The former Kink.com Armory, which Kink moved out of and sold five years ago, is set to return to being a concert and event venue — which it was briefly before the pandemic — but the new owners have also submitted plans to add a jazz club inside.

There were loud rumors back in 2018 that the historic Armory building at 14th and Mission was going to become an SF branch of the Soho House empire — something that Soho House denied at the time. The confusion stemmed from the fact that the new owners who purchased the 200,000-square-foot building from Kink.com, AJ Capital Partners, had a Soho house connection — CEO Benjamin Weprin had been the developer behind Soho House's Chicago property, and AJ Capital Partners had Soho House among its hotel clients.

Now, in March 2023, we finally get some movement on the building by AJ Capital Partners, in the form of a project review meeting that's been set up with the SF Planning Department. As SF YIMBY reports, the proposed project includes interior renovations that would add a new, two-story VIP lounge in the "castle" portion of the building, as well as "venue support" space at the back end of the massive Drill Court space.

The biggest new proposed addition, however, is a new bar and "Jazz Club" space on the first floor, which would be accessible from Mission Street. The floor plan indicates a small "dining area" in the Jazz Club, in addition to a bar, and what looks like a 100-seat venue beside it with a small stage.

Interestingly, getting back to the Soho House vibe, an aerial rendering of the exterior of the building that is perhaps only meant for prospective office tenants includes a roof deck spanning the entire Mission Street section of the building. (The building still has two full floors of potential office space on the third and fourth floors of the "castle," and the plans also include PDR [production, distribution, and repair] space on the second floor.) We were never aware of there being such a furnished roof deck and it's unclear if that was ever created — it's also not part of the new plans that SF YIMBY got ahold of.

A section about building amenities on the Armory's current (possibly outdated) website has a non-working link about said roof deck.

Hilariously, that website has a History page on which there is no mention of Kink.com having used the building for offices and porn production for over a decade.

AJ Capital Partners has made no public statements about their plans for the building, but at least we now know that their intentions include taking advantage of the massive Drill Court as an entertainment venue. But there's no word on when they might let the place come alive again — given these construction plans, it could be a year or so in the future.

Stay tuned as this project takes shape.

Top image: Mike Hoffman/Wikimedia

Folsom Street Fair revelers were greeted with a warm and sunny day Sunday — all the better for showing more skin and trotting out their leather and fetish finery in the daylight. What began as a neighborhood festival that took on the leatherish theme of the gay bars that once dominated the SoMa neighborhood, the fair has morphed over three decades into a much larger celebration of BDSM and fetish cultures for gay and straight alike, annually drawing about 400,000 people — making it the third largest outdoor public event in California behind the Tournament of Roses Parade and SF Pride.

This year the fair went down simultaneously with some small protests in Berkeley around a sparsely attended, fairly disorganized appearance by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Given how we've heard from multiple sources over the years how conservatives and red states tend to be the country's biggest consumers of porn, and kink, one could make a case that Yiannopoulos would have drawn more supporters across the Bay were it not for the conflict, and the extra-good weather for Folsom frolicking.

From colorful furries to pony play aficionados to a male mermaid (merman?) in rope bondage, photographer Erik Wilson captured an array of Folsom fashions across the fetish spectrum.

You can find a great many more that are more safe-for-work here on Instagram.

Related: #TBT: The First Folsom Street Fair, Way Back In 1984

When Kink.com announced they'd be selling off a bunch of used props and furniture a few weeks back, interest was high, and the story went around like wildfire — because San Franciscans love a good used sex sofa. Now, they've put the call out again to come "purchase a piece of SF kinky history," and this time, you don't need to sign up or make an appointment or whatever — drop-ins are welcome.

Once again, various props and furniture will be on offer, as well, I'm told, as some costumes. The sale will be on from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, July 15 and Sunday, July 16. Enter at 1800 Mission Street. And I've yet to confirm if the two stained toilets pictured here are still available.

The sale comes as The Armory is transitioning into a full-time event space — and, for instance, the once heavily furnished Fourth Floor of the building, which was filled with Victorian accoutrements and used for many, many Kink parties and shoots, was over Pride weekend transformed into a VIP lounge for the Jungle party, with much of its furniture gone, and a dance floor in one half.

Kink.com's productions have already moved to Nevada (see more about the final production shot at the Armory here), and presumably they've taken all the whips and chains they need. So think of this like a garage sale at the home of someone especially sex-positive, and sexually active.

Does your basement play space lack a stockade?* Are you in need of some shackles, mechanical sex devices, or the like? Or do you just like the idea of telling houseguests that the chair they're sitting in was featured prominently in Psycho Bitch Gangbang? Then you may want to head to the Armory on Thursday afternoon where, as part of Kink.com's relocation of all production to Las Vegas, the fetish porn concern is selling off a bunch of props and furniture.

We don't have a list of what may be available as part of this most unusual sort of garage sale, but they've advertised the sale on Craigslist saying it will be happening from noon to 5 p.m. on Thursday. It looks like it may be happening again from noon to 5 on Saturday as well.

"Purchase a piece of SF kinky history," they write. But you can't just drop in. Use the Craigslist link and email them your name so that the security team will have you on a list, should you want to peruse what's available.

Update: Kink sent over a couple photos of things for sale, including coffins, and a really disgusting looking toilet.

Previously: Final Kink.com Film Shot At The Armory Is Released And It's A 'Twin Peaks' Porn Parody

* SFist has not confirmed that a stockade is among the items for sale, but we are awaiting further details.

SF-based BDSM porn concern Kink.com, as we now know, is no longer using the historic Armory complex to shoot their array of mostly web-based porn productions, opting instead to move most of the production work to Las Vegas. And now the final Armory-shot porn film is out, and it's a Twin Peaks parody called Damn Fine Pie!.

As XBiz reports (link NSFW), the setting for Damn Fine Pie! is the brothel and casino over the Canadian border called One-Eyed Jacks, which figures into the original TV series. And building off of the plot of the series, the porn parody centers on the character of Audrey Horne (played by Amber Ivy), who goes to One-Eyed Jacks to try out prostitution, curious about the dark side of her dead friend Laura Palmer's life. There she runs into a group of male characters that will be familiar to fans of the show: Dr. Jacoby (Tommy Pistol), James Hurley (Owen Gray), Bobby Briggs (Will Havoc), Ben Horne (Mickey Mod) and Leo Johnson (Jon Jon). And they have a gang bang.

"What could be a more fitting end to the surreal decade we spent at the Kink castle than a tribute to this dark, cult series?” says director Maitresse Madeline Marlowe. "As a huge fan of surrealist films, David Lynch has played a pivotal part in forming my artistic spectrum. Being able to shoot a parody of my favorite TV show is absolutely a high point as a director."

She adds that after the shoot was over the cast and crew had "a champagne toast to the final farewell film at the Armory."

The decision to move production to Las Vegas, originally framed as a protest against growing regulation in California like that recent proposition (which did not pass) mandating condom use on all porn shoots, may actually be a bit more business-minded in the end — sources within the company have said that they've already overused many of the sets they built in the sprawling building and needed a change, and that the larger issue is really the introduction of new office tenants who likely won't want porn being shot in their midst, and the transition of the massive former drill court space into a concert venue. Liquor sales and nudity don't mix in California, under the law, so the company risked running afoul of the ABC if they continued their shooting schedule in the building with a regular concert schedule happening as well.

Vice looked in on the final shoot and wrote a piece about the shuttering of Kink's SF production studio back in March, looking back on the thousands of porn shoots that took place there.

For the past decade, the Armory has been a brick-and-mortar incarnation of the Marquis de Sade's wet dream. It's a place where all manner of fetishes, from the grotesque to the glamorous, were explored in unrelenting detail. More than 8,000 pornographic films featuring everything from erotic waterboarding to "enema debutantes" were made here, in San Francisco's Mission neighborhood. This is where Kink hosted dozens of classes and workshops on topics such as electroplay and the art of rope restraint, along with sex-positive events and parties. The Armory wasn't just an illicit landmark — the 200,000-square-foot edifice was a bastion for some of San Francisco's edgy sex cultures.

Vice says that Kink's move out of town after a decade in the Mission is "symptomatic of broader trends of the Silicon Valley-fueled gentrification pushing sex-positive spaces out of San Francisco," but Kink founder Peter Acworth was more pragmatic in talking about it to the Chronicle earlier this year. “Porn is not nearly as profitable as it was,” he said. “We have had to change our business model.” He noted the incredible expense of maintaining the building without having things like concerts and other tenants to pay the bills. He estimated that the building still needs somewhere between $13 million and $20 million worth of upgrades to be brought up to code, and such expenses will have to be paid by bringing in new tenants.

Kink is still maintaining its offices on one floor of the historic Armory, and nightly tours in the space, and its creepy basement sets, will continue for the foreseeable future — at least that's what Acworth was saying in January.

If you're interested in seeing porno Audrey Horne and the gang go at it one last time on the Armory's Victorian-styled Upper Floor, you can do so here (NSFW!! NSFW!!).

Previously: Kink.com Moves Production Out Of Armory Because They Want Potential Tenants To Be Less Scared

For several years there has been a succession of stories suggesting that the imposing Armory building in the Mission was slowly being relinquished by its owner, BDSM porn concern Kink.com. Three years ago Kink CEO Peter Acworth was threatening to take the company out of San Francisco entirely, renting some office space in Las Vegas ahead of a proposed state law that was passing through the legislature mandating the use of condoms in all porn shoots. But the condoms-in-porn debate aside, the company has apparently been facing bigger obstacles both with the upkeep of their signature headquarters, and with the dwindling market for paid porn content. Talking with the Chronicle this week, Acworth says that all film shoots at the Armory will be ending next month as the company diversifies its interests a bit, and moves to reuse the 200,000-square-foot building for other, revenue-generating ends.

This means that most of those shackles and dildos attached to drills will be leaving the sprawling complex, though Kink says they will be maintaining offices there. The reason, primarily, seems to be that the business can no longer support the huge facility they purchased a decade ago — which had been vacant for 30 years, in part because of the many issues, historic and otherwise, with its reuse. Reportedly Kink.com's subscriber base has shrunk by 40 percent in this age of plentiful free porn.

Two years ago, Acworth said that regardless of how the condom bill fight ended — that law didn't pass, and a subsequent ballot measure in 2016 also failed — the company would still likely transition out of the building in order to convert some of it to office space for rent. Acworth now says he's looking to convert the top two floors to leasable office space, but what stands in the way now is the recently passed Prop X — the space is currently zoned as PDR (production, design, and repair), and the newly passed law requires landlords and developers to replace any PDR space they convert. Supervisor Jane Kim is working on an ordinance to exempt historic buildings from Prop X, which Acworth is banking on.

And of course there aren't a lot of companies that want to listen to naked gay wrestling matches and women being penetrated with foreign objects while they're on a conference call.

Then there's the already completed conversion of the former drill court space into a concert and event venue with a 4,000-person capacity — something that was first announced a year and a half ago, and won approval nine months ago. That effort has included a whole new floor in the space, soundproofing, lighting, and more, though still to come to bring it up to code is handicap accessibility — and in the interior, for those offices, the building still lacks elevators. The place also needs new bathrooms and a new roof, and Acworth puts the potential upgrades at between $13 million and $20 million. As of recently, he secured a $4 million loan from the bank, on the basis of the drill court's potential revenue, to make some initial building repairs, including some crumbling turrets.

But what does this mean for the popular tours of Kink's basement production facility? Airbnb has a big event scheduled in the space next month, and the Chron notes that another company, cloud communications outfit Twilio had an event there last week. But others, like event organizers for the Golden State Warriors, have been turned off after seeing the remnants of Kink's oeuvre around the building — like a large portrait of a "hunting guy with his penis out" up on the third floor — and have backed out of event plans.

Kink rep Michael Stabile tells SFist, "Tours will continue for the foreseeable future, although [they] could shift in tone. While we might not be producing in the Armory anymore, it's a still an incredibly historic building." You can find those tours here (available twice daily, Tuesday through Sunday, through the months of January and February as of now).*

Further, Acworth adds in an email, "The basement sets etc, are not being dismantled until we can find new uses and users for the space. Until that time, tours will continue. Actually, I hope tours will continue indefinitely but morph to 'behind the scenes of an event space'." But, he has some rightful hesitation there. "I suspect the real reason the tours were so successful was due to the sex, however."

Previously: Permit Approved, Armory To Become 4,000-Person Concert Venue

* This post has been corrected to say that tours of the building will continue.

For the third year in a row, the purveyors of filth over at the Armory are hosting a haunted house in their cavernous headquarters. Unlike the first year, this latest dive into darkness follows less of a blood-stained theatrical route and more of a tie-you-up-and-leave-you-in-a-room-with-an-insane-person route, kind of like last year. Instead of being led through some sort of spooky series of vignettes, Escape: Hell in the Armory, as the very interactive experience is called (more on that later), drags you into a dark world and puts the onus on you to get your ass out.

“This year, we’ve produced an entirely new kind of horror, where participants will be forced to escape from the darkest recesses of the century-old San Francisco Armory,” Audrey Joseph, Director of Events at SF Armory, explains in a press release. "Escape: Hell in the Armory is beyond anything we’ve done before — a terrifying game of cat and mouse, played out in a truly haunted building.”

The experience, I will say, is very fun, and you should probably go in blind if you want to be legitimately spooked. However, for those wanting just the teeniest of hints as to what they're getting themselves into, the sparse official website is of little help. With that in mind, here are six suggestions you should probably consider before signing away your life — and don't worry, we've kept the spoilers to a minimum.

1. Find a date. Tickets are sold in blocks of two, and you really need a +1 for the show to work. Also, and trust me on this, you'll want someone's hand to hold onto — making it someone you're comfortable squeezing tightly while you yelp in panic is an added bonus. Oh, and while the show is not super-erotic, do not bring your mom. Or your really conservative cousin.

2. Don't be late. Seriously, don't be late. The tickets are timed out for every thirty minutes, and you should plan on being there five or 10 minutes before your scheduled start time. This will both give you plenty of time to check your purse and jacket (which, as the woman working coat check correctly informed us, you really should do), as well as to get sufficiently nervous as you stew in a low-lit waiting room.

3. Read the waiver. So at some point, before you're told to face the wall and a hood is placed over your head, you'll be ask to sign a waiver. You should read it, as your signature means you won't sue Blackout (the event producer) or Kink.com — even in the case of death. And while things don't get that wild, you should always know what you're consenting to.

4. Take a deep breath, and pray you've worked out any panic issues. The premise of the "unique and terrifying escape-the-room game with haunted inhabitants," as its promoters bill it, is that you have to figure a way out. For that to be possible, well, they first have to trap you inside. Think hoods, ropes, ties, locks, and various assorted means of preventing your (hopefully eventual) escape. No one there is actually going to hurt you of course, and there's a safe word should you really start to freak, but you will be locked in a really dark place as weird things happen around you — maybe keep that Xanax/flask nearby for the post show jitters.

5. Be OK with getting wet. Not to give anything away here, but you may get a little wet. Leave the silk at home.

6. Take it all in. Organizers aren't kidding when they say you have twenty minutes to escape, and that time can go by rather quickly — especially when you're running from a madman. There's a lot of great detail and performances which could be overlooked in the mad dash that is Escape, and while you don't need to catch every little thing to get your money's worth, there is enough packed in to the experience to make you both laugh and gag.

Enjoy.

Nightly "performances" run through Halloween night, multiple times per night, and tickets are $45 each. Plan on getting a drink afterwards.

Previously: Seven Things You Should Know Before Entering This Year's Armory Haunted House

The era of immersive, 360-degree simulated sex on your smartphone has finally arrived. One would have figured that the recent release of the Oculus Rift, Samsung’s Gear VR and Google’s virtual reality headset Cardboard would eventually result in VR porn, and this hand-y technology is now available to anyone with a smartphone and a cheap VR headset. To celebrate the advent of this era, more than a hunded VR porn innovators, adult industry personalities, and habitual masturbators came together at the Kink.com Upper Floor Thursday night for a powwow called Traffic Jam 2016 that showcased the most state-of-the-art technology available for these strap-on devices.

NOTE: While this article is Safe For Work, all of the links below are VERY NSFW! Clicking on any of the links below will display outrageously explicit images, massively erect schlongs and fully nude starlets. Furthermore, many of these sites are designed to be viewed with a VR headset — so the erotic images will display in bizarrely formatted double vision if viewed on your workplace desktop. The sites are best viewed through a VR headset, preferably in an uninterrupted solo environment.

So how, exactly, do they make 360-degree virtual reality porn?

Take a look at this apparatus, a combination of GoPro cameras and synthetic human ears. “This is our 360-degree VR rig that we use to shoot events,” said George, a camera operator at Kink.com. “Every piece is commercially available. They’re all just things I had to Frankenstein together to make it work.”

“The microphones have human ears on them because you hear things the way you do because of the shape of your ears,” he told SFist. “If it’s just a hole inside of your head, you hear things differently.”

Kink uses this and other VR cameras for their [Again! Very NSFW!] KinkVR.com site that’s one of the few sources of any gay VR porn. “With Kink.com, we produce a lot of niche websites,” Kink spokesman Mike Stabile said. “We produce gay content, which there is not a lot of in VR. A lot of the [competitors’] content is very middle-of-the-road. You see a lot of hotel room blowjobs.”

Kink's custom, branded Google Cardboard VR viewers. Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

Kink co-hosted the event with the adult streaming site Gamelink, who recently put out a virtual reality porn aggregate site as a clearinghouse of the best VR porn. “We’re like the Netflix of VR. We take the best movies and we put them on our platform,” said Jeff Dillon, VP of business development at Gamelink. “It’s a big shift in how the adult industry is producing and distributing content.”

Even live cam sessions with adult performers are now available on your smartphone. I caught up with the VR cam girl Ela Darling of Cam4VR, the first ever live cam platform in virtual reality. “It’s a photorealistic 3D, 360-degree experience,” Ms. Darling told SFist. “You get a real sense of who I am. You see the skulls on my shelf. You see the water-color portrait of Boba Fett. Everything that makes me me. It accelerates the intimacy and it also lends a greater sense of personhood to the performer.”

RubyVR headsets. Image: Joe Kukura, SFist

But most of us are not yet jacking it to VR porn, though, because most of us do not yet have these VR headsets. That’s where RubyVR comes in, and the totally Safe For Work RubyVR website sells affordable, custom, or branded smartphone-compatible Google Cardboard VR headsets for as little as $2. That’s the cheap model, of course, and they have higher-end headsets equipped with a headstrap available in the $35 range.

“You need the headstrap for this industry,” RubyVR EVP Michael Donohue told SFist. “You know the term ‘hands-free’? We like to say our headsets are ‘hand-free’.”

RELATED: Porn Audio Plays Over Target PA Systems In Northern California

In preparation for the Republican Party's national convention, that party's delegates have unanimously adopted an amendment to their highly conservative draft platform referring to pornography as "a public health crisis" and a "public menace." Very retro!

“Pornography, with his harmful effects, especially on children, has become a public health crisis that is destroying the life of millions," Yahoo News quotes the amendment. "We encourage states to continue to fight this public menace and pledge our commitment to children’s safety and wellbeing,” the amendment stated."

Those are some honest-to-god, good-old-fashioned, down-with-smut American Values — but here San Francisco, we've been known to abide by a different set of principles. Acting, no doubt, under director orders from His Majesty Satan, one local group is sticking it to the Republicans with a fairly delicious stunt that's at once promotional and political. Kink.com, your friendly neighborhood BDSM pornographers, will offer free access to its online fetish films to all Republican delegates. Maitresse Madeline Marlowe, a director at Kink.com who has quite the way with words, put it this way in an open letter:

Dear Republican Delegates,

We read with dismay that the Republican Party platform committee has endorsed a plank declaring “porn a public health crisis” and a “menace.” While it may not fit with your morals, studies have repeatedly shown that access to adult entertainment is positively correlated with decreases in sex crimes, better performance in bed, and more feminist views of women. (We understand that last one might not be a net positive for you, but we like it.)

Next week, you’ll vote to approve or reject that platform, and we want you to have an informed decision. That’s why we’re offering every credentialled (sic) Republican delegate free access to our sites from now until November 8. Kink has been a leader in ethical production of adult film for nearly two decades, and are proud to celebrate a diverse articulation of sexuality and gender. Unlike those your platform committee, we know the difference between fantasy and reality, the importance of informed decisions about sex, and the necessity of sexual representation. Porn isn’t harmful, but shame around sexuality is.

Now, since social conservatives might be concerned that their, uh, research, might be brought to bear against them, Marlowe proposes the following to ensure their privacy:

All we’ll need from you is proof of your delegate credentials, sent via email. We also understand the value of anonymity in accessing adult material, so as with any of our members, your request will be kept private. Heck, if you’re really concerned, you can even use a burner account — provided that you can adequately demonstrate the credentials (and your age) without revealing your name. We’re not here to shame or expose you you, we’re here to enlighten you.

Delivering one last plug, Marlowe encourages those "bound" delegates who support Donald Trump to check out a recent film of hers: "Make America Gape Again", a severely disturbing porn flick that depicts a group of men wearing Trump masks having sex with a woman representing America.

"Even the Republicans on our site loved it," Marlowe says of her work.

Related: Trump Literally Schlongs America In Horrifying New Kink.com Video

You don’t often see 100 porn stars at a state safety board meeting, but that’s just what happened yesterday at the Harris State Building Auditorium in Oakland. A huge turnout of adult film actors, directors and producers seems to have swayed the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health (Cal/OSHA) Standards Board to deny a proposed measure that would have required condoms, dental dams and eye protections in adult film sex scenes.

At the conclusion of a hearing that went for six wearying hours, the board declared the proposal would not pass and the assembled porn industry superstars whooped it up in celebration as seen below.

Technically, the measure received 3-2 majority vote from the Standards Board. But four “yes” votes were required for passage, so the measure is likely to be kicked back to Cal/OSHA staff to be reworked.

"I'm actually more torn over this than I can ever explain," said board member Dave Harrison.

Adult performers felt the measure unfairly targeted their industry as opposed to other fields where workers are potentially exposed to pathogens. “My wife is an emergency room nurse,” said performer Maestro Stefanos, whom you may recognize from Kink.com’s (Very NSFW!) Upper Floor website. “My wife goes to work every day and comes home occasionally with blood all over herself and her scrubs. My wife spends every day working with people that don’t have a known (STI) testing status... Why are my safety protocols more stringent than my wife's, as an ER nurse?,” he argued to the board.

Still, this all might be seen as an early climax. The board's rejection of the proposal does not necessarily mean the end of the condoms in porn legislation. The measure will likely go back to Cal/OSHA management to be revised “with more input from the affected industry”, according to board member Patty Quinlan. Additionally, a measure requiring condoms in porn will be on the California state ballot in November 2016. And oh, are Fox News and Drudge going to have a field day with that one.

Previously: SF Democrats Urge Party To Oppose Ballot Measure Requiring Condoms In Porn

Everyone's getting in on the Super Bowl-themed fun, even the BDSM crowd!

Tonight starting at 9:30 p.m., longtime fetish-friendly weekly dance party Bondage-A-Go-Go is hosting its "Fetish Bowl."

The party happens at Cat Club (1190 Folsom Street), and if you can believe it, it's been going strong since 1993. As they describe it, "Though not for everyone, this influential event is a dark slice of heaven for artists, musicians, fetishists, burners, and open minded nightclub goers of all types." And in addition to music ("a sinister blend of goth, pop, punk, and electro") and dancing, it's also meant to be "a welcoming and safe starting point to explore fetish play."

And the Fetish Bowl sounds like the usual party, only a little bit sports-themed?

Also, per a promoter, "For those of you overwhelmed by Super Bowl madness overtaking South of Market, this is a throwback to the dirty old days."

Admission is $10, or $7 with RSVP on Facebook before 10:30 p.m., and all-black attire and/or fetish wear is required.

You're in luck if you were denied tickets to next weekend’s HUMP! Film Festival, Dan Savage’s 11th annual collection of short, offbeat porn films from all over the sexual diaspora of human kink. Additional screenings were just added for Wednesday (HUMP!-day) Jan. 27, with seats still remaining for the late-night shows next Friday and Saturday. Dan Savage himself hand-picked these films screening next week at the Victoria, with a line-up of amateur straight, gay, lesbian, transgender and splosh porn that includes a sexually explicit Katy Perry parody called I Fist a Grrrl.

This is not your father’s ‘porn stash’ porn. Check out the trailer for this year’s HUMP! Film Festival below.

SFist spoke with — well, we can’t say who we spoke with, because no real names are used in these genuine homemade porn films. “A lot of my friends, they work with kids,” said Filmmaker X, whose film The Collector won the Best Humor prize at the Seattle screening. “They didn’t want the parents to know they were in a porn festival.”

“We wanted to make the kind of porn we'd like to watch,” Filmmaker XXX told SFist (her feminist/fairy video game porn Level Up is one of the 22 films in this year’s show.) “Sadly, there doesn't seem to be a lot of films out there that include things like pansexuality, politics, humor, and mixed-gender/bisexual group sex. And though the porn industry is growing with more homemade ‘amateur’ videos, the more we can contribute to the portrayal of porn actors as normal people — beautiful people who are beautiful without bleached hair and bleached assholes - the better.”

(NOTE: Bleached hair is also represented, if that's your thing.)

Dan Savage said in a statement that “We bill HUMP! as an amateur porn festival. But it's more than that. It's rare for people to watch porn that takes them outside their comfort zones — it's rare for people to watch porn that, if they were home alone in front of the computer, they wouldn't choose to click on and watch. At HUMP! straight people watch gay porn, vanilla people watch kinky porn, gay people watch lesbian porn. And people laugh, they gasp, sometimes they cover their eyes. But at the end of every film people clap and cheer."

HUMP! gets over the stigmas of ageism, size-ism and shame with a hardcore buffet of body types, fetishes and kink. “I think one of the amazing parts about HUMP! is that it makes adjectives like ‘dirty’ a positive thing,” Filmmaker XXX said. “It helps de-shame porn and the entire sexual experience.”

HUMP! just added screenings on Wednesday, January, 27 at 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Tickets also remain for the 11:30 p.m. show on Friday, January 29 and 11 p.m. on Saturday, January 30.

Previously: Video: Dan Savage Says Pot Can Help Women Orgasm

A new app launches today which aims to create both a viable social network and dating service for members of the BDSM and leather communities. KNKI, as the app is called, seeks to carve out a space free from the censorship that often accompanies posting adult content on sites like Instagram and Facebook. However, not content to merely be some sort of adult-themed Kinkstagram, the app also hopes to connect like-minded individuals in the BDSM community for both on and offline play.

The company describes the app as a "dating app" that simultaneously assists with "keeping up with your entire kinky social network." And just to make sure there's no confusion, the company further adds that they're "a social network for BDSM as well as dating app."

Based out of New York, the makers of KNKI have already found at least one interested party in the Bay Area — (surprise, surprise) Kink.com.

“When KNKI approached us with the platform, we immediately got it,” Kink.com's head of social media Jessica Reid explained in a press release. “As a sexual community, we have to walk on eggshells on most social networks, even when doing basic education and activism. KNKI gives us an opportunity to have those discussions without worrying about whether we’ll be banned.”

KNKI founder Carl Sandler detailed in the same release his motivation to build the app.

"This is an exciting time for the community," wrote Sandler. "More and more people are able to talk about sexuality and identity openly, and I wanted to create a mobile app that matched the new power.”

The app is free to download, and, like many social media companies, KNKI hopes to enlist city-specific "ambassadors" to spread word of the brand. Perhaps unlike other companies hoping to play in the social media sandbox, however, KNKI lists being "an active member of the BDSM community" as one of the ambassador prerequisites.

Notably, as part of the "KNKI code," the company prominently declares its ambassadors "will never engage in, or turn a blind eye to, dangerous or non-consensual behavior in our community." While this seems like a no-brainer, it is perhaps notable in light of recent allegations of sexual assault made against repeated Kink.com performer James Deen (Kink.com cuts ties with the adult star after the allegations began to surface).

Time will tell if KNKI is here to stay, but if a company that melds BDSM play with app dating can get a foothold anywhere, SF will likely be the place.

All previous BDSM coverage on SFist.

Another performer in the adult entertainment industry has come forward alleging that James Deen, a nationally prominent porn star, assaulted her in the San Francisco Kink.com Armory six years ago. This follows on the heels of numerous recent accounts of Deen assaulting women, and is the second incident to have allegedly taken place at the Armory. The details are disturbing, and call into question Kink's ability to ensure the safety of its performers.

In conversation with The Daily Mail, adult entertainer Nicki Blue (her real name was withheld at her request) spoke of the assault, and how her complaint following the incident was silenced.

Blue said that after completing a shoot with Deen, she joined him and several other performers in a bar located in the basement of the Armory. A warning to readers: descriptions of sexual assault follow.

Everyone was drinking but I wasn't really because I'm not a huge fan of alcohol. [...] I started giving him [oral sex]. It was nice at first, then it got really rough. I kept trying to pull my head up to say something, it was too rough.

But he would just push my head back in so I was choking and I couldn't say anything.

As he was doing it — this is the embarrassing part and why I didn't say anything — he said "oh my God, I have to go to the bathroom' and he p***** in my mouth."

Deen then allegedly proceeded to sodomize Blue with a beer bottle.

Following the incident, Blue told the Mail she wrote about the assault on a Kink.com internal message board — only to see her post quickly deleted and her account blocked.

As to why Blue didn't go to the police?

"When you're an adult actress, especially in BDSM, and you go to a cop and say 'Oh I've been raped by this guy after doing a scene', they are not going to take you seriously, like if you were a normal person."

After learning Monday morning of the allegations again Deen, Kink.com cut ties with the performer said in a statement to SF Weekly that the company planned to revisit its policies regarding potential assaults.

"Over the coming weeks and months, we will review our Model Bill of Rights to strengthen rights of performers off-set, and work with the larger industry to help performers to have been assaulted to more easily come forward."

Deen has denied the allegations against him, now coming from a total of seven different women, in a series of tweets, but has been otherwise silent on the matter.

SFist reached out to a Kink.com spokesperson for comment, but we have not received a response as of this posting.

Update December 3, 4:26 p.m.: Kink.com spokesperson Mike Stabile provided SFist with the following statement:

We first heard of the rape allegations through the Daily Mail this morning. While we support Nicki coming forward, she never reported those allegations to us, either formally or informally. Sexual assault is something that we take incredibly seriously, as its both a legal and ethical issue, and would have triggered a huge reaction throughout the company.

Previously: Kink.com Cuts Ties To Porn Star James Deen After Rape Accusations

After his ex-girlfriends and porn co-stars Stoya and Joanna Angel publicly accused the well-known and previously well-regarded James Deen of sexual assault and rape this weekend, prompting others to come forward with chillingly similar corroborating accounts of the 29-year-old porn star, San Francisco's Mission District-based BDSM porn studio Kink.com [NSFW] has dropped him entirely as a performer and producer.

Often described as a "boy next door" type in the mainstream media, for whom he had enough crossover appeal to star in novelist and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis' universally panned film The Canyons alongside Lindsay Lohan, Deen was even heralded by some as a feminist following a reverential 2012 profile in GQ.

Now that neatly tied reputation is coming undone as victim after victim confronts Deen, such as one anonymous accuser in a harrowing account to LAist and another, Tori Lux, in an essay on the Daily Beast.

Specific to Kink, performer Ashley Fires accuses Deen of assaulting her in the Armory building while shooting for Kink. the Daily Beast quotes her.

The only time I’d ever seen this guy, he walked into the green room at Kink [studios], picks up another performer like a caveman, grabs her by the hair, and takes her off somewhere… and I can only imagine... Later on that night, I was getting out of the shower of the communal bathroom at Kink, I reach for my towel to dry off, and he comes up from behind me and pushes himself and his erection into my butt,” she continued. “He pushes me against the sink and starts grabbing on me and I was like, ‘No, no, no James, no,’ and he released me from his grasp, and says, ‘You know, later if you want to fuck around I’m in room whatever-it-was. I was like, ‘Fuck you.’ I didn’t even know this guy, he was so out of line and entitled with my body.”

Fires maintains that Deen attempted to silence her a year later.

The Daily Dot and Buzzfeed obtained the following email from Kink CEO Peter Acworth to staff.

I know many of you are still processing the allegations about James Deen, and that many of you may have had personal or professional relationships with him. While these are still allegations, it's important that we respect the stories and courage of the women who are coming forward.

To the Weekly, Kink issued this statement, which echoes the above.

For the Kink.com community, as well as the larger BDSM community, consent and respect are sacrosanct. Effective immediately, Kink.com will cease all ties with James Deen, both as a performer and a producer.

Our performers deserve not only safe sets, but the ability to work without fear of assault. Rape or sexual assault, with or without a safe-word, off-set or on, should never be accepted as a hazard of adult production. While many of the allegations against Deen are new, the pattern is alarming. Over the coming weeks and months, we will review our Model Bill of Rights to strengthen rights of performers off-set, and work with the larger industry to help performers to have been assaulted to more easily come forward.

Following close on the heels of Kink's decision, another studio, Evil Angels, will cut ties with Deen Deen — for the time being. “In light of the recent accusations against James Deen, Evil Angel today has decided not to sell any newly created scenes featuring Deen,” said John Stagliano,company founder and president. "While our company presents what is consensual and exploratory about aggressive and rough sex, these accusations are of a nature so contrary to our company values that we feel it necessary to suspend the sales until more information is available."

Also following the accusations, Deen has been suspended from his role as columnist at Lifestyle website The Frisky and resigned from The Adult Performer Advocacy Committe.

Previously: Several Women Accuse Porn Star James Deen Of Sexual Assault
Woman Says James Deen Sexually Assaulted Her At A Vegas Party