The once-popular, pricey “orgasm workshop” OneTaste is now defunct, but its founder and a top executive were indicted Tuesday for forced labor conspiracy and forcing people to perform non-consensual sex acts.

You might remember a late 2000s, early 2010s San Francisco-founded “orgasmic meditation” group called OneTaste, whose name elicited giggles every time we walked by their clearly marked Fell and Market Streets headquarters. It was incredibly pricey, with one Yelp review describing their offerings as a “ridiculously expensive $13,000 p*ssy stroking courses,” but the group’s highly Botoxed founder Nicole Daedone was a huge hit on the TED Talk circuit. And the media were of course fascinated with OneTaste, though many reports started to examine the group's cult-y and perhaps a little sexual misconduct-y side, notably the 2013 long-form Gawker piece, “My Life With the Thrill-Clit Cult.”

But then a 2018 Bloomberg exposé revealed that OneTaste was under an FBI investigation for sex trafficking, prostitution, and labor law violations. OneTaste effectively disbanded shortly thereafter, but that investigation obviously did not go away. And on Tuesday, the New York Times reports that Daedone and former OneTaste head of sales Rachel Cherwitz were indicted on the forced labor charges.

Cherwirz was arrested Tuesday in San Diego, Daedone remains at large.

“Daedone and Cherwitz are both charged with forced labor conspiracy in connection with a years-long scheme to obtain the labor and services of a group of OneTaste members—including volunteers, contractors, and employees of OneTaste—by subjecting them to economic, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse, surveillance, indoctrination, and intimidation,” the Department of Justice sad in a release.

OneTaste was the subject of the 2022 Netflix documentary Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste, which brought up alleged sex trafficking and prostitution violations. The Justice Department's indictment seems to believe these allegations are true.

“Daedone and Cherwitz also recruited and groomed OneTaste members to engage in sexual acts with OneTaste’s current and prospective investors, clients, employees and beneficiaries, for the financial benefit of OneTaste and, in turn, themselves,” the announcement says. It adds that the two women “instructed the OneTaste members to engage in sexual acts—including acts the members found uncomfortable or repulsive— as a requirement to supposedly obtain freedom and enlightenment and demonstrate their commitment to OneTaste and Daedone.”

Daedone and Cherwitz each face a maximum 20-year prison sentence. And the Department of Justice adds that “If you believe you are or may be a victim in this case, please call the FBI New York’s main line at 212-384-4677.”

Related: The 9 Most Infamous Cults In The Bay Area [SFist]

Image: OneTaste via PR Newswire

Sex, love, and other mysteries in the city your mother warned you about.

Most actual Bubbes, or Jewish grandmothers, prefer to do their well-meaning nagging and cajoling in person or over the phone. I should know. "Would it kill you to find a nice Jewish boy," your own Bubbe might ask, "a doctor, or a lawyer?" That tone, perhaps, is why she complains you "never call."

Well now, God help us all, Bubbe has a new way of communicating with you about your love life. She can text. Sort of.

"Bubby," is a chatbot and app, a spin on the slew of dating services and communities like Tinder, Bumble, J-Swipe, and so forth. But unlike some of those (cough cough Tinder), Bubby's emphasis is on love — the old world, shared values kind. As Bubby co-founder Sarah Persitz tells SFist, her app is "a curated space inspired by Jewish values and tradition." Specifically, and unlike some shared-interest dating sites like, say, Christian Mingle, Bubby is for people of all faiths — or no faith at all. That means goyim, or non-Jews, and even the shiksas, or non-jew temptresses your rabbi warned you about, are welcome to join.

Allow Persitz, who created Bubby along with Stephanie Volftsun and Jordan Klein, to explain using her own dating life as an example. "I know that Shabbat (the Jewish sabbath, sometimes feted with a dinner party) is something important to me — not from a religious perspective, but just from a values perspective. To have a good dinner party with drinks and friends, to have tradition and community, that's important to me. I want to be with someone who loves a great Shabbat dinner, and they may be Jewish, and they may not be."

Bubby, like services including the League before it, takes applications to do that community "curation," and it's currently running beta versions in New York and San Francisco with expansion plans soon. Like the latest iteration of Hinge, the app hopes to eschew the constant swiping culture of Tinder, focusing on quality of match recommendations rather than quantity. Several times a week, Bubby will introduce you in a grandmotherly matchmaker tone to new possibilities. "He's from this place, he went to this college and works at that company, etc." she'll say: to quote the app's marketing slogan, adapted from the musical Fiddler on the Roof, "Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me an app."

Bubby will ask you if your'e interested or if the match is "not for you." If it's a match, you'll be encouraged to text each other and make plans. Bubby, Persitz says, wants to connect users in the real world as soon as possible to see if there's a real-life connection. Further, "Our Bubby bot does do follow ups, reminding people to ping each other, checking in a few weeks later." How very realistic! "The idea is that it can add this personalized matchmaker experience," Persitz says.

What Bubby is and how it works is still evolving, but its values are in place. Says Persitz, "We're inspired by our Bubbes and the love stories of another era — but we're totallly aware that we live in the modern world."

Related: Eff-ing In SF, Vol. 9: Tech Bachelor Hacks Tinder, Goes On 150 First Dates In Four Months

Well what do you know! Tinder's CEO Sean Rad, who famously did not know what the word sodomy referred to, isn't a total idiot! In fact, he and his company have made a positive effort to embrace and protect, in particular, trans people who are using Tinder to get out there, get laid, and not be attacked online by strangers for their gender identity/expression. That's to say that Tinder has broken the gender binary and is now offering a spectrum of ways to identify, almost 40 options by one count, including non-binary and two-spirit, a term used by indigenous people. Some heads will explode at this number, and that's just wonderful.

Where Tinder ran into particular difficulty in the past: In addition to your usual online harassment, users have reported other users who appear to be transgender. Reported enough times, and profiles can be frozen, which many trans users report was their experience.

According to the New York Times, who covered the change, Tinder realized the issue about seven months go and began working with trans activists and leaders to arrive at solutions.

“Dating for trans people is generally safer via an app like Tinder,” trans activist Andrea James, who worked with Tinder on the change, told the Times. “I find it much safer to make connections online versus having a stranger approach me in a cafe or bar.”

Facebook opened itself up to the spectrum of genders by which people identify themselves in 2014, allowing for a "write-in" option as well as providing options for neutral or preferred pronouns. Now Tinder is apparently on board, which would only make sense as it uses your Facebook profile. But I'm left with one question for Tinder after this change. How does one identify one's interest in a particularly gender or genders on the app now? Has that changed, or will it?

“Part of the problem is a lot of tech platforms try to stay out of complex issues because they don’t want to alienate any of their users,” Tinder's CEO told the Times. “For us it’s very important to come in and particularly now given what’s going on in the world, with all the division in the world, it’s particularly important to step in and make a statement of inclusivity and acceptance.”

Related: Use Tinder? You Have A Secret Internal Desirability Rating!

The founder of Good Vibrations, Joani Blank, passed away on Saturday at the age of 79. AVN reports that Blank died at her home of pancreatic cancer.

Blank was considered a sex-positive feminist pioneer, and in addition to opening Good Vibrations also invented the Butterfly vibrator.

"Her life was based on advancing social justice issues, and the bigger picture always took precedence over her personal struggles," wrote her daughter, Amika Sergejev, on Facebook.

Good Vibrations, founded in 1977, "is the premier retailer trusted for almost four decades to provide high quality products, sex-positive education, and information that promotes sexual health, pleasure, and empowerment," the company explains on its blog. "We invented the concept of the clean, well-lighted vibrator store and we’re proud to provide a safe, welcoming, and non-judgmental environment where customers can shop for sex toys, books, movies, and attend workshops."

Following news of Blank's death, Good Vibrations tweeted out its love and condolences. "We love you Joani Blank and are forever grateful that you helped make the world a more sex positive place," reads the company statement. "#GoodVibrations forever JB RIP."

Blank also founded Down There Press, a publisher focusing on feminist and sex-positive works, in 1975. According to her website, Blank also wrote numerous books and served as a volunteer for San Francisco Sexual Information — staffing the phones and answering questions for those who called in.

"This fierce revolutionary woman has taught us all so much," wrote her daughter Sergejev. "She has done so many things in her full days here on earth and I know you all have stories."

Blank leaves behind a company that is still going strong. Good Vibrations has eight locations, and earlier this month announced on its blog that it would be acquiring a new store in Santa Cruz.

Related: Now They've Even Gentrified The Porn Shop At 16th And Mission

Sex, love, and other mysteries in the city your mother warned you about.

Though he may have programmed dating apps to automatically match with as many women as possible and systematically send them the same series of messages, Sebastian Stadil thinks of himself as a romantic. "That has to do with my French upbringing," he says. "I very much believe in this 'romantic soulmate' kind of thing." Actually, that's the real reason why Stadil sought to date women "at scale," one of many technical phrases he uses in his highly technical approach to courtship.

It's an emphasis that plays to Stadil's strengths. After completing his studies in economics and computer science in France he moved to San Francisco to found cloud computing company Scalr, where he serves as CEO. While Stadil has been met with professional success in the Bay Area — Scalr boasts millions in investments and he now serves on advisory boards at Google and Microsoft — the 31-year-old has been less lucky in love.

Stadil and his girlfriend broke up, which was understandably difficult, but he decided he'd better waste no time in his search."I was determined to find the One, even if it meant swiping right on the whole Bay Area," he writes in a Medium post detailing his experience. "Normal dating was a nightmare, so I hacked it." That meant writing a program for automatic swiping, messaging, and date scheduling on OKCupid, Tinder, and Hinge, creating a kind of cyberspeed dating with up to four dates per day and eventually 150 first dates in four months starting last summer.

Stadil honed his approach, which he calls "industrialized," over time, testing various photos and messages against controls. "I assumed canned messages wouldn’t work well, but after over 10,000 sent, there wasn’t a significant response rate difference between personalized and generic messages," he writes. That led to the following series of messages, deployed in order until he got a 'yes' or no response at all.

• Bonjour ! Care to meet over coffee some time next week?


• Perhaps I can tempt you with some pastries instead? I know of place with fruit tarts, chocolate pies, and macaroons. :)


• Can I interest you in a chai latte then? Better than coffee, and we can still get the pastries!


• Fine, if you don’t like coffee nor pastries nor chai, we can do tea. How does tea sound?


• Yeah, you are right. Tea is a little boring. We should get ice cream! How about the Bi-Rite Creamery?


• Ice cream is too cliché anyway. We should do something no one else does on a first date, like meet at a gas station and get beef jerky! Think of the stories we could tell our grandkids!


• Alright, I’ll admit that meeting at a gas station isn’t the most romantic. And let’s be honest: American food portions are so large we don’t need more calories. How about a boat ride on Stow Lake? We can get a nice pedal boat and get fresh air and plenty of exercise. How about that?

Of course, tea and pastries (incidentally, Stadil found via his data that a "warm" cup of tea was not as tempting as a "nice" cup of it) aren't awfully expensive. But in the end, at scale, costs added up. Stadil also invested in paid premium versions of Tinder and OKCupid to maximize his reach — as power-users of Tinder, for example, know, a limited number of "likes" are offered for free. "The thesis behind the decision there," Stadil tells me, "is if I'm going to spend $20 per date for tea, for two, maybe some cookies to go with it, if every date costs $20, then the $20 that it costs you to get infinite swipes, that just makes the whole process a lot more efficient." Stadil also refused to split costs on dates. "I could feel the reaction that you re not supposed to split the bill on the first date," he told me, "that the norm is the guy pays on the first date." Stadil also selected date spots that were near his office, often summoning Ubers for his dates to bring them to him. "I can't really afford to take an Uber and then cross the city and then have a one-hour date and then Uber back to work. That would take two hours of my time. It was just much more time efficient, and gentlemanly, for me to order up an Uber for her," he argues. All told — Ubers, tea, and premium subscriptions — the endeavor cost Stadil about $6,000.

While bringing dates to him made more time to have more of them, that wasn't always easy, Stadil tells me: "There were times when I had three to four dates a day, and those were kind of painful because you end up drinking a ton of coffee or a ton of tea, and that just sucks. Usually what I would do is two, three coffee drinks a day and then drink dates in the evening." That aspect of Stadil's speed-dating appears to exhibit a double-standard. While dating cuts both ways — each party investing time and effort in the search and in each date — Stadil seems to have valued his time more highly than his dates'. In the end, that predictably led to difficulty for him. Even if, as Stadil puts it in business parlance, he was able to "convert" a first date into a second one, he might forget details of their original date. "It gets tricky, because you end up telling your story three times a week, and you get a little awkward, repeating stories." After learning that a woman was an orphan on date one, he made the mistake of asking her about her parents on date two. "That was an awkward moment," he writes in his Medium post. "If you're reading this, I apologize."

Stadil also betrays a double standard when it comes to control in dating. "In my sample of 150, not once did a girl take the initiative, pick a place, and invite me." he writes. "I’m told it’s fear of appearing desperate, but fuck that! Own your life, don’t let someone drive it for you." Of course, Stadil automatically sent messages first, and he also told me he "hated" the dating app Bumble, a highly popular option where women must message men first. "It gives all the control to the women. I'm not a passive guy: I take action, I like to control my life," he said.

Stadil is, on the whole, a self-effacing and well-intentioned person, both in his post and, fairly clearly, in his life. For example, he's amusing and self-deprecating when it comes to his appearance. "I’m a fat, bald, short guy whose only quality is that he isn’t an ax murderer." His most successful profile picture hid his flaws, he told me, chuckling. Even if his methods are unorthodox, it's easy to root for him, and in the end to feel disappointed along with him when he says he "failed" in love. "Dating is like enterprise sales," he writes, I think sort of heartbreakingly. "When your customer goes for a competing, more compelling product, you’re never told and you don’t get any feedback."

There was one glimmer of hope in all this: A Google employee whom Stadil refers to as Jane. "She was fun," he writes. "I had a special feeling so I brought her on a special date at Golden Gate Park. I brought a basket with fruits, macaroons and red wine and rented a boat. We took turns, and she rowed with the vigor of a thousand Vikings. At some point, we got lost and I used this opportunity to steal a magical first kiss. That was my best first date on more than 150, ironically the only one that hadn’t been part of my rigid routine."

Not only was Stadil more successful by devoting time and thought to someone he was interested in rather than abiding by his usual rote system. He was successful in part because he was honest, telling Jane about his program: "She just laughed and said that was ingenius and pretty smart," he recalled to me. After five fun dates, the two parted ways.

Stadil was less forthcoming, though, with his other dates. That made me question his choice to publish his story under his own name, revealing to women he'd met that they had, as he writes, "participated involuntarily in this experiment." Stadil does thank them for that participation, and he did leave some time between the dating spree before publishing his story. "I met smart girls, pretty girls, fun girls, and weird girls and it was great even though in the end, I didn’t find my soulmate." Did Stadil, I had to wonder, have any of his own questions about the ethics of his project?

Not really. "Coming from France, where dating is one at a time, and moving to San Francisco where people are dating four five or six people at a time, that ethical change was kind of already made," he says. "I didn't invent it, I just decided to take that a little bit further." In that vein, I might argue that plenty of people use standard greetings with online dating matches or swipe blindly to see who they might match with or even repeat the same date regimen with different people. Whether or not it's the most rewarding and promising way to go about dating is another matter.

Though none of Stadil's dates seem to have been the wiser, save Jane, some of his friends learned of the effort. "Once in a while, with a friend, we had a conversation, and they would start complaining about how repetitive [dating] was, they would say 'oh I tried building [a program to help],' and I would say, well, I have one too... I'm not the only one who has built this pre-built automation, a surprising number of my software engineering friends [have done so.]"

That said, Stadil won't share his program with them or anyone for that matter: "If you are to give this to other people, if other people were to use this, I would be arming my competition," he tells me. He also doesn't want to give it away willy-nilly for a reason he discovered over the course of his dates. Here's a Facebook post from him:

In hindsight, Stadil doesn't think his tactic was ideal. "I think I would have been more successful if I had spent that time going to a dance class or going to a yoga class, and not being on the dating apps, and being in social places." Couldn't he do both, I asked? No, he says, for him it's a binary. "I have fairly limited time so I had to choose one or the other."

Still, he ends his Medium post on a hopeful, if exhausted, note. "I'm running out of steam. It is a very time-, resource-, and attention-consuming thing. The whole point of automating was precisely to make it not so. It’s time for another approach. A drastic change. But not tonight. Tonight, I have a date."

Actually, he tells me, he hasn't been dating much. "I kind of sometimes start the app again and get a few dates that way, but I'm mostly focused on my company," Stadil says." The other strategy I'm contemplating is just choosing a market, a different market. For example, my friends that are in New York are doing somewhat similar things, and there there is a higher ratio of women to men, which skews the supply and demand equilibrium."

In the end, Stadil wonders whether he might attract a partner in revealing his quest. "Who knows, perhaps I’ll find my special someone through this post?" he writes. Hear that, ladies? Feel free to reach out with a message, automated or otherwise.

Previously: Eff-ing In SF, Vol. 8: Five Signs He's A 'Peter Pan'

via GIPHY

Sex, love, and other mysteries in the city your mother warned you about.

Peter Pan was the original fuccboi. That dude would NOT grow up, you know? So perhaps it should come as little surprise that a city with a long history of comparisons to Neverland has a shit-ton of fuccboi Peter Pan syndrome sufferers who are effing up your lovelife.

If that's the case, then this blog post is for you, and it's inspired by a rant that might stand for many others. A 35-year-old San Francisco woman, one who identifies as queer but is clearly dating all the wrong dudes, tells Elle magazine today that she is utterly exasperated with her romantic prospects here.

"Dating in the Bay Area is hard," she observes, "The tech guys are the worst; I've pretty much stopped dating them." Yes, a lot of tech guys are young, and therefore dumb, but she adds that "it's not just tech guys." In the end, it's a general immaturity — the kind that stands in the way of a person's ability to really appreciate and account for another person in their life. As she puts it, these guys "don't want you to have needs and wants of your own." Some she's dated have even adopted expedient political opinions just to get laid. "It kind of sucks when you thinks someone is super cool and really down with social justice and it turns out they're just into fucking girls who are into social justice," she says.

Now, this particular Wendy doesn't speak for everyone — there are plenty of people out there who are looking for a bit of boyish charm. Boys do make such excellent playthings. But when you've personally decided that you're through with the Peter Pan types you keep dating, look out for these five signs he isn't ready to grow the eff up.

1. He wears a little green hat

Peter Pan guys are easy to spot because they wear those fucking little green hats. You know the ones: With those little red feathers in them? Who do these guys think they are, some kind of puckish wood nymph? By extension, this rule can be applied to any dude that wears hats, especially uncool ones, especially inside. If he wears a hat at a restaurant, go to the bathroom and do not return.

2. He flies in through your window at night

Umm can we talk about how this is definitely NOT okay? This is some heavy breaking and entering shit, plus it's rude as fuck and a clear invasion of your space. This Peter Pan asshole needs to learn some serious boundaries. Even if he isn't literally sneaking in to your apartment, this type of person will always put his needs ahead of yours — at all hours. Yes, this includes unwanted texts for late night booty calls.

3. Super vague at making plans

"Second star to the left and straight on 'til morning" does not constitute a date night plan. Where are you going? Where is this headed? In the end, you need a dude who you can scheme things out with. And, if he's trying to take you somewhere and wont' tell you where that is, start preemptively typing 911 into your phone.

4. He has hella other chicks and they're tryna kill you!

Look, it's 2016: This thing doesn't have to be totally exclusive right away. Monogamy is so retro! But if your dude has all kindsa chicks and mermaids and such who are actually attempting to murder you, that's a red flag right there. Please be careful! Possessive behavior on the part of his friends, especially those with whom he might be romantically involved, is definitely a bad sign. While, yes sure, they could just be jealous — it's clearly a deal-breaker if he has other known partners who are out to get you. You just don't need that drama in your life anymore.

5. He fetishizes youth

Neverland doesn't last forever. Face it: We're all getting older. If he wants to ride a skateboard or a motorcycle or some shit to feel young, that's up to him. But if he's obsessed with youthfulness in others and is somehow trying to enforce it on you, it's time to make romantic investments elsewhere. You know where this is going: In the end, this dude is just gonna leave you for some young thing who doesn't have half of what you've got. I mean, what, is this dude gonna try to date your daughter or something? That's disgusting.

All previous volumes of Eff-ing in SF
Related: Neverland Forever: SF's History Of Lost Boys And Girls

When it comes to online dating, your average 20- or 30-something has a lot of options. Think Tinder, OKCupid, or Grindr to only name a few. The prevalence and variety of dating apps, however, can make it hard to know just exactly which one is right for you (economists refer to this as the "paradox of choice"). Thankfully, the good people at Priceonomics have come to the rescue, helping you decide which dating app to use by collating data like an app's number of users, frequency of use, age of users, and, of course, the gender split of various online dating options.

Some of the information, say for example that Tinder is the most popular of the apps surveyed or that almost 50 percent of Christen Mingle users are over the age of 50, is not that surprising. However, the fact that the average Happn user engages with the app 10 times per day might help inform your app choice when trying to find a date quickly.

The study also reveals regional differences: Grindr, which has a predominantly gay user base, is popular on the West Coast and in the South, while Bumble, which only allows women to initiate chats, is big on the East Coast. However, we both know you're not reading this to figure out the regional distribution of dating app use — you want to know what app is right for you. Well, understanding that no one but you can truly answer that question, Priceonomics takes a stab at it anyway.

"Straight men may want to check out Coffee Meets Bagel, while straight women can confidently choose between a number of apps where the gender ratio is favorable," explains the study, noting that CMB has the highest percentage of female users (other, interestingly, than Christian Mingle). "Bumble is a hub for twentysomethings," it continues, "while Match has the most users in their fifties."

There you go. Now, as to how you should use the apps? Our handy Tinder primer might help with that.

Related: Eff-ing In SF, Vol. 7: How Do Dating Apps Make Money?

San Francisco-based HR-platform startup Zenefits has lately been in the news for all the wrong reasons. Fresh off the resignation earlier this month of the company's CEO and founder Parker Conrad, and the announcement that staffers and execs could soon face criminal charges for selling health insurance without a brokers' license, we now learn that the atmosphere at the company is so out of control that executives have been forced to tell employees to stop drinking and having sex while at work.

Let that one sink in for a moment — employees at a human resources company have been drinking and fucking each other, at work.

The Wall Street Journal reports that last week Zenefits' new CEO, David Sacks, officially banned alcohol in the office — “it is too difficult to define and parse what is ‘appropriate’ versus ‘inappropriate’ drinking in the office,” the Journal reports Sacks as telling employees.

While drinking at SF startups may not be that unusual, it is a company-wide letter from last June recently obtained by the Journal that is really turning heads.

"It has been brought to our attention by building management and Security that the stairwells are being used inappropriately... Cigarettes, plastic cups filled with beer, and several used condoms were found in the stairwell," the letter reads in part. "Yes, you read that right. Do not use the stairwells to smoke, drink, eat, or have sex. Please respect building and company policy and use common sense...”

The latest Zenefits revelation is perhaps merely another data point in the saga of inappropriate and out-of-control startup culture, and, with reports that as many as 60 percent of women working in tech are sexually harassed, it will likely not be the last.

Zenefits was named as 2014's hottest startup by Forbes.

Related: Twitter's Frat-Themed Office Party Totally 'Not Reflective' Of Fratty Tech Company Culture

Airbnb's impact on a city is proving a divisive issue around the globe — does the company contribute to the housing crisis by taking units off the market, or does it allow for part-time hosts to remain in their homes by supplementing income with occasional guest stays? Or neither? Or both? Well, while people on either side of the home-rental divide battle it out, one group is unequivocal in its support for San Francisco-based Airbnb: Sex workers.

In many ways it makes perfect sense — trying to operate out of a San Francisco hotel would likely draw the unwanted attention of the front desk, and Airbnbs are spread throughout the city and easy to book at the last minute. One sex worker spoke with CBS 5, and emphasized how Airbnb units provide an opportunity to move away from working on the street.

“Airbnb is a simple way for women who don’t have an enormous amount of money to transition into indoor work,” the worker, who wished to remain anonymous, explained.

A member of the Erotic Services Providers’ Union of California told the channel that some neighborhoods are better than others for renting out Airbnbs for sex work.

“Not Nob Hill or Sea Cliff — a place where there’s a broader mix of people, perhaps a higher volume of street traffic,” she noted.

We reached out to Airbnb, and asked if the company works with any anti-trafficking organizations to identify potential sex work in rentals, and if they have had any reports of prostitution happening in Bay Area rentals. They got back to us, but notably did not address the issue of whether or not they've uncovered instances of this in the Bay.

"We have a zero-tolerance policy for issues like these," replied Airbnb spokesperson Alison Schumer. "When hosts and guests sign up for our service they agree to comply with local law. When we are made aware of issues, we work fast to help take care of hosts and guests and permanently remove the people who are intentionally violating our policies. Our trust and safety team works with safety groups around the world, including No Traffick Ahead, a Bay Area coalition that works between law enforcement and the hospitality industry to help train employees on identification and prevention of trafficking."

Schumer further notes that the company intends to get involved with the Crimes Against Children Conference — a group that focuses on "investigation, prosecution, and treatment of crimes against children."

A similar situation made news in Sweden, where Vice reported earlier today that sex workers are using Airbnb to get around anti-pimping laws. In that case, the company issued a similar statement condemning the practice.

"Over 70 million guests have stayed with Airbnb," the statement reads, "and problems for the hosts and guests are incredibly rare. If problems arise, we work quickly to take care of our hosts and guests and to permanently shut down users who abuse our platform and community."

While the appeal of working out of an Airbnb is perhaps obvious for sex workers, that hosts could find their homes used for this purpose is sure to unsettle at least some of them. But such are the risks of the sharing economy, right?

All previous Airbnb coverage on SFist.

When it comes to sex, particularly of the more adventurous variety, you may be all tied up, but you never want to be tongue-tied.

All kink scenarios or scenes should, Mistress Mina Bellamy explains, start with a chat between parties "before you enter the sandbox." Even if you've set rules in the past, "you have to talk out how you're feeling on that day and what your boundaries are on that day," she tells SFist.

Mistress Mina is, in fact, nobody's mistress, but if you'd like, you can be her subordinate. The part-time dominatrix tells SFist she likes to explore the intersection of kink and consciousness — hence her website of that name. But say you're literally losing consciousness under Ms. Mina's command? It might be time to tap the brakes.

In the popular cultural imagination, each person selects their own safe word. That's indeed common among couples who only play with each other, and leaves room for fun safe words like, I don't know, "Beetlejuice."

But Mistress Mina clarifies that if you're used to using different safe words with different partners or plan on engaging with multiple partners, that could get confusing. Or say you're in a Beetlejuice role-playing scene: All of a sudden your safe word doesn't exactly stand out. Hence some industry standardization: "The people who play the most use the same safe words for the most part." Those are simply "yellow" for caution and "red" for stop.

Of course, it's not always so simple. "Sometimes you can't talk in a scene," says Mistress Mina, inspiring all manner of ideas, "or sometimes you won't think to talk because you go so nonverbal. So you can always look out for signals that convey 'I need some help.' That could be blinking eyes, tapping twice. If someone has a gag on, or a blindfold, it might be shaking their head from left to right, for example/"

Safe words might model communication in its simplest form: They're direct instructions that must be followed. It's not always so easy. "I'm exploring something that doesn't always have a good vocabulary behind it," Mistress Mina says of her kinky pursuits. "I teach a class called 'How To Eat Pussy Like a Champ,"and I learned through doing that that the communication we had in bedrooms, even just asking, 'I would like that softer and one centimeter to the left, please'" can be difficult for people." Why the difficulty (other than who's left we're talking about here)? "It's feedback about the most vulnerable thing," says Mina, "which is scary."

In those situations, maybe it would serve us well to consider safe words. When someone shouts "yellow!" or "red!" or offers feedback, no one is to blame — everyone is to be congratulated. The system is working, everybody, and it's working because no one is stigmatizing it. "Using a safe words isn't seen as a failing of the top or the bottom," says Mistress Mina, "It's the best thing we can do."

In fact, safe words and their philosophy might be more useful in general than we think. With one of her partners, Mistress Mina says, "If we're at a boring party, our safe word might be, 'I'm bored.'" In that vein, we could start using safe words everywhere, from ordering a burrito — yellow spicy, please — to waiting in line for brunch — red, red, RED!

More practically, maybe it's time to talk safe words with your partner(s), you know, so you can play a little more dangerously and a little more safely at the same time. It'll open the lines of communication generally, because regardless of what they are, or even how vanilla you think you are, you should use your words.

Previously: Eff-ing In SF, Vol. 4: New Year's Dating Resolutions And How To Break Them
Eff-ing In SF, Vol. 3: What He's REALLY Saying When He Sends A Dick Pic
Eff-ing In SF, Vol. 2: I Left My Heart In San Francisco, Should I Post To Craigslist?
Eff-ing In SF, Vol. 1: How To Use Tinder

According to photos circulating today, a graffiti artist and meme enthusiast has amended a sign at Netflix's Los Gatos headquarters with the words "and chill" in observance of the popular internet meme "Netflix and Chill." CBS 5 reports that the tagger was, in fact, caught on camera.

For the uninitiated, Fusion mansplains that "Netflix and Chill" began as a joke on Black Twitter, a nod to the fact, universally acknowledged, that no one just hangs out and watches a movie in 2015.

Indeed, Netflix and chill, a dating app come-on that's by now self-aware, is a slightly coded request for intercourse, perhaps while episodes of House of Cards autoplay in the background and go binge unwatched.

Sex, some speculate, is as old as civilization itself. We'll keep creating euphemisms for it. This one has just peaked.

Netflix has yet to respond to the incident, and it's unclear if the tagger has been identified.

Honestly, they should just be thankful that what's practically a branded meme has achieved this level of ubiquity.

Don't worry, everybody. The "blood" — all 6 gallons of it — in local bawdy singer/songwriter Rachel Lark's first music video is just corn syrup.

"No sex-positive people were harmed in the making of this video," she tells SFist. Lark's song, which has become something of a "single" for her, explodes the social taboo of having sex during your period. After all, that's an act Lark says she vastly prefers to being covered with corn syrup. She does mention one problem with the shoot, however — which looks amazing, not to mention very gnarly, by the way. "I forgot how we were gonna clean up afterward," she confides, explaining that the crew ended up mopping up corn syrup "blood" with T-shirts.

"Warm, Bloody, and Tender" — which is not for the faint of heart, because you'll be laughing to hard — features cameo performances from the writer and activist Dan Savage and local SF sex luminaries Jamie DeWolf, Polly Superstar, Dixie De La Tour, Sister Flora Goodthyme, Wonder Dave, Laika Fox, and Paige Goedkoop.

Says Savage “I’m a Stephen Sondheim obsessive, a Tom Lehrer obsessive, a Tim Minchin obsessive. Rachel Lark is right up there with all of those." High praise indeed.

The video is NSFW.

The above video was funded by Lark's recent Kickstarter campaign, which raised over $15,000 for its production and work on her most upcoming live album.

In the meantime you can catch Lark in person at local Bay Area venues and events, listed here, from "Bawdy Storytelling" to "Tourette's Without Regrets" to Folsom Street Fair itself. Lark's upcoming "Vagenius" tour, named for a live album that drops next week, will take her farther afield as well.

On tour, Lark says she's frequently asked about her San Francisco home. "As a working artist the big question everyone asks is how can you afford it," she says, "My response is usually how could I not live in san francisco. I like that I'm a product of the work that activists for sexual freedom have been doing here for years. They've made this place what it is."

Previously: 'Hung For The Holidays' Is The SF Xmas Album We've Been Waiting For

Are you feeling sexy? How sexy? If you said "sexier than Boston, but less sexy than Miami" then you and Playboy magazine agree on at least one thing!

According to the hetro/"lesbian"-for-the-sake-of-the-male-gaze-focused publication, San Francisco is the fifth-most sexy city in the US, behind #1 New York, #2 LA, #3 Chicago, and #4 Miami.

The methodology for their "exclusive poll"? Please, allow a rabbit in a bow tie to explain:

We conducted two customized polls with ­SurveyMonkey: The first general-­population study ranked cities from one to 25; the second dug deeper into the attitudes and lifestyles of people living in the top five cities. Using data from the second survey and outside sources (see below), we uncovered key preferences and predilections in our five sexiest cities.

We partnered with NerdWallet, a San ­Francisco-based personal finance start-up, to crunch numbers on bars, restaurants and other entertainment outlets per 1,000 residents to come up with a nightlife factor, which we then combined with a walkability index to produce these overall after-sundown scores.

Weirdly, though, the data seems to focus on people who stick to sexual activities with those with whom they do not share a gender! For example, here's one of their insights on SF: "As for the dating market, good news, ladies: The city is home to 116 single men for every 100 single women."

Yeah, ladies, and if you really want to skew the odds in your favor, check out bars like Badlands or The Eagle! At places like that, the world is your oyster! (At least, I think that smell is oysters...)

Then again, maybe it's not so weird that Playboy might overlook the fact that a lot of those 116 dudes are not looking for lady love. After all, can an antique (albeit, a charming one!) like Playboy get down with Dore Alley? Probably not.

Moving past Playboy's apparent heteronormativity, we have one thing going for us: coming.

"Our survey shows San Francisco trailing Miami and New York in frequency of sex," Playboy observes, "but leading the top five in quality—that is, frequency of orgasms." Yay?!?

Trailing our orgasmatic city is Boston at #6, Seattle at a #7 so sad they don't even get a writeup, Vegas at #8, San Diego at #9, and Portland rounding out the top 10.

Take it away, folks...

Also sexy: BDSM Meets Broadway In Snappy New Folsom Street Fair Promo

In the early years of SFist, one of our Gothamist overlords told us we should sign up for this (since discontinued, I thought) email-alert system from Urban Dictionary that would let us know when a local slang term was popularized. In the intervening decade, I can't recall ever seeing anything of note. That is, until today, when my inbox got a message about the San Francisco Hitchhike.

My first thought, of course, was that this was somehow related to John Waters's recent book, Carsick (capsule review: first two sections are for Waters superfans only, third section is completely wonderful!), which details how he hitchhiked from Baltimore to his new apartment in San Francisco. John Waters seems like the kind of guy who could've somehow commandeered Urban Dictionary for his own purposes, right?

However, that was not the case. Here is what a San Francisco Hitchhike is, per the entry posted to Urban Dictionary today:

The act of tucking your penis back and then proceeding to jerk yourself off from the back while your thumb is extended into your butthole.

Or, to use it in a sentence:

Ray was feeling frisky today, so he tucked it back and gave himself a good ol' San Francisco Hitchhike.

As I reread that, it has a certain Watersian quality, I suppose. But, anyway, now you know.

Have you heard about this? There's this artist/entrepreneur by the name of Spy Emerson who got herself a box truck and is now rolling it around the Bay Area, and to events, providing a "mobile hotel room" for brief, spontaneous sex. It's called The Hook-Up Truck, and Emerson says she was inspired by a story a gay friend (Sister of Perpetual Indulgence Flora Goodtyme) told her about hooking up via Grindr. "My friend was telling me about ... how he had sex with someone in a driveway,” she tells SFGate. “I thought, ‘What if I started some kind of service for people on the go?’”

Leah Garchik and SF Weekly first reported on the Hook-Up Truck in March, and right on schedule, it launches tonight at Oakland's First Friday art walk. Following that, around 10 p.m., Emerson will roll the truck across the bridge to the Mission District (exactly location TBA, likely via Twitter).

The service, which is a max of a 30-minute rental, will cost you $75 when you come to the truck's scheduled location, or $150 when the truck comes to you. They're also doing party rentals with staff and cleaning services provided: $2500 for five hours. Of course, contraceptives/condoms are provided.

The space, Emerson says, is small. But:

"Everyone who has seen it has had so much fun. It’s like being a kid in a fort,” she said. “It’s designed for sex. There’s a bench, a bar to hold onto, and there’s a mirror on the ceiling. I’m still putting the finishing touches on it.”

So, look for some disheveled, libertine friends to be stumbling out of this thing on a corner near you! Also, it'll be at this NIMBY party in Oakland tomorrow, on Amelia Street, from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.

[SFGate]
[Chron]
[SF Weekly]