On Tuesday night's episode of Conan, Palo Alto-bred wunderkind and your boyfriend James Franco dropped in to support his latest role in Rise of the Planet of the Apes*, but during the interview the conversation steered towards Franco's attempts at amateur porn making and his respect for the folks in the adult film business. Which leads us to the bit about his Kink.com documentary. more ›

With all the theme bars popping up around here, we're about due for one with a little less childhood nostalgia and a little more adult sensibility. This morning, Grubstreet reports the Kink.com-owned former home of Ace Café will be transformed in to the appropriately named Armory Club, caddy-corner to the fetish site's headquarters (and possible community center) on Mission Street. more ›

If you've been inside the Armory at Mission and 14th, better known these days as the headquarters of Kink.com [link NSFW], you may have seen the ginormous, gymnasium-like space at the rear of the building, which was once used as a drill court by the National Guard, and later used by George Lucas to shoot parts of Star Wars. The thing is five stories tall, and 38,000 square feet, you can drive trucks into it, and Kink's never really had a lot of use for it -- it's kind of too big for anything but a super huge rave, and we're sure Fiona Ma would disapprove of that. (Kink does all of its shooting, for its various internet porn channels like Device Bondage, Men in Pain, FuckingMachines.com, in the front of the building and in the basement.) more ›

You might want to sit down for this one. Because when online porn companies start reducing its staff due to the economic downturn, you know times are tough. Local porn superpower Kink.com laid off 15% 11% of its staff yesterday. Founder Peter Acworth confirmed this today. Kink.com is headquartered at the San Francisco Armory, a "200,000 square foot 1914 reproduction of a Moorish Castle that served as a National Guard Armory and Arsenal until the 1970s." Is bad organizing, with Acworth at top and not much structure after, to blame? Alas. Anyway, in addition to producing stellar pornographic cinema, they host parties, photo shoots, live action play, and more. [Inset filmed fornication joke here] Update: A Kink.com rep tell us that they "laid off 11% (12 people)." more ›