Polly Whittaker's Blog, page 4
March 26, 2015
Meet Enormvs
Hello from New York! Listen in on a conversation between me and the lovely “manmeat” Enormvs. He was one of our favorite performers at Kinky Salon in San Francisco and since he moved to New York he’s joined the team here to help create the community here. We talk about his pet chicken, what it’s like to feel like a nerd at the cool party, and why performing at Kinky Salon is different from other events.
March 22, 2015
Spaces and Places
Hello from Copenhagen!
I’ve been on such amazing adventures and it’s pretty clear to me at this point that the biggest challenge new Kinky Salon’s face is finding a venue. I’ve been to four cities in the last two weeks and seen first hand that the success of the event is defined by their ability to find a home. Here’s the lowdown of the places I’ve seen so far:
LOS ANGELES: The team in LA has a great venue called the Syrup Loft. It’s already established as a groovy event space with tons of awesome arty things happening. The Syrup Lounge (pictured left) is a gorgeous room with a bohemian vibe perfect for lounging and flirting. The inaugural Kinky Salon in LA went off with a bang in part because the venue was so perfect. It’s the kind of place that we can improve over time, adding décor and perfecting the vibe.
NEW YORK: Our NYC contingent has been struggling with some serious venue problems. Their last party was canceled the day of the event because of unresolvable complications with the venue. They’ve been scouring the neighborhood for a new home since December. While I was there I got to see the new venue they just signed a deal with. It’s a classic Brooklyn loft with a big open main space, brick walls and hardwood floors. It also has two small rooms that will be perfect for play spaces, and we’ll curtain an area off to make the fungeon. It’ll take some work, but it’s a gorgeous loft.
LONDON: The team in London celebrated their five-year anniversary while I was in town. The party was huge, with over 300 people in attendance. Their venue is in the trendy neighborhood of Homerton, and it’s a big empty space that they can configure to their needs. It’s a lot of work to start with a blank canvas, but the London team has great volunteer support, using 60 volunteers for each event! They produced tons of custom décor to make the party feel special, and even built a custom ball pit. They have eight storage containers to store all the beds and décor materials for the event that they truck in for every party. It’s a feat of organizing and a lot of work, but they’re looking for a permanent home.
March 12, 2015
Letter to the London Times
Written in response to this article in the Sunday Times about Kinky Salon
There’s a story that San Francisco sex culture is teeming with uber rich, hedonistic Silicon Valley playboys. The outside world seems to be infatuated with the idea that vast wealth and hedonistic sexuality go hand in hand. It’s a compelling image to portray—with money and power they no longer need morals. They can do whatever they want. They don’t care. It’s like the fall of the Roman Empire. It’s the perfect image of debauchery and decadence. The truth is, as with most things in life, a lot less salacious, and a little more complicated than this satisfyingly titillating template.
San Francisco has always been an incubator for progressive sex culture. It was the first town in America to allow topless dancing and pornography. By the time the sexual revolution blew its wad into the heart of San Francisco, it was already established as a haven for liberal sexuality. The streets in Downtown San Francisco are named Minna and Grace, after the sex workers of the Barbary Coast. San Francisco is a city with history and culture; it’s not just the playground of “young, rich and driven” Silicon Valley white-collar elite. Young people travel to San Francisco from all over the world because they’ve heard that this is a place where you can be yourself. In San Francisco moral structures are questioned, not ignored.
Kinky Salon is a San Francisco event, not a Silicon Valley event. Sure, there are some tech workers in our community, but we also have librarians, social workers, nurses, waiters, firemen, teachers, artists, store clerks and civil engineers, and they’ve found a place where they can be themselves—where being sexual is just being human. It doesn’t have to be shocking and sleazy. We are leaving the sexual dark ages behind, and places like Kinky Salon are leading the way. At Kinky Salon diversity is celebrated, sexuality is playful, consent is paramount, all bodies are beautiful, and creativity is valued above social status. Volunteers run our community, which prides itself on being inclusive and authentic, and our VIPs are the people who take out the trash.
It’s easy to fall back on stereotypes, but the tired image of young, wealthy, narcissistic socialites with a voracious appetite for self-indulgence has been around since the ‘70s. That isn’t what’s happening at Kinky Salon.
Adventure Calls
My bags are packed and I’m ready for my big adventure. First stop is Los Angeles, for their first ever Kinky Salon, then I visit London, who are celebrating their five year anniversary! Then on to Copenhagen and Berlin and then home again.
I promise to video diary the whole thing and send you back my stories from the road.
What do President Obama and I have in common? We both own a selfie stick and we follow each other on twitter
Sex Culture Revolutionaries on Facecrack
There’s a new Sex Culture Revolutionaries facebook group for activists, educators and artists working in the realm of sexuality.
So far it’s been an incredible process just to see the people signing up. We’ve got film makers, performance artists, comedians, sex educators, pro Dommes, therapists, psychologists, podcasters and event producers from all over the world!
You should join.
Kinky Salon Confessions Podcast
We’re at episode number four in my podcast. For this interview I visited a gorgeous hot springs to meet with Sensei, who runs Kinky Salon NorCal. His event is currently our only rural Kinky Salon, located in the Native casino in the sleepy town of Middletown. Sensei is a Kinky Salon original. He worked the door for many years in the early days of Mission Control. Listen in as we talk about friendship, culture, and how anyone can have balls big enough to call themselves “Sensei”.
Available on iTunes, Stitcher, Player.fm, and Tune In! Please don’t forget to rate the show to help it get better visibility!
If you have some great stories to share about your experiences at Kinky Salon and the surrounding culture please let me know! I’m looking for heartfelt realness rather than titillating tales
Take This Shit to the next Level
The Patreon campaign is going strong, and YOU can help support the vision of having Kinky Salons all over the world and spread to the Sex Culture Revolution. Patreon is like Kickstarter but for ongoing projects. You give a set amount (like $1) each month, and that helps create a stable income I can count on. Plus there are some awesome rewards! Watch the video. It’s Hi-larious.
Until next time,
P♥lly
xx
P.S.Check out my website at www.sexculturerevolutionary.com
They call him Sensei
In this episode of Kinky Salon Confessions I travel to Northern California to a gorgeous hot springs to talk to Russell Gonzaga AKA Sensei. If you’re thinking to yourself, “He must have some balls to call himself Sensei,” you’d be right. He was an original character in the Kinky Salon San Francisco scene, and is now host of his own Kinky Salon in NorCal. The interview ends with the plan to do a takeover of his event in a couple of months. I hope you’ll join us!
February 26, 2015
Revolutionary Progress
This newsletter comes to you from the chaos of preparing for the Kinky Salon world tour so I’m doing it in bullet points to save time.
The T-Shirt campaign was successful and in a few short weeks there will be 53 Sex Culture Revolutionaries walking around evanglizing from their chests! Yippee!
There’s a new Sex Culture Revolutionaries facebook group for activists, educators and artists working in the realm of sexuality. You should join.
We ramp up for the Kinky Salon 12 Year Anniversary. Holy shit has it really been that long?
The big Club Kiss relaunch is happening on March 7th. Don’t miss it.
If you have Amazon Prime and a Kindle, my book is now available FREE in the Kindle Lending Library.
I was on Forum on KQED which was super duper exciting. Follow the link to listen in.
PHEW. That’s it for now folks. Next time you hear from me I’ll be getting on a plane!
Kinky Salon Confessions Podcast
In this THIRD episode of Kinky Salon Confessions I wanted to get a perspective from someone totally new, so I talked to a total Kinky Salon newbie. Katie’s only been to one Kinky Salon, even though she thought she’d been to two we figured out during the show her first event was actually a Mission Control party. Listen in to her story, about how much she loved the environment, and about the challenges she faced. Then we end with a rant about hairy pussy.Available on iTunes, Stitcher, Player.fm, and Tune In! Please don’t forget to rate the show to help it get better visibility!
If you have some great stories to share about your experiences at Kinky Salon and the surrounding culture please let me know! I’m looking for heartfelt realness rather than titillating tales
Take This Shit to the next Level
The Patreon campaign is going strong, and YOU can help support the vision of having Kinky Salons all over the world and spread to the Sex Culture Revolution. Patreon is like Kickstarter but for ongoing projects. You give a set amount (like $1) each month, and that helps create a stable income I can count on. Plus there are some awesome rewards! Watch the video. It’s Hi-larious.
Katie the Noob
I wanted to get a perspective from someone totally new, so in this episode I talk to a total Kinky Salon newbie. Katie’s only been to one Kinky Salon, even though she thought she’d been to two we figured out during the show her first event was actually a Mission Control party. Listen in to her story, about how much she loved the environment, and about the challenges she faced. Then we end with a rant about hairy pussy.
February 13, 2015
We Create Culture
We create culture. You and I and our parents and our ancestors. We are all a part of it. Nobody is exempt from this great communal task. Culture is like a giant homunculus, given life through the lives we live. Rearing its giant head, it looks at us with vacant eyes. How should I feel? What’s right and wrong? In the past the answers were easier. Where and when you were born was the determining factor, and your morality was decided for you. Victorian England? Sex is bad, listen to your father. Norse? Welcome guests to your hearth, die a hero and live forever in Valhalla.
We didn’t get to decide what we believe until recently.
We have watched the world shrink. The time it took to travel shortened and we all got cozy. People fled wars, or just sought warmers climes. We traded places. Instead of absolutes, the options became broader. This is what we believe, but these are your neighbors and you should respect their beliefs too. And so we asked our neighbors what they believed and we discovered they knew some pretty cool shit. They taught us how to meditate, how to do yoga. They reminded us that prayer is not just an empty ritual. And most importantly, we discovered the parallels between all ideologies. At the end of the day all the myths and the ceremonies sound kind of similar. What a wonderful and unique moment in history when the overarching belief system isn’t to fear the gods of your strange neighbors, but to value them, experience empathy, and seek out the connections rather than differences.
Our brains have gone quantum. Instead of one belief system with a basic message driven and enforced by its limited local culture, we are now managing a multitude of ideologies, from civilizations all over the world, overlaying each other, cross referencing and merging. If, as citizens of global culture, we are expected to respect our neighbor’s beliefs, then it’s natural we become critical of the beliefs we were raised with. Morality isn’t black and white anymore. Instead of being told what’s right and wrong, we get to decide for ourselves. We can create our own moral structures based on our personal experiences in the world.
I don’t mean to break out into religious commentary and get all serious, but it’s difficult to talk about the lineage of our sex culture without talking about religion. When it comes to our sexuality there’s always been some sort of belief system wrapped up in it, whether we’re shamefully trying to hide our lustful inclinations from a wrathful god, or celebrating the cosmic force of creation by ritually re-enacting the birth of the universe. Godless sex is a very modern phenomenon. Or a very ancient one.
With this intricate, personalized, and nuanced relationship to our belief systems, we get to approach our morality critically. We also get to question how we want to approach our own relationships. We are searching for answers to our culture’s broken relationship to sexuality though our individual experiences. If our desires don’t fall within the constraints of traditional relationships, we can explore outside those structures and find out what works for us. Will we be happier? Perhaps. Some people might get exhausted with all the complexity and yearn for simpler times, when a man could get down on one knee and expect his woman to be faithful to him for life. But for some, it’s liberating. The world of relationships is opening up to create options that were never possible before. As human culture develops, and the great homunculus strides onward, perhaps we’re taking one step closer to understanding why society’s relationship to sexuality has been so challenging, and find some lasting solutions.
We create culture. Every single one of us. I pull the great homunculus this way, influencing it with my thoughts, and then you wrench it back. Thoughtforms that become popular in the greater community feel like truth to those who experience them, but it’s all part of this dance. The great beast reels and takes another step. We’re all here, either cheering it on or begging it to stop. Seven billion shepherds with one sheep.
February 11, 2015
Claim Your Sex Culture Revolutionary T-shirt!
Now it’s easy to let the world know that YOU are a SEX CULTURE REVOLUTIONARY. But there’s a caveat! This awesome T-shirt will only be printed if I can get an order of at least 50 shirts in the next 10 days! So don’t delay.
This new logo was created by Craig Feinberg, Creative Director of Begson in Los Angeles. He did it because he’s inspired by the vision of Kinky Salon and wanted to give us some love. Craig’s background includes Taschen, Bennetton, Fabrica, and Begsonland. You can see more of his work here: http://www.Begson.com
He’s kind of a big deal! And he’s adding this beauty to his portfolio, which means random awesome people who would never otherwise see it will see it, and it will become a famous, iconic symbol of our generation! Maybe. Either way it’s still a cool shirt. Screen printed by genuine bona fide perverts right here in Oakland California! You know you want it.
Plus all the money raised goes towards supporting the INTERNATIONAL KINKY SALON MOVEMENT.
MOAR products coming soon (you know we need panties and manties) but not unless you tilt this bitch, so buy your T-shirt NOW!
Kinky Salon Confessions Podcast
Welcome to the SECOND episode of Kinky Salon Confessions. Now available on iTunes, Stitcher, Player.fm, and Tune In! Please have a listen and don’t forget to rate the show to help it get better visibility!
In this episode I talk to Dan and Nicole in Portland. You can listen in on my conversation with these long time Kinky Salon peeps talking about negotiating open relationships, and being in love with a whole community.
If you have some great stories to share about your experiences at Kinky Salon and the surrounding culture please let me know! I’m looking for heartfelt realness rather than titillating tales
Take This Shit to the next Level
The Patreon campaign has
launched! You can help support the vision of having Kinky Salons all over the world and spread to the Sex Culture Revolution. Patreon is like Kickstarter but for ongoing projects. You give a set amount (like $1) each month, and that helps create a stable income I can count on. Plus there are some awesome rewards! Watch the video. It’s Hi-larious.
Club Kiss Relaunch March 7
Club Kiss, Kinky Salon’s sister club, has been on hiatus since the loss of Mission Control. On March 7th it will be relaunching with a huge party at Danzhaus. If you’re looking for a more hetero-couple-oriented event with less costumes and pagentry-but still lot’s of style- then Club Kiss might be the place for you.
Kiss has been San Francisco’s favorite spot for modern couples looking to add a little vavoom to their social lives since 2005. With a sophisticated social scene as well as a steamy playspace, it stands apart from swinger parties with its zero pressure, relaxed atmosphere and hot, intelligent, vetted crowd. Guests come to meet other couples, or just to check out the scene. It can be flirtatious, and it can be downright scandalous at Club Kiss.
Gender balance is slightly more women than men.
Rich, fun, flirty social scene. Getting laid is only part of it.
No pressure to interact sexually with other couples.
House rules and monitors mean a safe space.
Concierge for single women keeps them protected.
Zero tolerance for intolerance. Bi friendly.
Until next time,
P♥lly
xx
P.S.Check out my website at www.sexculturerevolutionary.com
Dan and Nicole in Portland
Listen in on my conversation with long time Kinky Salon peeps Dan and Nicole, talking about negotiating open relationships, and being in love with a whole community
