Last friday night I was invited to happy hour at local online BDSM porn mega-giant Kink.com. I have a few friends that work there, and they told me that most fridays at 6pm the whole place closes down and the “bar set” opens up to employees and their invited guests for drinks, dancing to a DJ, playing pool and just generally hanging out. The alcohol is provided, and I enjoyed walking in and seeing the founder behind the bar, smiling, chatting and pouring drinks to a very happy, warm and friendly group of people.
I was quite stunned when I entered the space — the “bar set” is a really nice club! I had walked off a SOMA alleyway street and into a hip underground club; where down the hall began a giant catacomb of huge (multiple) warehouse spaces that have been professionally recreated into a dungeon, barn, waterworks, wrestling arena, sci-fi spaceship bridge, interrogation rooms, office set, dirty bathroom set, alleyway set, “Blair Witch” basement and much more. These are the same people who do Fucking Machines, Real Fucking Couples, Whipped Ass, Wired Pussy, Behind Kink (my fave, a documentary site about Kink.com) and many more porn sites.
I got drinks, had a wonderful and hilarious tour behind the scenes, and took lots of photos. I was not only impressed by the unbelievable quality of their space (I got a *great* drunken tour from cute props personnel), but also by their multiple cleaning facilities and pathogen safety guidelines, their safety rules and the incredible friendliness (and happiness) exuded by everyone working there. Southern California porn is *so* in the fucking dark ages compared to this; this is the future of porn — it’s run like Apple computer and reminded me of my tour of Apple’s Cupertino campus. In fact, when I walked through the office to see the spaceship set I drooled all over their dozens and dozens of huge Apple monitors; everyone gets one at their desk!
Special thanks to Chriso and Paco for the tour and drinks! I was surprised/stopped when I got ready to leave by Kink.com’s founder, who saw me getting ready to go and rushed out from behind the bar to insist that I have a shot with him before I left, hugging me warmly. He brought me into his circle of friends and poured me some very top-shelf tequila, and we toasted — he welcomed me to come and hang out anytime, wanted to chat with me at some point in the future about blogs and stuff, and asked if I’d like to come to their upcoming parties and events. Of course I would! This seems to me like a very sophisticated, highly educated porn utopia; they understand everything from safety and consent to health issues, they spoil their employees, and I recognized a lot of sex educators and sex training personnel from community sex ed institutions on the Kink.com staff. Expect more from me about Kink.com events…
* Upload and post took a while; I shot with two cameras and also got toasted from the tequila, which I never drink. I took my old Sony with my crappy newer Sony and — lo — the older Sony outperformed the new one. They *used* to make such good cameras… The entire set from my evening begins here.
