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Hey everyone! I’m Lights, and I’ve worked in the BDSM scene for most of the last 7 years. Before I get to the discussion, I'd like to get a few disclaimers and ground rules for this thread out of the way. First, I'm a heterosexual cis white male (assigned male at birth, and I use masculine pronouns). I come from a background of het cis whiteness. While I've served other communities, my lived experience reflects my identity, and thus please keep in mind that while I try to recognize and avoid discriminatory practices, I've got patriarchy and toxic masculinity baked into my view of the world. There’s still work to do, and I’m imperfect. Secondly, the BDSM and kink communities across the US and the rest of the world operate in ways that are often wildly different depending on local views and law. My experience is extensive with the upstate New York and Philadelphia scenes, and I know a fair bit about Baltimore, Boston, and the District of Columbia’s scenes as well. Beyond those areas, I cannot speak with authority. If you think something I'm saying is busted, it's probably because I've still got work to do on myself. Feel free to speak up, or to ask someone you trust to speak up if you feel like it isn't safe. Furthermore, if you have a concern that you'd like to have discussed but don't feel safe having your name associated with it, feel free to PM or email me anonymously (lights@phillymusichall.com), and I'll copy/paste your question/concern into the thread without your identity being involved. Or, have a friend do it for you. Additionally, know that I am pretty much retired from running things nowadays. I can't help you get free passes to an event or a venue, and I won't ask presenters to come to your town and teach. I can probably put you in contact with folks if you're an event promoter / venue owner who would like to book a paying gig for someone to teach, though. Any conversations about specific individuals, I'd prefer to keep in PMs, or over email, just to be respectful of people's privacy. On the topic of privacy, after 7 years of running poo poo, I have a bunch of interesting/weird/hilarious stories. I will absolutely be changing the names of anyone I post about, because everyone, even lovely humans, deserves privacy. If you happen to know an individual that I post a story about, don’t dox them, even if they’re a shitheel. If you are posting your own antics (or the antics of people you know), change the names of the people who aren’t you unless you’ve got specific permission and consent from them! The exception to this is consent violation: if you feel the need to name someone who has violated your consent and it is relevant to the discussion… as long as it is within forums guidelines, go ahead. This isn’t FetLife, and I’m not interested in protecting toxic individuals or “missing stairs” (ie, assholes that everyone in a community knows are problematic but never have action taken against them for various reasons). Finally, in general, I'd like to keep this thread focused on the business and community aspects of the BDSM / kink / poly lifestyles (queer / gay / nonbinary / trans community posts are welcome too, but I both can’t and shouldn’t try to speak for those communities myself). I'm happy to recommend resources for learning skills and whatnot, but this isn't the right thread to ask about how to tie a takate kote, how to do fire play, or who to buy whips from. Ok, that stuff out of the way, who the gently caress am I and why do I have opinions on this poo poo? Eh. I’ve got some qualifications. I've been involved in BDSM community leadership for the last 7 years, served on the Board of Directors of two different kink organizations (Rochester Kink Society and Philly Music Hall), am co-founder of a rather well-known venue (Philly Music Hall) and also of a rather well-known conference (RambleGRUE). I’ve also presented on rope, fire play, and impact play at venues across the country, mostly in the north-east, and have done photography work for a number of conventions. There are doubtless folks on these forums with longer experience, and hopefully they'll feel like chiming in with other answers and different perspectives on whatever questions people may have. Mainly, my involvement in the business side of things centered around writing, reviewing, and enforcing policy, overseeing finances, and integrating technology to make the processes of running events more efficient. I'm also very well-versed in Philadelphia zoning code and the IRS’s 501c7 designation after a year-long zoning fight (we won!). I've also dealt with many of the less-fun issues plaguing BDSM communities; consent violators, serial creeps, stalking, poorly educated tops, bans and watch lists, and the raging dumpster fire that is FetLife. However, I’m an introverted hermit at heart, so I largely let people who were more qualified handle those issues where possible. I may call-in my co-founder from PMH and RG to answer questions about those things if they come up. Thanks for reading all that, and remember, kink threads have a bad reputation on SA. Let’s try not to follow the previous examples. If this thread becomes a nuisance to the mods, I’ll close the thing myself.  --- Edit: To be extra clear, my experience is in 501c7 non-profit kink community organizations, small business finance, policy, etc.. not the kink marketplace or professional BDSM-related sex work. I will try my best to answer question that are out of my wheelhouse if I know enough about it, but if you ask me about kink toy supply dynamics, my best probably looks like "I don't know enough to answer that." Lights fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Nov 27, 2018 |
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Nov 25, 2018 22:59
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Please try to avoid making GBS threads up this thread the way these things often go. I will be probating more liberally in this than I usually do if people are being dumb.
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Nov 25, 2018 23:04
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Hey, Lights, thanks for posting this. I'll look forward to reading what you've got, because those sound like some pretty interesting bonafides. What got you into the event management side of this in the first place?Grand Fromage posted:Please try to avoid making GBS threads up this thread the way these things often go. I will be probating more liberally in this than I usually do if people are being dumb. Appreciated!
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Nov 26, 2018 04:30
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Liquid Communism posted:What got you into the event management side of this in the first place? This will probably sound kinda corny, but honestly, it's because I wanted to make the scene better. Getting into the scene was the start of a massive (positive) change in my life. It was the first place I'd ever felt a real sense of community, and due to joining it, I gained a lot of life-long friends. That led me to want to give back, so when RKS put out a call for trustees for the Board of Directors, I applied and was accepted. The following year, I ran for and won a position on the Board. There, I put in two years of service trying to bring a culture that was largely based in paper into the digital era. While I didn't achieve all my goals there, it was a good learning experience. Philadelphia was a different matter. At the time that I moved down here, every play party in Philadelphia was a for-profit pop-up party. IE, people would drive a u-haul full of bondage furniture to a venue, have a crew haul everything in, set up lighting/sound/etc, people would show up, play til 2am, and then the crew would tear everything down and put it back in the u-haul (and then back to a storage unit). It was mind-blowing to me, coming from a community with a permanent community space, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make things in Philly better. So my (now) ex / business partner and I decided to open a kink community center / venue, which would eventually become Philly Music Hall. (side note: I despise that name, but we're based out of an old music hall and I couldn't come up with a better name before we needed to lock down the details.) So yeah, ultimately I wanted to make the communities I'm in better. To some extent, I even succeeded!
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Nov 26, 2018 05:13
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Lights posted:At the time that I moved down here, every play party in Philadelphia was a for-profit pop-up party. IE, people would drive a u-haul full of bondage furniture to a venue, have a crew haul everything in, set up lighting/sound/etc, people would show up, play til 2am, and then the crew would tear everything down and put it back in the u-haul (and then back to a storage unit). This makes it sound like kink is pretty commercialized, are people in the scene receptive to this? Is it your fellow kinksters running these businesses or is it seen as an attempted cash-in? How intrusive is the sales pitch, like this sounds like a Tupperware party but with people interrupting the sex to try to sell you a fancier paddle.
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Nov 26, 2018 14:34
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purple death ray posted:This makes it sound like kink is pretty commercialized, are people in the scene receptive to this? Is it your fellow kinksters running these businesses or is it seen as an attempted cash-in? How intrusive is the sales pitch, like this sounds like a Tupperware party but with people interrupting the sex to try to sell you a fancier paddle. So I'm going to refer to my caveat in the OP about my knowledge being limited in geographic scope, but in Rochester, Philadelphia, DC, Baltimore, and Boston, all the people that I know of who run pop-up parties are community members. In general, most kinksters are happy enough just to have a place to play, even if it costs them $20~40 a head to get into the door. Generally speaking, these pop-up parties will largely run on a volunteer basis. That is, most of the people who haul the furniture in, run your check-in, act as playspace monitors (or dungeon monitors - I prefer playspace monitors since honestly we're almost never playing in basements), teardown... all volunteers, doing it so that they can get into the party for free. You'll have somewhere between one and ten people who are actually making money in an operation like that, plus the venue itself (usually an empty warehouse of some sort). But the majority of the actual labor is volunteer-based. There's basically never a sales pitch; people want events to go to, and all party promoters have to do is set up an event on FetLife and maybe talk about it a bit at local munches when they're starting out. Once you've established a good reputation, by and large your customer base will keep coming back just because that's where most of their friends are going to be that night anyways. Almost no party promoters also try to sell toys or anything like that. People are expected to bring their own paddles and rope and whatnot. Sometimes a toy vendor will be given permission to set up a booth to vend from at a party, but even they will just sit there and shoot the poo poo with their friends unless someone comes to ask them about something they'd like to buy. Uninvited sales pitches are almost unheard of. Venues generally get a pretty great deal out of most party promoters, because kinksters typically don't have the luxury of being picky about where they're playing, and you can rent to them on a night when you don't have something else already going on and still get a few thousand dollars out of it, they don't drink, they'll clean up after themselves, and will be grateful that you let them be there at all. There are a few exceptions, almost all of which form 501c7 non-profit organizations to run their events. There are also a couple of for-profit permanent venues, but they're a lot more rare than pop-up parties overall and I don't have a ton of insight into the actual finances of how they run; the organizations I've directly worked in were 501c7s.
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Nov 26, 2018 15:42
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Also, there's actually a lot less sex happening at BDSM parties than people generally seem to think, for a variety of reasons. First, not all parties even allow sex on-premises. Even where it's allowed, exhibitionism isn't really that common of a fetish. Not to say that it never happens, but if you have 100 people coming to your party, and sex is allowed at that event, you can probably figure on maybe 2~4 of those people actually having sex at the event, and they're usually going to be polite enough to find a quiet room or corner or something. Plus there's the whole hassle of putting down chucks and whatnot. Second, not all BDSM is sexual. A lot of people just want to tie/be tied/beat/be beaten/etc, or want to hang out and chat with their friends, or whatever. Again, this isn't to say that sex doesn't happen. But it isn't the norm, and folks going to a BDSM party hoping to get laid are almost always going to be disappointed; most people go to parties to play with their partners and friends, not with random people they don't know.
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Nov 26, 2018 15:55
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Do East Coast venues have weird trouble figuring out coat or bag check is really needed? For some reason in SoCal like half the venues don't do coat check, sometimes the same venue and organizers will have one at one party/show and then skip it the next. Also would you say there are any good warning signs or ways to figure out if a venue/organizer is exploitative of performers?
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Nov 26, 2018 20:23
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Coolness Averted posted:Do East Coast venues have weird trouble figuring out coat or bag check is really needed? For some reason in SoCal like half the venues don't do coat check, sometimes the same venue and organizers will have one at one party/show and then skip it the next. Good questions. So as far as coat checks go, this is almost always only a thing with pop up parties; permanent community spaces tend to have a dressing room with places to store things. For pop ups, it's dependent on three factors: First, does the venue have enough space to set one up, and does the promoter have the correct furniture (ie easy-to-assemble and transport coat racks) if the venue doesn't have it on hand? Second, does the promoter feel like there is a need for / profit in setting one up? Third, does the promoter have a volunteer to spare to run it? Sometimes you'll have things like a freak storm or cold front (promoter didn't think it was needed, so they didn't have the coat racks transported), or a volunteer will call out / no show, and then you have to figure out how you staff your coat check (and the answer is sometimes "gently caress it, no coat check"). Or sometimes space in the venue will be at a premium, and the promoter has to choose between a coat check and an extra playspace and try to figure out which one will make people less angry. Related, to this day it is one of my greatest regrets with PMH that I was never able to source lockers for a reasonable price. I think having the ability to rent a locker for a few bucks a month and not have to ever cart your toys to a party would be amazing, but lockers are EXPENSIVE. As for performers, that's is a bit outside my wheelhouse, to be honest. I've never run an event with performers, nor do I ever attend anything with performers. To speak to something related that I DO have experience with, I've booked plenty of presenters/teachers. I've definitely heard of events loving over presenters by going back on agreed-upon compensations (rooms, +1 comp tickets, travel, etc.), but generally speaking, outside of the absolute top tier talent (people like Midori, Graydancer, or Osada Steve), presenters aren't being paid beyond glorified volunteer tickets... nor, in my opinion (and this is definitely controversial), should they be, as this leads to the sort of idol-worship culture that has led to so many consent violations and the protection of such consent violators by venues and organizers. There's a lot of other trickle-down effects from big-name presenters which I'll probably rant about at some point. It's one of my biggest gripes with our community.
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Nov 26, 2018 20:53
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How old are you op? Are you rich? You ever get pooped on? How often do the niche kinks get addressed at big events? Is there an untapped market (at least in large metro areas)? How ada compliant are most events? Are there niche vendors for obese kinksters? What is the local producer economy for kink tools? What partnerships are established between suppliers and events? JIZZ DENOUEMENT fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Nov 27, 2018 |
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Nov 27, 2018 01:38
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JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:How old are you op? Old enough, I'm nowhere even near rich, and no.
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Nov 27, 2018 01:44
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Lights posted:Old enough, I'm nowhere even near rich, and no. I’m serious about the age thing. Please provide more info even if just general decade. There seems to be weird schisms in the kink economy based on age and perceived cultures and literacy with technology E: what’s the income distribution of your event attendees? Age demographics? JIZZ DENOUEMENT fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Nov 27, 2018 |
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Nov 27, 2018 01:46
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Given how you describe fetlife, do you think there's a way to integrate an app or website into these events that would be beneficial/helpful and not create worse problems in the community?
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Nov 27, 2018 01:56
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JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:I’m serious about the age thing. Please provide more info even if just general decade. Alright, that's fair and germane to the topic. I'll say late thirties. There are definitely age based schisms in kink, though in not sure I'd ascribe it to technological literacy entirely. Longer topic than I can reasonably cover in a phone post though. Edit: Couple points came up while I was typing that one, that I promise to talk about in a bit once I'm in front of a real keyboard again. Lights fucked around with this message at 02:02 on Nov 27, 2018 |
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Nov 27, 2018 01:59
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JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:I’m serious about the age thing. Please provide more info even if just general decade. Alright, now that I've got a real keyboard again, I'd like to tackle this a little more in depth. These are all my views, and do not reflect the views of PMH or anything, etc etc. There are absolutely schisms in the kink community that can be traced down age lines, and there's a whole lot of things that cause, exacerbate, and result from this. For causes, technological literacy is definitely a part, but I honestly believe that the largest part of the divide is based on the prevailing social norms when people were growing up. People born in the 50s and 60s grew up with more rigid cultural norms and a more sex-negative culture, which led to a lot of fundamental differences in how your average 55 year old kinkster views kink compared to an average 25 year old kinkster. Additionally, consent culture has changed dramatically in the last 20 years, and as a general trend, it's been harder for older kinksters to see and react positively to those changes. So you end up with older kinksters feeling alienated by the youth (who may hold views that they don't understand), and the youth not trusting older kinksters (who may hold views they don't agree with). In some circles those barriers can break down, and in some they go from mere barriers to scene-rending cataclysms. Rochester's scene ended up splitting nearly down the middle over a consent incident that became Us Vs Them age-based politics a couple of years ago, in fact. This isn't to say Old People Bad or anything, just that they grew up in a different culture and I feel like that makes it harder to fully enmesh with dramatically younger crowds. Most attempts I've seen to create intentional "age-inclusive" munches or parties end up skewing fairly far in one direction or another after a few months, no matter how what the hosts try. That said, the scene works really hard to at least try not to be age-ist. They just... don't often succeed.  JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:E: what’s the income distribution of your event attendees? Age demographics? We don't actually collect demographics (kinksters and privacy concerns, y'know), but I can give you a rough idea of what my impression of the average party demographics are. Age ranges between 18 and mid-60s, with the bulk of attendees landing somewhere in the 25-40 range, and another bump in the 50-55 range. People who are 55+ are fairly uncommon, and the 40-50 range is less represented than one would expect (there's a monthly for-profit event in Philly that tends to draw more of that age range). This will shift a lot depending on whether the event has a theme. A high-protocol event will skew a fair bit older, while a Harry Potter themed party will skew much younger. Income range is weighted largely towards working class, and for the most part mirrors what you'd expect to see in a standard sampling of employed 25-40 year olds; ie, most of 'em are not making all that much. However, public kink party attendees tend to have children less often than people who don't attend public kink events, so they've got a little more expendable income. There are plenty of outliers (the scene has a ton of doctors and lawyers), and as I said, we don't collect statistics on this so I can't be much more definitive than this. Again, those are just my impressions, and are almost entirely based on what I see when I head to PMH. I can say that DC's public venue (The Crucible) has a median age that is a fair bit higher (and, being in DC, better paid) than PMH, and Baltimore seems to be a little younger (and poorer) when I head to events there. Spikes32 posted:Given how you describe fetlife, do you think there's a way to integrate an app or website into these events that would be beneficial/helpful and not create worse problems in the community? As much as I hate FetLife (and goddamn do I hate FetLife), it serves a pretty essential role in the community, and I don't think we'll see anything take its place for quite a while. That said, I definitely think that there are ways to create community sites or apps that are less problematic... but in return, you have to lose some of the central-hub capability that FetLife has. Getting a local community to buy into a non-FL website is extremely challenging. With PMH, we force all members to use the members site to RSVP before events (due to our occupancy limits on the building, we don't allow walk-ins - not interested in the fire marshal shutting us down), and it's enough of a hassle that some people just won't come. We've just recently recruited some web developers and will over the next year or so be working on making that side of things easier, but ultimately, if it isn't on FetLife, it is hard to get the community to commit to a site/app/etc. I think there's a lot of things to be gained from technology even if we're writing off social purposes, though! For instance, most modern phones have NFC capabilities, and if you can have your membership app relay a token to the front desk to tell check-in that you've already paid your entry fee / dues / ticket price / whatever, and that you've already got a waiver on file, that can help speed up the check-in process. At PMH, we use barcoded cards that link your membership account for that purpose, but an NFC token would be even faster. In general, ticketing and membership management software isn't really designed for our communities, so we make do with things like EventBrite or BrownPaperTickets. I have a close friend who thinks that people should just move to private FaceBook groups. Personally, I don't think that's likely to catch on. FaceBook just isn't secure enough and privacy isn't enough of a concern to them, and kinksters who feel like they're at risk of being outed are pretty much never going to use it for that purpose. One thing I've seen gain some traction locally is kik, but eh... call me an old person, but I don't like it. I am the same problem that I decry.  Edit: Some stuff got edited in... this is a lot of ground to cover but I'll try to hit what I can. JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:How often do the niche kinks get addressed at big events? Is there an untapped market (at least in large metro areas)? Niche kinks occasionally will get a theme party, but it really depends on how niche it is. I've seen a fair amount of femdom, master/slave, ageplay, cigar play, and edge play content, but generally you won't find kink events for more specific things like vore, scat, watersports, etc. They're either too niche to be worthwhile, or too messy for any venue to want to deal with. Even in a major metro area there just aren't enough scat folks to be worth catering to. JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:How ada compliant are most events? In general, less than we'd like. ADA compliance varies by the venue; warehouse events tend to be fairly accessible, and permanent venues are sort of a roll of the dice (ie, if you have mobility issues, you should message the event runners and ask). PMH is currently not accessible due to stairs, but there are plans to get a motorized stair climber for mobility-impaired individuals next year. The biggest problem is money; becoming ADA compliant is not cheap (for example, adding an elevator would run something like $250,000-$500,000 last time I looked into it). JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:Are there niche vendors for obese kinksters? I'm not aware of any vendors specifically targeting obese kinksters. Doesn't mean there aren't any, but I'm not aware of 'em. JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:What is the local producer economy for kink tools? I'm not super familiar with the toy vendor market, to be honest. I dealt in providing event spaces. JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:What partnerships are established between suppliers and events? Well, as I mentioned, occasionally a vendor will request to be given space at an event (those requests are not necessarily always taken; depends on the venue. PMH does not allow vending within the space at all, as a policy.) For things like condoms, chucks, cleaning supplies, toiletries, etc... I dunno how other venues do it, but we got an Amazon Prime account for the organization and used that to have things delivered. Lights fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Nov 27, 2018 |
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Nov 27, 2018 03:05
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You ever coordinate your events and communities to accomplish philanthropic / political fundraising or canvassing?
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Nov 27, 2018 04:01
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JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:You ever coordinate your events and communities to accomplish philanthropic / political fundraising or canvassing? As far as politics go, no. We sent our members an email reminding them to do their civic duty on the day of the midterms, but as a 501c7 organization, we cannot directly campaign on behalf of any candidate or cause, so that's about as far as we can go. For philanthropic causes, we've supported (and been supported by) the NCSF, but right now the organization is more focused on being able to generate enough revenue to afford the aforementioned ADA renovations, along with paying off the remaining legal bills from our zoning dispute. Once those goals are met, if there's excess revenue, it'll depend on what the current Board decides to do with it. Generally speaking, revenue generated by a 501c7 has to go towards the operation of the organization, or towards assisting organizations that are similar in nature or cause. So donations to, say, the NCSF are fine, as are renovations and general saving for emergencies, but things like investing, paying dividends, or campaigning for / against any given politician with those funds would be a misappropriation and could result in loss of 501c7 status, so we're very careful with that. That's not to say that PMH members (even some PMH leadership members) can't be politically involved and active - a number of PMH members are involved with Abolish ICE, for instance. However, they do not use PMH's resources for that, it's all on their own personal time and their own personal money, and while acting in those types of roles, they do not coordinate with nor speak for PMH.
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Nov 27, 2018 04:19
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JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:You ever coordinate your events and communities to accomplish philanthropic / political fundraising or canvassing? I think we've found Robert Mueller's secret SA account. I strongly doubt you'll find Trump or Russia poo poo here, boss. IME kink communities tend to blacklist people who advocate non-consensual sexual assault.
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Nov 27, 2018 04:40
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cat_herder posted:I think we've found Robert Mueller's secret SA account. I strongly doubt you'll find Trump or Russia poo poo here, boss. IME kink communities tend to blacklist people who advocate non-consensual sexual assault. What? I’m liberal. While the kink community has many flaws, it’s generally good about sex positivity, LGBTQA, and helping trauma survivors. It seems like a solid base to leverage for positive community change. Thank you for the response light, that nonprofit info makes sense regarding politics.
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Nov 27, 2018 04:53
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JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:What? I’m liberal. Absolutely. There are a number of non-business unit kink groups that do work on awareness in those kinds of fields, and we're super happy to see them. We just can't do anything as an organization to support them, for as long as the IRS's guidelines on 501c7 orgs remain as they are. We actually toyed with the idea of starting a 501c3 Foundation that could do that sort of work (remember, a 501c7 can donate to organizations that share similar missions) back when we were incorporating the non-profit, actually, but the process of forming a 501c3 takes a very, very long time comparatively, and the rules for how your 501c3 can interact with your 501c7 are pretty far into "You Need A Real Lawyer For This" territory. The current Executive Director of PMH is still interested in the idea, but it'll probably be a few years before anything happens there, if ever. Personally, I'm of the mindset that the NCSF is already better positioned nationally to do advocacy work and it would be better to support them instead, once funding is less tight.
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Nov 27, 2018 05:07
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There's something oddly... reassuring?... to the notion that the coordinator for a secretive group pursuing forbidden desires spends a whole lot of time dealing with paperwork and legislative compliance issues.
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Nov 28, 2018 00:29
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Tree Bucket posted:There's something oddly... reassuring?... to the notion that the coordinator for a secretive group pursuing forbidden desires spends a whole lot of time dealing with paperwork and legislative compliance issues. The sexy secretary is quite a common kink trope.
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Nov 28, 2018 01:56
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The Story of O-h no how are we gonna get a fire safety permit
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Nov 28, 2018 15:14
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Hate Fibration posted:The Story of O-h no how are we gonna get a fire safety permit Screwed up the permit, send me the forms  No lies, occupancy permits are one of the most frustrating parts of opening a venue (in my experience). Lots of contradictory information out there.
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Nov 28, 2018 15:44
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I'd be really interested to learn about everything that went into getting a permanent, dedicated space, and also about who uses it and when. Is the venue exclusive for your organization's events, or do other organizations have events there too? How do you figure out what to charge? At what level of membership (50? 500?) were you able to look at the finances and say "buying a space could work," and how did you go from that decision to owning and occupying a venue?
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Nov 29, 2018 21:10
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Can we back up here and take it once more for the cheap seats? What happens at an event? Which people go? Do they pay to go there? Why? I mean, I like getting blowjobs, but I haven't gone and joined a blowjob society or gone to blowjob events or taken the wife to an intermediate blowjob techniques class. What compels (a subset of) the BDSM crowd to take their sexuality so public?
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Nov 29, 2018 21:44
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bolind posted:Can we back up here and take it once more for the cheap seats? It's a lot harder to find someone you'd trust to strap you to a rack and put clothespins on your balls than it is to find someone to slob your knob. They have a good reason to meet up with other like minded individuals.
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Nov 29, 2018 21:59
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Parties also give people the opportunity to use equipment that you don't have at home. Like some people are into stuff that fits into nightstand drawers or doesn't even require anything, for sure, but then there's the person who wants to be tied to a cross and whipped. Not everyone wants to make their cross the focus of their home design, and most people don't have ceilings high enough for things like using whips or doing questionable poo poo with fire. Classes are also a thing. Like blowjobs are rarely fatal for anyone involved, worst case someone barfs, but if you gently caress up even something as little as tying up someone's wrists or hitting their back, there could be lasting medical problems. So it's worth getting info on how to not maim your partner by accident.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:27
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i like nice words
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What are the cleaning costs like? Did you build things out of materials with that in mind? What cleaning agents get used?
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Nov 29, 2018 22:32
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Tricky Ed posted:I'd be really interested to learn about everything that went into getting a permanent, dedicated space, and also about who uses it and when. Is the venue exclusive for your organization's events, or do other organizations have events there too? How do you figure out what to charge? PMH currently runs events of some sort between 2 and 5 nights per week, ranging from play parties to classes, potluck munches, and open clubhouse nights. The venue is accessible to vetted members only for all play events (each member can also bring one guest), and most classes or social events are open to anyone in the community who would like to come. Pricing is a tricky beast. The first 501c7 that I was in had a monthly membership dues system, and 100 members paying ~$30 a month (in Rochester, in 2014ish) was enough to rent a permanent space, run the lights, etc. So our pricing structures were originally built around allowing two types of membership: a free one, where your membership just means that you've been vetted and are allowed to buy tickets and attend things without a member being responsible for you, and a monthly membership, where you pay a flat $50 in dues and can attend as many events as you want for free. So for a basic (free) member, most weekend events are between $15 and $25 for yourself, and another $15~25 if you're bringing a guest. For standard (paying) members, it's $0 for your own ticket, and the normal ticket price if you're bringing a guest. The feasibility of a venue largely depends on what you're looking at paying for rent / mortgage. RKS used to only have to pay around $2,000 a month for an 8,000 square foot space. PMH pays a fair bit more than that for around ~9,000 sqft of space. As for how we went from "thinking about it" to "we have a building", we had been working on the business model for a while and looking for buildings, and in the process of doing that, a community member who we did other business with found a building, purchased it, and offered us the right of first refusal for renting from him (with the understanding that, if we said no, he'd find someone else to run a venue there). The building is WAY nicer than any of the other properties we'd looked at to that point, and we were concerned that if we didn't take the offer, we'd miss the opportunity. Having a kink-friendly landlord makes life a lot easier, if you don't have a couple million on hand to buy your own building outright. So essentially, we got lucky. However, if you've got your community behind you and find a reasonable space to rent, you can likely get a small business loan if your credit is reasonable, or you can crowdfund (which is what we did to fund our initial renovations). bolind posted:Can we back up here and take it once more for the cheap seats? So this is a lot more into "Why should kink be acceptable?" than "How does the community run?", but I'll field the question anyways. People get into the public scene for a huge variety of reasons. As PDR said above me, it's a lot harder to find people to do BDSM with than it is to just have sex, and especially for bottoms, it's a risky proposition to meet a stranger and put yourself into a position of helplessness. So one part of the scene's purpose is to provide safe avenues for people to both explore their own interests and to find people that they are interested in doing so with. Additionally, as I mentioned above, there's a lot less sex going on in the BDSM community (at least, at public events) than most people think. Some people just really want to get tied up (or tie people up), or whatever their interest in kink is, and most folks don't own a safe piece of hardware specifically designed to tie someone up to. Additionally, there's a bonding and communal element to sharing "private" things, especially things that generally looked down upon by mainstream culture. People generally pay, either in cashmoney or in volunteer effort. They do so because they get access to safe space, safe equipment, and a community of their peers. Spikes32 posted:What are the cleaning costs like? Did you build things out of materials with that in mind? What cleaning agents get used? Couple hundred a month-ish. Materials for play equipment are definitely chosen with cleaning in mind. PMH uses generic commercial cleaners for most things (floors/windows/counters/etc), the staff uses cavacide spray for play equipment, and keeps lysol wipes available for people who want to wipe down their toys.
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Nov 29, 2018 22:57
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What sort of rules does a space like this run on, anyway? I'm pretty familiar with the principal of 'Safe, Sane, and Consensual', but what sort of stuff specifically gets called out as needing explicit rules?
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Nov 30, 2018 06:55
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Lights posted:So this is a lot more into "Why should kink be acceptable?" than "How does the community run?", but I'll field the question anyways. Rereading my post I realize that it could come off as critical of BDSM and/or (semi)public BDSM activities; nothing could be further from the truth. I'm 100% for exploring whatever makes you happy as long as it doesn't hurt you or others, hell, The Lord and a few ex-girlfriends know I'm not exactly all about missionary on first and third Saturdays of the month. I also applaud your efforts in creating a community for people who like this, that's awesome.
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Nov 30, 2018 15:22
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Liquid Communism posted:What sort of rules does a space like this run on, anyway? I'm pretty familiar with the principal of 'Safe, Sane, and Consensual', In my experience the community as a whole has shifted away from SSC into RACK, which stands for risk aware consensual kink out of acknowledgement of potential ableism in the word "sane" and how some the common acitivities will never be entirely "safe," breathplay being a good example. "Lights" posted:Additionally, as I mentioned above, there's a lot less sex going on in the BDSM community (at least, at public events) than most people think. Some people just really want to get tied up (or tie people up), or whatever their interest in kink is, and most folks don't own a safe piece of hardware specifically designed to tie someone up to. Even in the private community there is less than you would expect. For example, my dominant's dominant(we are a matryoshka doll of confusing feelings) recently invited someone over using Tindr to, in this order: A) Feed her homemade cookies B) Tie her up C) Snuggle her on the couch while watching anime, her still being tied up No sex or kissing was involved at any point. And the non-sexual aspects of kink being important for a lot of people was actually the thing that ended up finally torpedoing my last relationship(she was vanilla, I wasn't, tale as old as tiiiiiiiiiiiime). For a lot of people involved in the community there are important non-sexual parts of these dynamics that scratch an itch you can't really explain. I see a lot of interactions between dominants and submissives that aren't sexual at all, but still hew closely to those heirarchies. Sometimes it can get real funny. One time a dominant got mad at me cause I called him "dude" I think in general the community aspects can be really really important. I have found myself becoming very close to a group of people incredibly quickly, enough so that I was both surprised and concerned. There is a kind of inherent vulnerability in voicing these needs and desires to people and it can cause friendships to form rather quickly. Also the whole 'deviancy spiral' thing means a lot of people in the community have a lot of overlapping interests. Liquid Communism posted:What sort of rules does a space like this run on, anyway? I'm pretty familiar with the principal of 'Safe, Sane, and Consensual', but what sort of stuff specifically gets called out as needing explicit rules? For some reason the local munch takes care to explicitly mention that the dress code is vanilla on every goddamm invite and to this day I wonder who the gently caress showed up to the combination cafe/sandwich shop at 2 PM in leather gear or perhaps something worse and why.
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Dec 3, 2018 15:11
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How frequently do you have to deal with drama/criminal allegations? What makes FetLife a dumpster fire, from your perspective? Not trying to throw stones here, I've been to local events and don't have any beef with them, just curious.
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Dec 3, 2018 16:03
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Cool thread OP! I'm a kinky chick but never really experienced a true BDSM space except for one time when I lived in NYC in the early 90s and a woman I had just met at a dance club took me there as part of our after hours "date". We weren't going there to play, but since she used to bartender there, so we could get free drinks (gotta love being a cheap art school student). Which brings up a few questions: 1. This place charged something like $30 cover for men, but nothing for women. I guess to weed out creepers, and try to bring some gender parity? I've been to some strip clubs that had similar cover charge policies. Did either of your spaces do this? 2. The one scene I got to watch was a dude bent over a bench and getting smacked bare-assed with a paddle by a dominatrix. Afterwards, I watched him peel off a few $20s, so I guess she was for-hire. Do you allow pro's who charge in your spaces? 3. Do you serve or allow alcohol? The city I'm in now, you can't allow nudity and serve alcohol, so the one gay strip/dance/party club in town has a BYOB policy and you can keep your bottle there, for a corking fee when you come back. (Virginia's got some weird rear end alcohol laws.) Also, my brief flirtation with Fetlife also made it seem like a hot pile of garbage. Couple years ago I went "shopping" there hoping to find some like-minded folks to munch with in my area, and backed right the gently caress out when I started reading screeds from some local woman who was calling out other women for daring to think they were they could possibly be equal to men. I mean, maybe that was part of her role play, but it really didn't seem like it, and there were waaaay too many people agreeing with her. I peaced out pretty quick after that. Was that akin to your experience, too? Curious to hear why you despise it. Thanks again for a nifty, well-written thread, and I hope we don't poo poo it up.
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Dec 4, 2018 01:02
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Straight White Shark posted:How frequently do you have to deal with drama/criminal allegations? Things may have changed recently but at least around 2011 or so there was a big problem with a "No naming and shaming" and other anti-drama rules being used to protect abusers, folks who violated agreements, or who otherwise engaged in unsafe things (such as play while intoxicated, or using unsafe knots). Specifically back then there was a pretty big exodus of people who found it very telling admins and their friends who had accusations against them had threads calling them out quickly deleted, and users who tried to exclude them or warn others were punished.
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Dec 4, 2018 01:52
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bolind posted:Rereading my post I realize that it could come off as critical of BDSM and/or (semi)public BDSM activities; nothing could be further from the truth. I'm 100% for exploring whatever makes you happy as long as it doesn't hurt you or others, hell, The Lord and a few ex-girlfriends know I'm not exactly all about missionary on first and third Saturdays of the month. No worries, and thanks for acknowledging it. Sorry if I came off a bit defensively! Straight White Shark posted:How frequently do you have to deal with drama/criminal allegations? Drama... a lot less now that I've retired, that's for sure. Generally speaking there's been at least one "dramatic" incident every 6 or so months, and out on the east coast, the scene likes to burn itself to the ground about once every two-three years (Studio 58 / Grove Lane Studios, Black Phoenix, Baltimore's parade of failed venues, etc). We've never had to deal with law enforcement, thankfully. FetLife is a complicated ecosystem, and there's a lot of things that make it suck. The administration of the site won't allow victims of sexual harassment/assault/abuse to name their abusers, and that's a big one. Then there's the general Thirsty Dudes, resulting in anyone with an "F" next to their name receiving unsolicited advances from empty profiles bearing only the image of a penis. There's a lot of other issues too, but it's a bit too late for me to reply with proper nuance tonight. I might revisit this topic later. JacquelineDempsey posted:Cool thread OP! I'm a kinky chick but never really experienced a true BDSM space except for one time when I lived in NYC in the early 90s and a woman I had just met at a dance club took me there as part of our after hours "date". We weren't going there to play, but since she used to bartender there, so we could get free drinks (gotta love being a cheap art school student). Which brings up a few questions: 1) We don't do gendered pricing, never have, and never will. I strongly feel that if you are letting women in for free, you're using them as a product, and beyond just being gross as a concept, it leads to entitlement issues; some men will believe they are paying for access to women's bodies. Additionally, it enforces the gender binary, and while I'm a cis dude, I can understand why my genderqueer and trans friends would feel lovely about it. 2) We do not, though there's not really any way to enforce that if neither party is making it obvious. We're very careful about what interactions with money are allowed in general, as anything that a lawyer could interpret as exchanging cash for sex could put us on the wrong side of the law. It's frustrating, since we would like to be able to be pro-sex-worker, but providing space to the community puts us under an onus to not let our ideals put that space at risk. 3) We do not. We don't really like to encourage Drink n Kink in general since alcohol makes the lines on consent a lot harder to draw. Additionally, our building is in a part of the city where we wouldn't be able to get a liquor license even if we wanted one, and our zoning agreement with the neighborhood specifically codifies that we do not allow any form of intoxicant. I don't think it's necessarily impossible to responsibly drink and play, mind you, just that it adds a danger that doesn't need to be there for a venue. See above about FetLife. I'll try to talk more in-depth about it in the future, but experiences like you had are definitely part of why FL is awful. Liquid Communism posted:What sort of rules does a space like this run on, anyway? I'm pretty familiar with the principal of 'Safe, Sane, and Consensual', but what sort of stuff specifically gets called out as needing explicit rules? We try pretty hard not to be governing people's play, so most of our play rules are general etiquette and cleaning. There's a few specific rules (no long whips without clearance, fire and medical play only in designated areas with commonly-accepted "best practice" safety precautions, etc.), but generally we try to trust members to be responsible adults. Probably the most specific rule is the rule banning fire play with white gas / paraffin oil.
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Dec 4, 2018 06:44
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Wow, I had the impression that Fet was pretty decentralized and left enforcement up to individual groups, didn't realize they had that kind of sitewide rule in place. That does suck. re: gendered pricing, the local events around here (used to?) do discounts for groups of 2+ which effectively function as a thirsty dude tax since women and non-creepy guys very quickly find friends/partners to go in with.
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Dec 4, 2018 06:53
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I know you're really more on the events coordination side of things, but I assume that you know your fair share of dedicated/professional dominates. How do people sort of typically get into that line of work? I ask because I know there's a place in my town that has a few professional doms on site that set up appointments and I am not trying to sound flippant when I say, it's hard for me to imagine walking into a place like that and going, "Here's my resume." Basically, how does one go from a place where you know you've got a certain aptitude for it and go into making it a career?
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Dec 5, 2018 02:18
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cash crab posted:I know you're really more on the events coordination side of things, but I assume that you know your fair share of dedicated/professional dominates. How do people sort of typically get into that line of work? I ask because I know there's a place in my town that has a few professional doms on site that set up appointments and I am not trying to sound flippant when I say, it's hard for me to imagine walking into a place like that and going, "Here's my resume." Basically, how does one go from a place where you know you've got a certain aptitude for it and go into making it a career? I honestly don't know a lot about how pro-domme's get into that line of work; though I do have some friends who are in that line of work, they're not good enough friends that I would pry. I'll say that from what I've seen, for most male-identifying folk, it's going to be a lot harder to break into professional domination, because male doms are basically a dime a dozen. The gay Leather community is basically the only place where there's demand for talented male tops, and even there, it's not like doms are uncommon enough that it's likely to be a good primary income unless you're in the very top tier of talent and conventional attractiveness. That said, I don't work in that field, it's possible I'm wrong and just don't know the right people; I almost exclusively deal with the public community rather than the private pay-for-play scene.
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Dec 5, 2018 03:54
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