For this week’s column, I had the absolute pleasure of getting a grand tour of local fetish and BDSM retailer (and 30+ year institution) Madame S and Mr. S Leathers. (Craziest toy: the human box/vacuum cube.) A few weeks ago I was at Kink.com‘s happy hour and was introduced to Paige White, a respected and talented BDSM filmmaker and Mr. S’s Director of Operations. She was super-sweet and friendly, and excited about my Fetish Sex book (!), and invited me to see their digs — and it was *amazing*. Everyone there was so genuine and warm and dedicated; it made me so proud that they’re such a ‘San Francisco treat’. The tour was tuesday, they graciously allowed me to shoot photos and video, and I made it my thursday column.
The video is on this show page and embedded after the jump. In the video, Paige locks me in the “isolation cell” — good times. The owner, who is just the coolest, Richard “Big Daddy” Hunter, sent me a bunch of photos of customers having fun getting tied up (and more) in the store — these are in my Fleshbot post about the experience, Mr. S Leather: Tops In Customer Satisfaction. Here’s a snip from my Chron column this week, Everything’s Better With Leather:
An adorable, enthusiastic, grinning Paige White crouches down on the Mr. S showroom floor next to a dildo that looks to me like the size of a small — OK, medium-size — fire extinguisher. She is crouching because, in my tour of the amazing facilities at San Francisco’s Madame S (madame-s.com) & Mr. S Leathers (mr-s-leather.com), this is one item I simply cannot photograph without a human for comparative perspective. She laughs, “Isn’t it incredible what guys stick in their butts!?” I’m cracking up, knowing she’s at least half-right, because part of me still thinks, “That’s got to be a prop.”
But if anyone would know what BDSM fetishists, leather lovers, rubber dollies and the kinky cats and kittens of the world want, it’s most certainly the staff — who seems more like family — at Mr. S. A couple weeks ago, I’d met Paige, Mr. S’s director of operations, over cocktails. When I found out that Mr. S employs nearly 100 people, and designs and manufactures literally thousands of goods in its SOMA warehouse, I asked her if I could see it for myself.
And what surprised me wasn’t the big butt plugs or the rubber hoods with funnels on the mouths — hey, I’ve shopped at Safeway on Market Street during Folsom before. No, what surprised me was all the giddy retellings of customer interactions, the sheer smiley joy with which employees describe testing every product Mr. S makes, and then the quiet, passionate seriousness exuded by the designers and makers in the giant manufacturing rooms behind the storefront.
The giant dildos were in the dildo annex off the main store floor, and we’d interrupted the quiet shopping reverie of a grinning boy-girl couple — Mr. S really could be called “a clean, well-lighted place” to shop for riding crops (and rubber isolation suits). Paige explained to me that customers were allowed to try much of the product in the store, and there are occasional hands-on “try before you buy” episodes involving ropes, cages and restraints. And some very naughty boys, I was assured by Mr. S’s charismatic owner Richard Hunter (affectionately also called “Big Daddy” Hunter).
Link.
* * * * * * *
this is the companion video to my Chronicle column Evereything’s Better With Leather; here I talk about visiting Madame S and Mr. S, San Francisco’s premiere fetish and BDSM makers and sellers. in this video I talk about and show many items, and get locked in an isolation cell. fun!
as a footnote, iMovie HD corrupted half my video, quit functioning except for basic editing and added all kinds of editing/sound glitches. I inserted some stills to replace the corrupt video and hope it’s okay — this took hours longer than it should have and was frustrating enough to make me want to take a little break from video, bleh!
