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The Twisted History Of The Mission Armory
It's all about sex and land use around here in San Francisco, as kink.com (probably NSFW) moves into the Mission Armory and gets the official not-very-welcome wagon greeting from fifty community members yesterday, who braved the rain to protest the online porn industry. Much to the protestors' chagrin, though, it turns out kink.com has already moved in and started filming, and they didn't need to get permission from anyone to do so.
The Armory's got an only-in-San-Francisco history: It was built in 1912, after the original armory burned down in the 1906 earthquake, for the National Guard. In 1976, when the National Guard moved to Fort Funston, the Armory was left empty -- and because of the extensive retrofitting it would need to come up to current earthquake and fire codes, it's been languishing ever since.
The community's had vociferous debates about an appropriate use of the building for almost as long. In the 80s, Delancey Street (now where have you heard about them lately?) tried to buy the building to use in its rehab programs, but community members complained that Delancey Street was not a Mission-based organization. The Coppolas also tried to turn the space into an entertainment center, but that fell through as well.
In the mid-90s and in the beginning of the dot-com boom, various groups tried to buy the space to turn it into condos. Do you guys remember the Mission Anti-Displacement Coalition? (and their radical wing, the Mission Yuppie Eradication Project, made famous by one Ms. Laurel Wellman?) Well, they made their fame opposing any proposal to turn the Armory into market-rate condos, and scared off a succession of would-be buyers in the process. (There was also a proposal to turn the building into a server farm, but that company went dot-com broke.)
After the jump: How Kink.com got in on the deal, community reaction, and -- do you know how expensive it is to heat a dungeon?
Picture of yesterday's protest from ABC 7.
So Kink.com came in after the last developer fled, paid $14.5 million for the space, and because they're a private company and they're in a space zoned for light industrial use, they don't need city approval to get those cameras rolling.
The Mission Anti-Development Coalition has a defensive article in this week's Guardian saying it's not their fault no one wanted to put affordable housing in the armory, Ken Garcia has now managed to be both morally sanctimonious and anti Chris Daly, and Beyond Chron basically throws its hands up in the air and gives up on the Mission.
Meanwhile, Kink.com is cleaning up the Armory building itself, will participate in community hearings on the issue, may open the building up as a community space if people want, is offering tours of the studio to interested parties, and pledges that no one in the neighborhood will even know what's going on inside the building if they don't want. However, the building is a little cold, so they're going to be bringing in space heaters for the talent.
The rain -- gets you every time.