While The Advocate is busy throwing darts at a map to pick its gayest city in America, our own Kink.com is checking out the numbers of folks using their site and others like it or registering for fetish social networks like Fetlife to anoint "America's Kinkiest City." They also factored in kink professionals listed in each of the 50 cities they examined. The results? We're number two behind Portland this year, with New York in third. And that's all according to our own hometown website, as Kink is, of course, based in the historic San Francisco Armory.
In the end, it would have been gaudy to give ourselves first place, right? Right. Here's the blurb on San Francisco's silver ranking:
The home of the Folsom Street Fair, the Society of Janus, Mr. S. Leather, Kink.com and Kink University, when it comes to kink, San Francisco is never far from the top (even when it bottoms). The city’s unconventional sexual history goes back to the bawdy days of the Gold Rush, and today, San Francisco offers more professional resources to kink-identified people than any other city on our list, with a kink-identified population that rivals much larger cities. But the tech boom hasn’t been all good for BDSM and fetish — legendary play spaces like Mission Control and the Power Exchange have faced evictions as rents have risen, the city instituted a nudity ban that would have been unthinkable a few years back. Even sex anchor tenant Kink.com has floated the idea of picking up the castle and moving to Nevada, in the face of anti-porn legislation. It may not have taken the top spot this year, but don’t expect this city to submit for long
I'm sure the are plenty of techie kinksters, but the point about Mission Control and The Power Exchange is taken. But how did Portland best us? I'll say it again, Kink's hands were probably tied, because it would have been pretty self-aggrandizing to give your own city the gold. Here's Portland:
With nearly 4% of it’s population logged on to kinky social networking site Fetlife, Portland has the highest percentage of kinksters per capita in the US — and is nearly as rich in resources for the BDSM, fetish and poly communities as much larger cities like San Francisco, New York and Chicago. It’s also become a leader in pushing the scene forward — it’s the home of influential kink blog, Leatherati, and it was local Portland artists who (for better or worse) launched the HealthGoth trend. The numbers speak for themselves. In a recent survey by the Portland Mercury, nearly 42% of Portland identified as something other than monogamous and 33% as something other than heterosexual.
Alright, guys, we'll say our safe word and let you win. Looks like we better whip our asses into shape if we want to be on top next year.
