted by SFBG at 03:29 PM | | | Comments (3)

By Juliette Tang

The amazing Dirty D at the Air Sex World Championship in NYC

Have a hot imaginary date and don't know where to go? Head over to the Air Sex World Championships, which will be held at the Independent (628 Divisadero) this Wednesday, June 24, and get up on stage. You'll be sure to score.

What began in Austin, TX, has become a nationwide phenomenon, as it appears a lot of people really, really like pretending to have sex in front of a live audience. The ASWC has been snaking its way around America and finally lands in our sexy city after stops that have included DC, New York City, Toronto, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Portland, and Seattle. Frankly, I'm surprised this hasn't arrived to SF sooner -- although the whole idea of fake sex is sort of PG-13 in a city known for its unapologetic love of outdoor nudity and inappropriate public sex/masturbation/orgies.

After a year of sold out shows at the Alamo Drafthouse and the Paramount theater in Austin, TX, the World Air Sex Championships are taking it to the road. "Air Sex is sort of like Air Guitar," said Tim League, founder of the Air Sex World Championship, "except instead of pretending to play an invisible guitar on stage, contestants get up there and pretend to have sex with someone who isn't there. With their clothes on, typically. They pick a song to perform to and then have two minutes to impress the judges with their overall Airness."

Like many things that have to do with sex without actually featuring real sex (sex video games, hentai, Dutch Wives, host/hostess clubs) the concept of air sex comes from Japan, where it began as an outlet for sexually frustrated men to act out their desires.

Continue reading "The Air Sex Championships (fake) cometh" »

Posted by SFBG at 03:03 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Juliette Tang

It goes without saying that we tend to take our Internet porn for granted.

Naturally, we are so inundated with porn in our pop up ads, our spam folders, and our Google searches (an unfiltered image search for something as innocent as "cucumber" will get you porn on the first page), it becomes the accepted standard that porn will be an immutable fact that as long as the Internet exists and that we will be entitled to free, or at least accessible, cyberporn until the end days. Unless we're in the business of making internet porn ourselves, we don't often think of the business or entrepreneurial aspects involved behind the scenes, or the planning and development it takes to get even the most basic of adult websites off the ground. But adult entertainment, as with any other profession, is a part of an industry (albeit one that is on the fringe of the mainstream) that relies on a complicated network of people who work together and interact as a part of a larger market. And, like all professions, adult entertainment is privy to a phenomenon known as the "Expo".

What industry, these days, doesn't have its own expo? Every day, in hotel conference rooms all over the United States, from coast to coast, from New York to LA, from La Quinta to the Four Seasons, professionals gather to drink coffee and mini sodas to meet one another and discuss things like customer conversion and marketing strategies. Usually these expos are a staid and boring affair, with keynote speeches by tedious suit-types with topics like "Putting Service Above Self". We see them all the time in San Francisco. After the open bar closes down, some of the more adventurous professionals will make their way up from the Renaissance Hotel in Fremont to the city, just to go to Ruby Skye.

At least in the adult entertainment industry, expos provide some entertainment value.

Slightly exposed at the 2008 Cybernet Expo

If the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo is adult entertainment's version of Web 2.0, then the upcoming Cybernet Expo is its version of the TechCrunch 50.

Continue reading "Cybernet Expo 2009 gets deep down in it" »

Posted by Marke B. at 05:55 PM | | | Comments (1)

By Juliette Tang

It started as I was digging around for an old Janus magazine for a friend of mine (sigh, I swear).

Janus -- the classiest and cheesiest British spanking magazine from the 1970s, and still being campily produced to this day -- reads like the Vice Magazine of softcore spanking. There's something that is, strangely and inconceivably, almost high-brow about this periodical, with its modestly made-up and un-enhanced models who look like they stepped out of a Richard Kern photo. The lo-fi, soft-focused, 35mm photos and the intentionally retro design of the layout and typeface -- plus the fact that the magazine's design philosophy has not changed in the last three decades -- imbue the publication with a toothsome genuineness noticeably absent in its more explicit modern day counterparts.

The publication also makes no secret of its aspirations toward a "higher standard." Janus also runs a popular sex shop in Soho, London, that boasts a storefront more fitting of a Prada boutique than a sex shop, and which in the past has participated in an homage to Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, two French poets who had a famously violent affair in the 1870s.

It was by pure accident that, through searching for Janus magazine, I discovered QSM, an online BDSM bookstore, its warehouse located here in San Francisco, woman-owned and -run since 1989.

Continue reading "QSM offers BDSM adventure of a different sort" »

Posted by SFBG at 02:17 PM | | | Comments (2)

By Juliette Tang

One thing I never thought I'd see in my life: an 85-year-old man in an orange paisley pashmina and a red beret screaming "Gum my cock" in front of a crowd of reverent observers. But on Wednesday night at Army of Lovers, held at the Center for Sex and Culture (1519 Mission St) in conjunction with this week's Sex Workers Fest, that was exactly what I saw. Unfortunately, I don't have a transcription of the full text, but trust that it included highly homoerotic descriptions of a bathroom orgy at the Embarcadero, a heavy bondage S&M scene between a sex master and his sex slave, and the aforementioned cock-gumming scene between the author and a toothless young man in suede pants.

George Birishma at Army of Lovers

George Birishma, 1955. Yowza!

Hearing octogenarian playwright George Birishma read from his 1977 novel, S&M Gym, was well worth suffering through some of the night's other performances. Army of Lovers, a two-night spectacle featuring art, video, and performance by men who have worked in the sex industry, opened on Wednesday with performances by Birishma and 9 other former (and some current) sex workers that touched on themes of sexuality, eroticism, isolation, fear, community, and home. Curated by Kirk Read, a former sex worker and current writer, both Wednesday and Thursday showings were completely sold out.

Continue reading "Male sex worker art: first night not so exciting" »

Posted by SFBG at 01:16 PM | | | Comments (17)

"Come support SF's Lusty Lady Theater, the one and only unionized worker-owned peep-show co-op, and their saucy presence in SF Pride 2009! Strippers, dancers, performance, DJ Durt, dykes, debauchery, raffle, panty and date auction, lapdances, bodyshots, and you...."

Lusty Lady Pride Float Benefit Party
Sat/13, 9pm
Lexington Club
3464 19th St, SF
www.lexingtonclub.com

Posted by SFBG at 02:34 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Juliette Tang

Queer Arts Fest

The Sex Worker Fest

This is definitely a good month for worthwhile local festivals. The 6th San Francisco Sex Worker Film, Art, & Music Festival officially kicked off this past weekend and promises to be a thrill for both the intellect and the libido. Smart, kinky, and fun, the Sex Worker Fest is a positive and educational week-long extravaganza that occurs in tandem with the ongoing 12th Annual Queer Arts Festival, a whopping month-long festival featuring over 400 artists in over 100 performances taking place in 18 venues all over San Francisco. The only question at this point is how you're possibly going to fit everything into your schedule.

Michelle Tea

On Saturday, the Sex Worker Fest launched with a benefit at a. Muse Gallery (614 Alabama St) to support Radar Lab, a free queer writers retreat looking to accommodate 12 outstanding queer artists by this summer. Hosted by Ali Liebegott, whose IHOP Papers performs the feat of being at once witty and charming and a poignant lesbian coming-of-age novel, and Michelle Tea, prolific author and Guardian contributor whose novel Valencia joins rank with Michael Ondaatje's Divisadero in being good books named after famous San Francisco streets, the benefit featured appearances by literary luminaries Dorothy Allison, ZZ Packer, and Eileen Myles.

Continue reading "June: Sexiest sexy festival month ever" »

Posted by SFBG at 04:01 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Juliette Tang

"All art is erotic," Adolf Loos famously said in 1908. We say, ok maybe, but not all art is equally erotic. All you need to do in order to test that hypothesis is look at American Gothic by Grant Wood and compare it to anything Edouard-Henri Avril has ever done.

Photo by Craig Scoffone

Those who like your art on the more (i.e. blatantly) erotic side will be happy to know that, this Friday, March 15, at the Aspect Gallery (731 Polk Street), there will be a nude and erotic art show from 6:00-9:30PM. Enjoy food and refreshments (you can BYOB) while perusing a titillating selection of erotic paintings and photographs from 12 local San Francisco artists who are making the art scene sexier for us all.

Man on Bed, by Erika Meriaux.

The Aspect Gallery is injecting a much needed shot of Viagra into the San Francisco art scene.

Continue reading "Aspect gallery goes there Friday night" »

Posted by SFBG at 03:16 PM | | | Comments (0)

In Which Super Sexy Porn People Answer Questions --each week-- From Bay Area Locals. View the last installment here.

By Justin Juul

Fielding your questions this month is AVN’s current “Transsexual Performer of The Year,” Wendy Williams.

Jason W: Will you have to take hormones the rest of your life?
Williams: Yes, unfortunately, if you don’t keep putting female hormones in your body, you’ll start to produce testosterone and that never goes away. It sucks because it’s extremely expensive and you’re never going to be able to finish. If you’re a transsexual you are “in transition” your entire life. Like…I’ve had many surgeries and there are many more I’d like to have. And I’ll be doing hormone replacement forever. But it’s all upkeep. All women have to pay for that and it’s totally worth it. One shitty thing is that insurance won’t cover any of it, but I’m not complaining. There are many other basic human rights issues in our society that need to be dealt with before we work on transsexual stuff.

SFBG: What advice would you give a young person thinking of transitioning?

Continue reading "Ask a Porn Star: Hormones and the mainstream" »

Posted by SFBG at 05:05 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Juliette Tang

Why Kindle when you can burn?

Sometimes, it really is sexier to close your legs and open a book. Especially in the case of good erotic fiction. While porn gives you a balls-in-the-face visual overload, the pleasures of erotica are subtler, more cerebral. A book of erotica is something you can take with you into the bathtub with a glass of wine, candles lit, and jazz on the radio. Or, put the dust jacket of Ulysses on your copy of Hot-N-Naughty: Extreme Erotica and you're totally safe to read while MUNI-ing to work in the morning.

Always known as a bookish city, San Francisco does not disappoint bibliophiles whose tastes lean toward the more sensational. Who knew there were so many different words for "penis"? Like "bald-headed butler"? This Friday (May 8, 6:30PM) at the Good Vibrations on Polk (1620 Polk Street), treat yourself to a free session of "Erotica and Wine" with a special reading by writer John Thursday. More of an "erotic philosopher," Thursday has introduced some truly necessary terms to our sexual lexicon, like zen penis, dong perch, and shirt cocking.

Not an example of "shirt cocking"

If you've got the urge for some sizzling stories but can't make it out to Good Vibes on Friday, check out some of these progressive San Francisco bookstores for some literary hardcore!

Continue reading "Highbrow smut: local literary porno for book lovers" »

Posted by SFBG at 05:59 PM | | | Comments (0)

In Which Super Sexy Porn People Answer Questions --each week-- From Bay Area Locals. View the last installment here.

By Justin Juul

Fielding your questions this month is AVN’s current “Transsexual Performer of The Year,” Wendy Williams. Check out some of her stuff and then send some questions here.

Trent B: What is the best place for a transsexual to live?
Williams: Um….the most progressive place in the U.S. is probably New York. Last year’s “AVN Transsexual Performer of The Year,” Allanah Starr, started a huge huge party trend there and so there’s a lot to do now…just parties and clubs where girls like us can go out and meet guys. Los Angeles is also a great place to be. I spend tons of time there. And then San Francisco, obviously. But that’s just America. There are plenty of great spots overseas too. London, for example. There’s a huge circuit there, mostly cross dressers and transvestites, but it’s still fun. There’s a spot called The Way Out Club in London that caters to girls like us. I love it there.

Lisa N: Do you feel more comfortable with other transsexuals?

Continue reading "Ask a Porn Star: "Porns stars are over!"" »

Posted by SFBG at 04:33 PM | | | Comments (1)

Each week Justin Juul highlights a rad upcoming local sexy event

Who: Madison Young is a local porn star who also directs films, makes art, teaches sex classes, and co-owns the coolest “feminist, tranny, queer” art gallery/performance space thing in the whole entire world. It’s called Femina Potens Art Gallery and it’s the best place to visit in SF if you’re looking to balance out your interest in smut with your love of paintings and sculptures and stuff. If you read SEX SF regularly, you probably already know about Femina Potens and you probably go there at least twice a week. But if you’ve somehow missed the boat, go right now. Girls who are boys who want boys to be girls who do boys like they’re girls who do girls like they’re boys flock to FP daily and nightly to stare at sexy paintings, watch dirty movies, and talk about art.

Continue reading "Peepshow: Art House Sluts" »

Posted by SFBG at 12:20 PM | | | Comments (0)

In which super sexy porn people answer questions -- each week -- from Bay Area locals. View the last installment here
By Justin Juul

Fielding your questions this month is AVN’s current “Transsexual Performer of The Year,” Wendy Williams. Check out some of her stuff and then send some questions here.

SFBG: You’re known for using blogs and video diaries to develop and maintain a really intimate relationship with your fans. Can you tell us a little about them? Are they mostly straight men?

Williams: Yeah, they are. You gotta understand that my fans are attracted to the feminine qualities they see in me and that many of them just consider the dick to be a fetish. Transsexual porn has a very divided fan base, actually. For example, there are people who want to see the transsexual as a bottom only. For them, the fact that she has a dick is just kind of a best-of-both-worlds thing. They would never do it in real life, but they like to see it. I don’t know what that means as far as sexual orientation goes, but I do know that most of my fans identify as straight men. They’re never gonna go to a gay bar and try to pick up guys because they’re not attracted to masculine qualities. They like long hair, breasts, and asses. Obviously, since I have a cock, there’s some question about their actual straightness, but that really doesn’t matter. I’m sure I have bi-sexual fans and I’m sure there are people out there who just want to fuck anything with legs. Whatever. I don’t believe in rigid labels.

SFBG: Yeah, the lines always get blurry when you really start to look at this stuff. I think smart people view sexuality as a continuum that shifts around throughout life. The labels don’t really fit anyone perfectly.

Williams: Yeah, it’s hard not to use the labels sometimes though. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that transsexual porn is marketed to and made for a straight male audience. Ask any gay guy if he’s attracted to transsexuals and you’ll get the same sort of answer: “God, no! I don’t want titties on my back. That’s disgusting!” Transsexuals and drag queens have a place in the gay community, but we’re not sex objects. We are a form of entertainment.

Continue reading "Ask a Porn Star: Wendy Williams on straight lust and sex objects" »

Posted by SFBG at 11:55 AM | | | Comments (1)

By Juliette Tang

Isabella Rossellini is a woman who wears many hats. Actress, model, writer, philanthropist. Now, Rossellini can add "filmmaker specializing in animal pornography" to that already impressive list. "When needed, I can have an erection six feet long and stick it inside a female," exclaims Isabella Rossellini, clothed not in her standard designer fare, but in a paper mache whale costume, of which the defining characteristic is an attachment of a giant pink penis in full erection.

Hallelujah, season two of Green Porno is underway!

Rossellini writes, directs, and lends her acting chops to the quirky Green Porno series, which features the actress, donned in hilarious animal costumes, describing the various mating habits of members of the animal kingdom. The series is winsome and fun, not just because of Rossellini's infectious charm, but also because of the wonderful craftsmanship of Andy Byers, a Brooklyn-based artist who created all the sets and costumes. His costumes are hand-made, crafts-influenced, and seeped in an adult's residual nostalgia for bad elementary school Halloween costumes meticulously made by well-intetioned mothers hungry for Kodak moments. There's also the fact of Rossellini's sexy, ambiguously European accent, with its traces of Italian and Swedish, which lends richness and whimsy to phrases like "Penises, different penises, all trying to get as close as possible to my eggs!" The series is peppered with Rossellini's cheeky and good-natured translations of beastial intercourse, and pronouncements like "we are sequential hermaphrodites" reminds me very much of a Polish biology teacher I once had, who always confused the term "organism" with "orgasm," to jocular result.

Continue reading "Isabella Rossellini and "crazy animal sex"" »

Posted by SFBG at 11:01 AM | | | Comments (4)

In which super sexy porn people answer questions -- each week -- from Bay Area locals
By Justin Juul

Wendy Williams is an award-winning movie star with nearly a half-a-million films under her belt. But that doesn’t mean this month’s featured celebrity is some shallow Hollywood glamour snob… quite the opposite, actually. In fact, it only takes a second of conversation with Williams to realize that she’s really just a down-home southern girl who enjoys the simple things in life.

Williams likes traveling, shopping, advanced social networking and, um…interracial gangbangs. Okay okay okay! So maybe Williams isn’t exactly what you’d call normal, but that’s why she’s so much more intriguing than other media starlets known for dropping their vowels and dipping their thongs. While traditional southern belles like Jessica Simpson, Britney Spears, and Brooke Hogan waste their/our time making crappy music, popping pills, and collecting the worst sunglasses you’ve ever seen in your life, Williams keeps it real and focuses her energy on something we can all relate to: steamin’ hot tranny sex. What I’m saying here is that trans porn is better than reality TV and that mainstream pop icons have less talent than the people you see on Fleshbot everyday. I’m also saying that Williams is much cooler than all the girls I mentioned above because she’s an interesting individual with a mind of her own and those other girls are pretty much the opposite of that (although Britney got pretty cool there for a second).

Anyway! Enough with the half-assed shot at social commentary, right? Here’s the Wendy Williams story in a nutshell:

Continue reading "Ask a Porn Star: Introducing Wendy Williams, trans sex superstar" »

Posted by SFBG at 01:55 PM | | | Comments (6)

By Molly Freedenberg

I've recently realized that Ellen Sussman's Dirty Words: An Encyclopedia of Sex (Bloomsbury, 2008) was a strange (good? bad?) choice as the first book I would read on the bus during my first month of car-free living in San Francisco. And not simply because the subject matter of an anthology of essays inspired by words like "cunt," "fuck," and "dirty sanchez" might have the potential to turn me on, which could either lead to embarrassingly obvious physical symptoms (flushed cheeks, unusual frequency of crossing and uncrossing legs), or simply the frustrating reality of wanting to do something (get off) somewhere I can't (the bus).

No, the main issue, I discovered, is the chapter heads. Each new section starts with the word in question, big and bold and impossible to miss. CUM! HAND JOB! VAGINAL EJACULATION! It's as though the designers wanted its visual impression to say, "Hey! Look at me! I'm a dirty book!"

Continue reading "Dirty Words on the bus" »

Posted by Molly Freedenberg at 01:17 AM | | | Comments (1)

By Molly Freedenberg

While catching up on the last season of the L Word last night, I was reminded that I'm not that into porn. Thing is, I do get turned on by media - photos, stories, movies - just rarely media that's meant explicitly, or exclusively, to excite me sexually. Call it a girl thing. Call it a woeful lack of porn geared towards my particular interests. Whatever you call it, it doesn't bother me - primarily because there are so many other places (besides actual, you know, life) I find sensual stimulation. Here are some of my favorites:

1. The L Word

It's been awhile since I've watched this Showtime series about ridiculously attractive, femme-y lesbians in L.A. But as I watched the steamy tango (real, not euphemistic) between Bette and Tina in the second-to-last episode of the series, I was reminded of how sexy I used to find all the girl-on-girl action that punctuated every episode. I didn't even realize how much until I tried to watch it with my Mom. Both uncomfortable, we turned it off halfway through. "I think I'd rather watch this ... uh, alone," she said. My inner embarrassed teenager and I couldn't have agreed more.

Just one example: Shane and Carmen. (Please ignore the cheesy music.)

Continue reading "Confessions: My favorite accidental porn" »

Posted by Molly Freedenberg at 07:36 PM | | | Comments (0)

Photos by Darwin Bell. Text by Marke B.

Logan McCree, the inky "it" porn boy of the moment (whither Francois Sagat?) accepts his "Performer of the Year 2009" award. His current studio, Raging Stallion, swept the awards again this year.

Those ravishing Hungarians, the Visconti Triplets, on the GayVN red carpet. The won nothing.

Well! The sprawling, exhaustive GayVNs ("the Oscars of gay porn") pretty much swallowed the weekend whole for many of us. The stars! The awards! The tragedies! The complete winners list is here.

All in all, though, the entire thing was pretty relaxed and entirely fun -- moreso than I expected. There was even a charity aspect, with a pricey pre-ceremony "Porn Brunch" at the LookOut in the Castro attracting a number of curious onlookers, rabid fans, and stellar anal wattage for a taping of salacious and sometimes humorous Webisodic adventure "The Tim and Roma Show" -- raising some bug bucks for StopAIDS. I wish there had been more food, but the "bottomless" (ha!) mimosas soon made me forgot that I was probably the only hungry person there.

Logan, pre-win, on the couch at the LookOut

Logan's man helps him show off his assets

The endless night before had seen porn studio "reception" (double ha!) parties all over the Castro, in which boneriffic stars got very "up close and personal" with fans and photogs alike. Snapper Darwin Bell was there until the bitter, bitter end. Below is one more shot of my current threefold obsession, the Visconti Triplets, and then after the jump -- and so, SO NSFW -- perennial porno sunshine boy (and media mogul!) Barrett Long demonstrates his tongue-tickling talent for autofellatio. It took a couple tries, but we stuck with him!

Continue reading "Photofabulous GayVNs (NSFW)" »

Posted by SFBG at 02:52 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Danica Li

Ang Lee and James Schamus have, in tandem, produced and directed nearly a dozen movies. They count between them a trio of Taiwanese family dramas, a civil war epic, an Austen-derived austerely British comedy of manners, an encounter with the Hulk, and a Chinese-language film about flying warriors and a green sword of destiny that grossed a whopping 200 million bucks worldwide. The duo took the stage at Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall recently, in conversation with the Berkeley English Department's Professor Jeffrey Knapp. The premiere topic of conversation for the first half-hour? Sex.

I diagnose this as program coordinators On the Same Page's gesture at edginess and being "with it" -- or at least as an effort at warding off the buttoned-up stodginess and rehearsed, by-rote deliveries that have plagued past presentations (see: Stephen Hawking, Garry Wills). For starters, the audience was treated to a presentation clip in which a series of explicit splices from 2007's Lust, Caution were cross-cut with characters from Lee's other films expressing distaste and affecting grimaces, a dynamic that ended with a raunchily symbolic big bang (taken from 2003’s Hulk). It was enough to provoke a smattering of laughs from the audience, and was an easy enough segue into the first question: Why do so many of Lee's films involve sex, as it were?

An unguarded moment from Ang Lee's 2007 film Lust, Caution

Continue reading "Ang Lee: Let’s talk about sex?" »

Posted by SFBG at 02:30 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Marke B.

The GayVN Awards: You've felt the gay dude excitement, you've felt the straight dude excitement. Now, feel the excitement for yourself at the upcoming onslaught of gay porn-related events, as we explode through the wormhole of this weekend's fabulous -- and flab-u-less -- events. OMG -- meet the stars! Share the love! Be a part of history!

Hey, don't shoot me -- I'm just the 12-inch pianist.

Will the violent, controversial To the Last Man from Raging Stallion take home the GayVN for Best Picture? Will you take home its stars? Maybe

--------------

Friday, March 27th

6PM

Falcon Studios’ GayVN Weekend Kick-off Party
Hosted By Juanita MORE!
Q Bar
456 Castro

Roll In Style
A Safer Sex Fashion Show
With NakedSwordsman 2009 Steve Cruz
Sui Generis
218 Church

To The Last Man Signing
Does Your Mother Know?
4141 18th St.

7PM

Raging Stallion Studios Party
The Edge
4149 18th St.

Bel Ami Studios Party
440 Castro
440 Castro

Barrett Long's Cockstar
Moby Dick
4049 18th St.

Jet Set Men Studios Party
The Mix
4086 18th St.

Dirty Boy Video Studios Party
Twin Peaks
401 Castro

GayRealityPorn and PornTeam
The Midnight Sun
4067 18th St.

Continue reading "GAYVNs: the long, hard rundown of events" »

Posted by SFBG at 07:45 PM | | | Comments (0)

Each week Justin Juul highlights a rad upcoming local sexy event

Who Have you ever seen that movie where the guy pulls out his dick and rubs it on some other guy’s face and then another guy comes in and he’s like “Hey there buddies, can I get me summa dat?!” Or no, wait! How about the one where the guy is sitting in the sauna at 24 Hour fitness just minding his own business, reading the paper, and then another guy comes up and he’s like “Fancy a blowjob, sir?” Those movies were great! Someone should set up an awards show for all the people involved in making them, don’t you think? They could charge tons of money for admission, throw tailgate parties in The Castro, and invite that dude from Ugly Betty to perform stand up comedy. Maybe Margaret Cho could come too. Just a thought.

Continue reading "Peepshow: Gay porn for spring" »

Posted by SFBG at 07:40 PM | | | Comments (0)

Compiled by Molly Freedenberg

Turn up your inner thermostat with the ladies of Body Heat.

-------------

>> Body Heat: Femme Porn Tour 2009
The collective of fierce, sassy, irreverent Femme artists known for smashing stereotypes and challenging assumptions -- including Amber Dawn, kathleen delaney, Meliza Banales, Jen Cross, Vixen Noir -- returns to CSC with porn, kink, smut, erotica, mind-blowing performances and a sex writing workshop.

Thu/26-Fri/27, 7pm, $7-$10
Center for Sex and Culture
1519 Mission, SF.
www.sexandculture.org

----------

Continue reading "Hot sex events this week: March 25-31" »

Posted by SFBG at 06:56 PM | | | Comments (0)

In which super sexy porn people answer questions -- each week -- from Bay Area locals
Mediated by Justin Juul

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. Read the last installment of Ask a Porn Star here

James N: How would legalizing prostitution change the lives of sex workers?

Stephen Boyer: Legalizing prostitution would help prostitutes because they wouldn’t fear being labeled a criminal. They would be empowered and able to take control of their situations better. Plus it would do away with the hypocrisy we are currently indulging in as a society. Take the homophobic Ted Haggard for instance, the priest that was caught with a male escort and forced to leave his church and town. Well, Haggard has since gone on television and has publicly admitted that what he did was a “sin,” but as far as I know he never faced any legal penalties despite the fact he was on drugs committing an illegal act. However, low-end prostitutes are being booked all the time and being shoved down the hellish rabbit hole that is our present legal system. I’m for keeping everyone out of that mess!

Gerry H: How do things change when you tell people that you’ve done porn?

Continue reading "Ask a Porn Star: masturbation and legal prostitution" »

Posted by Marke B. at 05:44 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Johnny Ray Huston

Curt McDowell, from Buzzy's Adventures (Zip-A-Tone), ca. 1968-70. Courtesy estate of Curt McDowell

One of the things that I appreciate most about Curt McDowell's art is its shamelessness. It is shameless in a lively, funny, righteous, even virtuous manner that should embarrass prudish American moralists. "An uneven dozen broken hearts," a show of the late filmmaker's paintings and drawings, is a revelatory pleasure because of how directly it conveys McDowell's lust for and love of simple revelry. A scrapbook of photos and drawings attests to McDowell's appetite for asses and fascination with faces, but ultimately, it's a testimonial to a sexuality that shirked labels as it stripped off clothing. A collaged wall of comics and portraits brings one in close contact with McDowell's rich sense of community — one that blurred love and friendship, and mixed family members with figures of imagination.

McDowell’s untamed and uncensored spirit couldn’t be more refreshing today, when pornography (whether commodified or autobiographical) is endlessly subcategorized. But while McDowell’s big heart and healthy libido make for predictable discoveries, his serious talent as a painter comes as a surprise. As a filmmaker, McDowell blazed his own path with short works such as 1971’s self-explanatory yet unexpectedly rich Confessions and 1980’s equally direct Loads. (In 1972’s Ronnie, he merges porn and biographical portraiture with unmatched potency.) His most famous work is the two-and-a-half hour pornographic epic Thundercrack! (1975). It turns out he was just as fierce and skillful with a paintbrush or a set of Magic Markers as he was with a camera.

One of the show’s centerpieces is Untitled (the Beatles in autopsy), a nearly life-size oil-on-canvas naked and dead portrait of the Fab Four from 1968 that deserves a spot in the rich museum of cryptic Beatles iconography and perhaps even within the hall of pop art classics.

Continue reading "Naked kiss: Curt McDowell paints the town" »

Posted by SFBG at 01:01 AM | | | Comments (0)

By Marke B.

OK, all this may be a little tired by now, but I'm still in full agreement with Kimberly Chun's expert take down of Katy "UR So Gay" Perry from January of last year. That was published before Perry's odiously catchy "I Kissed a Girl" became impossible to escape last summer -- the ditty managed to "have it both ways," heh, playing both anti-gay conservatives and LGBTs for maximum chart effect. That's clever, but the song's lame sentiment (kissing girls turns my boyfriend on -- lesbians are only here for my amusement!) still makes my stomach churn.

The parodies came swift and mercilessly, from "I Kissed a Squirrel" (available in many versions) to "I Kissed a Granny" (yeesh!) to "I Kissed a Dog." Oh, enough already, YouTube Nation.

And then, of course, teh gay. I should have known there would be an onslaught of over-the-top backlash when drag superstar Lady Bunny unleashed "I Licked a Girl" on the world last year (first minute below):

Lady Bunny, "I Licked a Girl" at Southern Decadence

Yay, overly familiar gynophobia! Still, it could all be called hilarious if it wasn't a trend. Now, the pendulum has swung back, with emo boys embracing the kissing hysteria, and a flood of "I Kissed a Boy" guyliner-bedecked parodies, headed up by primo "hip" parody purveyors Cobra Starship's version from a Fall Out Boy (!) mixtape. I knew I was gonna have to surrender my critical faculties and just go with the flow when one of my smartest gay friends told me he was completely Lady GaGa for the boy in the video, followed by my bf Hunky Beau's comment: "Oh goodie, he takes his shirt off." At least the dood-singer Gabe lipsyncher (a reader informs us in the that this is a fan vid, not Cobra Starship itself) plays with the whole baseball-bat-bashing theme a little, even if he can't quite bring himself to admit the "he liked it" more than just wanting to "start shit."

Cobra Starship, "I Kissed A Boy"

So much confliction! Smash! Twist! Contort! Feint! Poor thing. I guess my question is, is kissing really that big a deal? And also, with the super-prominence of porn availability in the Internet age, has kissing become the final frontier of sexual boundaries -- the last retainer of intimacy now that all other sex acts have been publicized/commodified? Janet Jackson's boob, Paris and Britney's flashed beavers, and then Katy's emo lesbo-liplock spawn. Well, I guess whatever automatically short circuits "fag" in the comments section these days is maybe a good thing?

After the jump, an explosion of "I Kissed a Boys," with various degrees of homophobic liberation. Thanks, Katy!

Continue reading "Too many str8 boys kissing, maybe" »

Posted by Marke B. at 04:43 PM | | | Comments (6)

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

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?

Continue reading "Ask a Porn Star: Sex with Stephen Boyer" »

Posted by SFBG at 12:10 PM | | | Comments (6)

By Juliette Tang

Attention all you narcissists, fetishists, and exhibitionists, Bombshell Betty's crew of pin-up photographers are coming to San Francisco this Sunday, March 15, and they want to take naughty photos of you in your unmentionables. If you bring your bod to Hotel Frank in Union Square on Sunday between 3 to 9pm, along with your cutest skivvies and your sassiest 'tude, you'll get some star treatment that includes a pin-up posing workshop, a hair and make-up session, and a photoshoot that will make you feel like a burlesque goddess like Bombshell Betty herself. Afterward, you get to keep the disc of more than 200 of your own pin-up portraits, which will make a great present for a significant other, and an even better present for yourself. If you can't make it this Sunday to the group session, you can schedule a private one here.

Along with being the birthplace of Bombshell Betty, San Francisco is also home to other talented pin-up photographers who can help you channel the spirits of Betty Page and Gypsy Rose Lee. Check out some more great local pin-up photography services, after the jump.

Continue reading "I see London, I see France ..." »

Posted by SFBG at 05:47 PM | | | Comments (1)

By Andrea Nemerson. View more alt.sex here.

Dear Readers:

It's a dull, drippy week in California and when the weather gets like this a writer's fancy turns to tentacles.

Manifestly untrue, I know, but mine did. Recently while researching something else (the famous Sybian ride-on sex toy, the one whose dealer claims it will "cause a female to literally explode on it" — I hate it when that happens!) I came upon a repository of tentacle porn, and boy did that take me back. Once upon a time I had somehow managed never to hear of tentacle porn until one night when I was hanging out with my friend Annalee Newitz, the high tech high-weirdness expert and she was all, "Oh, blah blah blah this weird thing and that weird thing and tentacles" and I was all, "Wait, what was that last thing again?"

It's tentacle porn. It's Japanese. Extremely Japanese. Innocent schoolgirl types, drawn anime/hentai fashion with giant eyes and giant boobs and teensy little bodies clad in teensy little schoolgirl uniforms, until they're not, get non-consensually multipenetrated by ... tentacles. How did you think that sentence was going to end?

Anyway, I got the idea and I stored it away and brought it out occasionally to amuse or shock people and I totally forgot I'd still never seen any myself until I went looking for something else and somehow stumbled over the tentacles (another "I hate it when that happens" thing) and it all came back to me.

It's the dullest thing ever. I'd seen enough hentai (anime porn) to expect this (it tends to be weirdly slow and standardized and repetitive and badly dubbed). It's not the easiest sort of porn to project yourself into, even for a person who likes porn more than I do. And that's the stuff without tentacles. The odd thing about the tentacles, beyond the fact that they exist at all (they were invented to get around restrictions on depictions of non-tentacular intercourse), is that they are so ... uninspired. They never seem to be attached to an interesting monster with any motivations besides rape, and they have a very limited repertoire of sexual acts. They're very "bad teenage date" — stick it in, stick it in, stick it in, but unlike a bad teenage date, they can do all the sticking-in at the same time. Whoopty-do.

Here's what I do like about tentacle porn:

Continue reading "alt.sex.column: Shokushu Goukan!" »

Posted by SFBG at 09:03 PM | | | Comments (1)

Each week Justin Juul highlights a rad upcoming local sexy event

Who Don’t you hate it when you forget to close your browser after a hot and heavy self-petting session and then you suddenly find yourself watching porn with your brain instead of your naughty region? What is this shit, man?! Porn sucks. The plotlines are non-existent, the music sounds like it was made on a garage-sale Casio, and the production value is just total shit. But the worst part is the casting. Big beefy jocks with tribal tats and goatees, peroxide blondes with implants and tramp stamps -they may be good at fucking, but compelling character actors/artists, they are not. The problem with porn is that most of it is made in Los Angeles by brainless douchebags and clueless ex-cheerleaders looking for a quick buck. But this is San Francisco. This is the art capital of the entire world, the home of the free thinker, and the land of the awesome. Can’t we get some porn made for us? Yes, we can! Yes, we can! If you’re as sick of Barbie Doll smut as we are, then you should get to know local filmmaker/producer/writer/artist Courtney Trouble. Trouble is the founder of a "queer porn" ("queer" as in not just homo, but alternative as well) site called Nofauxxx.com and she’s the final word when it comes to smut with attitude and character. No Fauxxx is the oldest running queer porn site on the Internet and, to this date, the only spot that mixes alt, gay, lesbian, straight, trans, kink, and BBW genres into one common site. It’s sexy, artsy, entertaining, and totally DIY. In a word: ours.

Continue reading "Peepshow: Punk sex "Roulette"" »

Posted by SFBG at 12:22 PM | | | Comments (1)

By Molly Freedenberg

What’s the worst thing about waiting two hours in the airport for a delayed flight after a long weekend of drinking and subsequent hanging over? Almost everything.

The one redeeming thing? My extra two hours at O’Hare, without a convenient outlet for plugging in my computer, gave me the chance to finish Bad Sex: We Did It, So You Won’t Have To” (Chronicle, 2008), a collection of essays by Nerve.com contributors about funny, embarrassing, ill-advised, and just plain silly sex encounters.

The book, like Nerve itself, is charming, hip (but not trying too hard), entertaining, and extremely readable. It’s also refreshingly multi-generational, containing stories from recent college grads and middle-aged divorcees alike.

Highlights: Monica Drake’s “The Splatter Artist,” about a lover who can’t keep his fluids to himself; David Amsden’s “The Incomplete Triangle,” in which a man discovers the pitfalls of dating a bisexual woman (read: it does not guarantee you a threesome); and Porochista Khakpour’s “The 20-Year-Old Virgin,” which is about small liberal art school culture as much as it is about the boyfriend who believed intercourse was “commercial, pedestrian, and perfunctory.” Though there are some stories too crazy to believe (see the one on vampirism by Kevin Keck), and some about sex so bad it hurts (see “On the Rebound,”), most of these tales are about sex that’s less obviously bad but rather awkward, strange or disappointing in the way most of us have experience less-than-stellar sex. What these it-could-happen-to-me confessions lose in titillation they certainly gain back in relatability and humor.

Continue reading "Bad Sex makes good reading" »

Posted by Molly Freedenberg at 05:27 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Marke B

Dickinson fetes dick

Do those "Oscars of gay porn," the GayVN Awards, actually help premium homosexual video productions gain a wider audience? Sure there's the "recognition of your peers" aspect for directors, actors, key grips, etc -- you may be surprised, but down those stubbly, grunting faces run the tears of several clowns -- but do you honestly rush out after the awards are announced and snatch up the winning discs?

Well, we don't know about that, but the whole shiny shirted shebang -- hosted this year at the Castro Theatre on March 28, with satellite events all weekend -- sure is a lot of septum-searing fun. (We'll have all the details on the wild pre and after parties here as the "big event" approaches.)

Continue reading "Inflatable woman to host glorious gay circle jerk" »

Posted by Marke B. at 11:34 AM | | | Comments (0)

Each week Justin Juul highlights a rad upcoming local sexy event

What: “XOXO Third Annual All-Mediums Nude Art Show” is a mixed-media exhibition featuring local artists obsessed with boobs and butts. All paintings, sculptures, and photosets are based around the idea that clothes suck and that if you can’t even admit that on Valentine’s Day, then so do you. Sounds by DJ Gold, Ultraset, DJ Mama Bear, and Chuck the Naked Saxophone Player. Curated by Go Go Gracie Gallery.

Who: In a perfect world, Chuck Hepburn, aka Chuck the Naked Saxophone Player, would have enough time for all of his hobbies: physics, the saxophone, and nude modeling. But sometimes it’s just not possible. Or at least, that’s what the government and the police would have us believe. Bullshit!

Continue reading "Peepshow: Nude art, naked sax" »

Posted by SFBG at 10:53 AM | | | Comments (0)

In which super sexy porn people answer questions -- each week -- from Bay Area locals. View the last installment here.
Mediated by Justin Juul

Fielding your questions this month is local celebrity, Lorelei Lee. Lee specializes in fetish porn (water torture, whips-n-chains, electrocution, etc.) and has a blossoming side-career as a writer. Check out some of her movies/pics here and then stop into The Makeout Room on Valentines Day (02/14/09) to hear her read at Writers With Drinks.

Michelle M: Are you ever concerned about your privacy?

Lorelei Lee: I’m not exactly sure what aspect of my privacy this question is meant to refer to. I’m not that famous. I mean, no one (to my knowledge) is searching through my garbage or anything, although I do occasionally get recognized in the grocery store or at a bar or walking down the street.

Sometimes people will come up to me and say hello or stutter something endearingly unintelligible. Often, people will say, “you look so familiar,” but they won’t be able to remember why they recognize me. They’ll ask me if I’m “on television” and I’ll say, “Sort of.” Recently I was leaving a BART station and a boy riding by on his skateboard actually fell down on the sidewalk and shouted, “Holy shit!” I was startled and looked at him, and he said, “Uh… you’ve been in movies, haven’t you?” I couldn’t help but laugh. I shook his hand and said, “nice to meet you,” and he kind of stumbled off in the other direction.

Continue reading "Ask a Porn Star: Privacy issues, small penises" »

Posted by SFBG at 03:29 PM | | | Comments (4)

By Molly Freedenberg

Speaking (still) of Suicide Girls, those lovely ladies of alt erotica have published a new book (Suicide Girls: Beauty Redefined, 2008). This one's big and glossy and pretty, with full page photos of select girls organized by location.

I can't deny that it's attractive coffee table material for the yuppie punk. Intro pages look very art-booky with their big, bold type; and the nudie photos are uncomplicated with text or information (other than the model's Suicide Girls moniker). It's certainly more sleek and sophisticated than the first book (SuicideGirls, 2004).

But that's why I like the first book better.

Continue reading "Too slick for the Suicide Girls?" »

Posted by Molly Freedenberg at 10:28 PM | | | Comments (0)

By Molly Freedenberg

Speaking (still) of Suicide Girls, those lovely ladies of alt erotica have published a new book (Suicide Girls: Beauty Redefined, 2008). This one's big and glossy and pretty, with full page photos of select girls organized by location.

I can't deny that it's attractive coffee table material for the yuppie punk. Intro pages look very art-booky with their big, bold type; and the nudie photos are uncomplicated with text or information (other than the model's Suicide Girls moniker). It's certainly more sleek and sophisticated than the first book (SuicideGirls, 2004).

But that's why I like the first book better.

Continue reading "Too slick for the Suicide Girls?" »

Posted by Molly Freedenberg at 10:28 PM | | | Comments (0)

Juliette Tang continues her journey into the altporn world. Read her interview with Vivid-Alt's Eon McKaye here .

God's Girls is an altporn site that is like SuicideGirls except for the fact that it's not SuicideGirls - and nor does God's Girls mention "Suicide" anywhere in the title, which makes me like them more on default. Plus, they have Stoya, and they don't lock their models into impossible contracts. Based in California, God's Girls offers user-submitted DIY erotic photos and videos, plus a social networking community with user blogs, discussion boards, original writing, interviews and more. In our current installment of altporn interviews, the SFBG sat down with Annaliese Nielson, founder of God's Girls, to learn more about the altporn, DIY erotica, and the GG way of things.

SFBG: First, what is the story behind your site?
AN: God's Girls was an idea that i developed over the course of the summer of 2005. I knew a lot of hot girls who seemed to have no problem with nudity and I knew some amazing photographers, most notably Matthew Cooke, who I met during my own foray into modeling. And I had a generous friend who was willing to loan me the money to get everything going. It was just a very natural thing for me to get involved in. I saw myself surrounded by all of this fun and sexual openness and creativity and I knew it needed to be documented. I felt that I could do a better job than some of the people who have alt-erotica sites. I felt that I could be more fair to models, create better content and put together something that girls are proud to be a part of. It all came together relatively easily and after shooting content for a year (God's Girls has always been about amazing content and lots of it-- even when it was just a concept without a website yet) and the site launched in June of 06. This has truly been one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. I have met so many amazing girls and amazing members of my site.

SFBG: Can you describe how you get the content for God's Girls? It's all DIY, right?

Continue reading "God's Girls bare their souls (and more)" »

Posted by SFBG at 10:09 AM | | | Comments (1)

By Juliette Tang. Read her indepth article about the ironic hipster-altporn connection here.

They may look like a slightly trashier, more dolled up version of the run-of-the-mill American Apparel clad hipster, but the girls above aren't really hipsters at all. They're porn stars dressed as hipsters, and they make movies for Vivid-Alt, a subsidiary of Vivid Entertainment dedicated solely to, quite frankly, heterosexual hipster porn. And no, I'm not talking about those Richard Kern photographs in Vice Magazine. I'm talking about hardcore sex -- in tube socks.

Alternative porn, or "altporn," is nothing new, at least not since the advent of the Internet. While magazines like Hustler and Playboy have formulated the aesthetic of mainstream print pornography, the Internet created a democratic space inside which divergent interpretations of sexuality could be easily presented. Altporn began in the late 1990s with Web sites like GothicSluts and EroticBPM and was initially just an Internet anomaly. But due to the popularity of early altporn sites, new Web sites began to appear, altporn gained a measure of popularity, and by the time SuicideGirls surfaced in 2001, altporn was a full-fledged genre of pornography in and of itself. Seeing as early altporn followed the popularity of subcultures like the goth, punk, and emo movements, it was only a matter of time before altporn 'turned all hipster' (as everything is, it seems, these days).

A clip of The Doll Underground, directed by Eon McKai

I got a chance to chat with director Eon McKai, who has made movies for Vivid-Alt like Girls Lie, Debbie Loves Dallas, and The Doll Underground, a movie that, as improbable as it seems, is actually inspired by the Weather Underground. Eon, who calls himself an "aging hipster," says that everyone at Vivid-Alt is "a part of the subcultures that we represent, so if you look at the people who are behind it, I think you'll find that they are pure to the street, and everything is authentic." And he is totally, completely serious about his mission.

Continue reading "Tube socks lust: Director Eon McKai gets Vivid about his altporn mission" »

Posted by SFBG at 09:58 AM | | | Comments (0)

Hey there, horny toad. It's Marke B. from SFBG beckoning you hither into the Guardian's new SEX SF blog -- our local-focussed, sex-positive, Internetical adventure into the land of wanton lust (and education!). Feel the luxurious sheen of its fishnets on your eyeballs.

We felt there was a mighty big gap in the SF blogosphere, and wanted to fill it with something intelligent, playful, Bay-minded, omnisexual, curious, scandalous, irreverent, and respectful of the extreme diversity of the local sex scene. Oh, and lots of fun. This is our "soft launch," our birds and bees beta, our test-icle if you will. (Look, it's late and I'm short on comic material. Throw a hot tomato at me.) Join us each day as our sensual endeavor grows and grows -- but don't forget your safety gear, you little devil.

If you have any suggestions or tips, email here. Now, let's get it on, and pardon our excited glitches.

Photo of monthly wet jock contest at The Rod by Darwin Bell

Posted by Marke B. at 09:55 PM | | | Comments (0)