BDSM RTV NEWS!!!!

11 november 2008

Bondage Fair Drew More than 400,000 to San Francisco, Organizers Say

Source: www.cnsnews.com CNSNews.com - Alexandria,VA,USA

Last month’s Folsom Street Fair attracted more than 400,000 people to a 13-block area in San Francisco, according to the event’s organizers - people who came to witness or participate in bizarre sex practices like whippings, sadism and self-punishment.



Susan Wright, spokeswoman for the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, told CNSNews.com that the Folsom Street Fair is “the third largest single-day outdoor event to take place in California.”

“It’s a demonstration of personal and community expression,” Wright said. “It’s a safe place for people who are in this alternative lifestyle community to come together. We get persecuted and discriminated against quite often. So it’s extremely important that we provide these safe places, so people can access these vendors and celebrate who we are as a community.”

But Wright is not referring to the San Francisco “community” at large, or even the Folsom Street neighborhood.

She’s referring to the BDSM “community.”

“BDSM is bondage and discipline, dominance and submission and sadomasochism,” Wright said in an interview. “It’s basically an alternative adult lifestyle, is how we term it. That means, basically, it is people who are into alternative expression - not your mainstream traditional sexual expression.”

Just who comes to this “fair?”

“It’s people who are kinky, it’s people who are into leather, it’s people who are into fetishes,” she said. “There’s a lot of tourists that come - people internationally, as well as just locally, people in the San Francisco area, people who are not involved in the community who just want to come and experience the fair.”

Approximately 75 percent of the people that come to the fair are from the Bay area, Wright said. Some are homosexual. Some are heterosexual.

“The other 20 percent are national (from around the nation) and the other 5 percent are international,” she added. “It is largely a local phenomenon.”

When asked whether sex acts are performed on the street by participants, Wright was quick to state the fair’s policy: Nudity is okay; performing sex acts on the street is not.

“In California, the law is against lewd exposure, so what that means is that in San Francisco, the standards are more embracing of nudity, as long as it is not done in a lewd manner,” Wright said.

“So what happens is, the fair tells people, ‘You can’t do sex acts. You can be nude. We even had a sign that said, ‘Nudity is illegal,’ which is incorrect, actually.”

But sometimes people do get “caught up” and engage in bizarre sex practices on the street, she admitted.

“(Organizers) strongly try to discourage people from coming in nude, and if they see any sex acts, they stop them immediately,” Wright said. “They have hundreds of volunteers, security volunteers who go around trying to keep things from getting to that point. When you have 400,000 people, sometimes things get through the cracks and you can’t stop it.”

Access to the “fair,” which takes place on public streets, is restricted, Wright said. For one thing, vendors sell sex equipment.

“They do allow BDSM to take place in demonstrations, sometimes vendors hold demonstrations of equipment or do live demonstrations to entertain the crowds,” she added.

There are whippings, beatings, use of handcuffs, stocks.

“It certainly is considered legal to do on the street -- the things that we try to stop are the actual sex acts,” she said. “We try to put a stop to that whenever we see that happening. And we ask people not to do it when they come in.”

Wright admitted, however, that children are sometimes brought into the fair.

CNSNews.com: “You mentioned that this is an adults-only event. But you don’t check IDs, or anything like that, do you?”

Wright: “It’s a public street so what we do, if we see any parent - OK, if any kids try to get in by themselves, they can’t get in. They just are not allowed in. But if parents bring their children, what happens is they are told we strongly discourage bringing children - or pets - into the fairgrounds. It’s just not an appropriate - we don’t feel it’s an appropriate place. Parents at that time have the choice to turn around and walk away, which most of them do. These are mostly tourists, people who have heard about the event and are curious and come.”

“If we see any parents with children walking around, security personnel reiterate that message,” she said.

Wright, however, said she cannot estimate how many children may have been let in.

“Unfortunately, it is a public street, so we can’t prevent them from entering, like we could if it was a bar or a closed venue,” she added.

There are more than 250 “vendors” and distributors that are primarily associated with the “alternative adult lifestyle,” she said.

“That’s bars, and gay sex venues, but there’s also things like The New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle selling subscriptions,” said Wright. “If you have room for 250, you’re going to have quite a variety.”

Wright, meanwhile, said the revenues have not been totaled for 2008, but the event brought in $35 million last year.