Fetish Dayz

The Fetishistas goes live, and I can blog again!

Unnatural act? Gen of Society of Genitorture, topping the LA Kink Ball bill

Keeping up a blog — even a mere weekly one — when you’re also trying to launch an entire webzine is, as I discovered in February, easier said than done. So my apologies to everyone who has dropped in on FetishDayz over the last month or so to discover no new entries since my preview of mid-February’s Los Angeles Kink Ball Weekend.

There were just not enough hours in the day, in the run-up to the launch of The Fetishistas at the LAKBW, to do anything except work on the ’zine’ s debut. And after that event, my energies were inevitably focused on creating the party reportage for the new site that was a natural consequence of tying the ’zine’s launch in with the LA weekend. Not to mention catching up on all the other, ongoing editorial work that would otherwise have been done in the period when I was away. So this has been my first chance to return to blogging — but hopefully it’ll be the last time there’s such a large gap between pieces. It’s not like there’s not plenty to write about!

Anyway, the launch of The Fetishistas looks like it can be counted a success, even though what went online on February 16 was, in the end, only a taste of what a full monthly edition of the site will eventually look like. The fact that we went live with as much content as we did, looking how it was supposed to look, is a testament to the dedication of my two partners in grime, editorial associate and graphic designer Jan FetishClubPix, and webmaster Martin Pelzer.

In order for the site to launch as planned at Slave2Fashion, the Friday night opening party of the LA Kink Ball Weekend, Jan in the UK and Martin in Berlin both had to work right through their respective Friday nights. When I finally turned off my laptop at 10pm in LA on the night of the launch party, they were shutting down their computers at what for them was breakfast time the next day. Respect is therefore due to them in no small quantity.
   

Above, L-R: Slave2Fashion MC RubberDoll; House of Harlot’s star performer Jewell Marceau; one of Pretty Pervy’s scary alien bugs; Jolie Vaughn walks Torture Garden

Slave2Fashion had been planned as a dresscode event with the primary focus on networking, which tied in very nicely with its rôle as a media launch party. The fashion aspect was reflected both in the efforts the well-turned-out audience made to meet the party’s strict dresscode (this not being something LA audiences are accustomed to), and in the onstage fashion shows which featured Germany’s Tatjana Warnecke and three UK latex labels — House of Harlot, Pretty Pervy and Torture Garden Clothing.

MC’d by RubberDoll, S2F was undoubtedly successful in bringing a lot of the West Coast’s fetish fashion and media people together under one roof, with an impressive complement of top fetish photographers (see below) turning up to check out all the modelling talent the party attracted, both onstage and off.

Photographers’ gallery, above, L-R: Michael Helms with fashion show co-ordinator and Fetishistas columnist Marina St Mark; Helms’ buddy Perry Gallagher on production photography duties; Christine Kessler with Howard Vacbed; Michael Diamond of ErosArtist.com and friends

Photographers’ gallery, below, L-R: Taboo’s Gerry Koehler is attacked by Talia Monet; Steve Diet Goedde (left) and Jody Cortes lean towards Imp of Satan’s Rose Algren; New LA resident Nadya Lev (left) with Toronto’s Black Widow

It was great to see out-of-towners so well represented here. There was a whole enclave from Seattle, including my favourite kinky catsuit creator Rose Algren (Imp of Satan), while Portland was represented as only Betka Schpitz can represent it. I was delighted, too, that I finally got to meet Toronto’s Black Widow, who some years ago sent such hot pictures of herself to me at Skin Two that I was obliged to create a completely new section in the magazine just so I could publish them. The section was called Model Card, which quickly became one of the most sought-after spots in the mag. (Sad to say, it no longer has a place in that publication.)

Another thing that gave me quite a buzz, as a confirmed networking addict these days, was to meet in the flesh a substantial number of people who had friended me through MySpace or Model Mayhem. People who use these sites to build up a more or less random network of ‘friends’ around the world may never meet more than a tiny percentage of them. But if you use these sites for something as focused as fetish networking, then every time you go to a fetish event outside your usual locale, you have a fair chance of connecting with some of your new virtual pals in the real world. Which makes it all seem strangely worthwhile.

Masque moments, L-R: Arachnia Webb; Betka Schpitz; RubberDoll and Anastasia Pierce; Maxine and Athena Fatale

Quite a few people whom I recognised, but couldn’t always think from where, came up and introduced themselves as recent MS or MM friends, and it was great to get to know some of them, such as bondage model Arachnia Webb and Master Liam, better during the course of the weekend. I’d first bumped into these two at Saturday’s Masque dinner, where Arachnia would find herself invited, with rope expert Charly B, to stand in for the absent Maria Shadoes at Sunday’s Bondage Brunch. There were some great performances at Masque by the likes of Athena Fatale and Maxine, though it has to be said that the night belonged to RubberDoll, whose second show, featuring Anastasia Pierce, blew fuses literally as well as metaphorically.

Socialising at events like this also produces many new MySpace friend requests, and in the wake of the weekend, I’m pleased to have added to my circle of cyber-chums the likes of V and Nikki, a couple of fun girls who shared my Masque table; and Angelique, a proper stocking-wearing miss with great 1940s style whom I met at Sunday’s Kink Ball.

If Masque belonged to RubberDoll, then the Kink Ball itself belonged to the legendary Gen, whose Society of Genitorture show predictably transgressed just about every guideline that LA venue managements could imagine laying down for live performances. Whether by coincidence or as a direct consequence, the party finished a good hour before it was scheduled to, leaving some of the billed entertainment unsampled by me. Although it has to be said that much of Kink Ball’s spectacle, such as that provided by dommes-at-play Mya and VonLivid, was of the unscheduled variety anyway (and not unsampled by me).
   
Kink Ball kinkery, L-R: Angelique has a quiet nylon moment; Gen and her girls givin’ it large; LA discovers that Seattle is not wearing any drawers; Mya and VonLivid provide their own floor show

Up until this point, I’d been staying at Kink Ball promoter Robert Fluty’s impressive downtown studio, but after the craziness of the weekend, I needed a quiet place to work on my report. So I decamped for my last few days to the house my good friend Veronica shares with her man Joseph overlooking Coldwater Canyon, which is a haven of tranquility even when Joseph is recording music in his studio above the guest bedroom.

Apart from a brief shopping trip to Glendale Galleria that gave me a chance to hook up for dinner with my pal Perry Gallagher, and a scouting trip with Veronica to a bisexual fetish bar (don’t ask), I hardly saw the outside world again until the following Friday. It was my last night in LA and the redoubtable Sonny Black had taken it upon himself to organised a perv dinner at a restaurant in Beverly Hills. The venue had been carefully chosen to give Hollywood — the more usual location for such gatherings — a wide berth, because this was Oscars weekend, which meant all around Hollywood the roads would be gridlocked.

The Italian restaurant Sonny picked had told him that it had recently lost its liquor licence, so everyone had to take their own booze. Then when we got there, we learned that the restaurant had miraculously regained its licence in the two days since the BYOB advice. So those of us who ended up being an hour late because we’d been searching for somewhere to buy booze in Beverly Hills were not perhaps in the best of moods at this point. However, the food and the ambience soon made up for it, and of the 30-plus diners in our party, a good few accepted the invitation to end the evening with a drink or three at Miss Kitty’s, where the genial Christos and his cohorts were on good form.

By the time I boarded my Virgin flight back to London the next evening, I felt that I’d barely scraped the surface of Los Angeles on this visit. My ten-day stay had just flown by, leaving me with insufficient time for some of my closest West Coast pals. On the upside, however, some interesting new friendships were started… and there was the small matter of launching a new fetish webzine too. So, all in all, not an entirely fruitless trip!

Above, L-R: Last supper with Sonny, Veronica and Joseph; a bit of cheek from our first Fetishistas Style File subject, Jolie Vaughn; Marina bends my ear about her next Fetishistas column

A full report on all the Los Angeles Kink Ball Weekend parties, complete with extensive photo galleries, can be found at www.thefetishistas.com. Use the menus and go to Events > Reports > LA Kink Ball or just click directly on the second link below. You can also use the menus to find all the site content not displayed in the site’s current Front Page trailers.

Fetish webzine: www.thefetishistas.com
Full LA Kink Ball Weekend photo report

Launch of ‘The Fetishistas’ at LA Kink Ball Weekend

The fetish webzine project that I’ve been working on since my departure from Skin Two at the end of May last year is about to go live. Launch of the webzine The Fetishistas will happen during the first Los Angeles Kink Ball Weekend in mid-February. The site will officially go live on Friday February 16 at Slave2Fashion, the opening event of the weekend, at Knitting Factory, 7021 Hollywood Boulevard.

I was very pleased when I heard last summer that LA was going to get a proper European-style fetish weekend in early 2007, and I happily made a commitment on behalf of my as-yet-to-be launched ’zine to support it. Why? My last four years editing of Skin Two magazine had seen me forging a strong relationship with Los Angeles’ growing community of fetish creatives. Looking back on LA’s emergence as a fetish force, it seems almost as if someone must have thrown a switch to produce the surge in the quality and quantity of work that I observed coming out of the area over that period. But I think the truth is more that this great mass of fetish talent had been simmering quietly away for quite some time, and what it needed was for publications like mine to take notice.

I’m the first to say that London can teach the rest of the world a few tricks when it comes to playing home to more top-drawer designers and international-standard events than anywhere else. But I can’t help also feeling great affection for this new West Coast scene — a scene I’ve witnessed blossoming rather as I watched the London scene grow from its roots in a single Soho club in 1983.

I had originally thought that by the time the LA Kink Ball came around in mid February, The Fetishistas would have been online for two or three months. But getting this big project off the ground has turned out to be more complex than predicted (quelle surprise) and so we find ourselves in January 2007 still working on getting everything just as we want it. Though delays are never desirable, in this case they have at least had the positive effect of enabling me to tie The Fetishistas launch date in with the other very significant launch of early 2007. Both these ventures — webzine and weekend — are, I would suggest, important milestones for the international fetish community. Los Angeles finally gets a full-scale perv-fest that befits its importance as a centre of kinky excellence, and the world gets its first truly world-class online fetish magazine.

I know Los Angeleans will turn out in force to support their own weekend, but I’m expecting also to see a lot of old friends from further afield, not to mention some of my many new MySpace and ModelMayhem mates from near and far. I’m sure a lot of people are disappointed that there’s no San Francisco Fetish Ball this year, but in its absence, the LA weekend this February could be just the way to get your first fix of West Coast fetish fun in 2007.

As for the launch party itself, well, reflecting the London-based but shamelessly internationalist outlook of The Fetishistas, Friday night’s Slave2Fashion brings strict dresscode European pervy partying style to Los Angeles, with latex fashion shows from UK labels House of Harlot, Torture Garden Clothing and Pretty Pervy, plus distinctive pvc designs from Germany’s Tatjana Warnecke. With its ambient/chill-out/trip-hop musical backdrop, the night aims to provide the perfect vibe for socialising and networking. It promises to be a particularly good promotional opportunity for models, with the chance to show off their hottest outfits and be photographed for the world’s Fetish Press. And of course there’ll be the bonus of seeing, in the flesh, famous fetish fashion labels never before brought to the Los Angeles stage.

In case my presence alone is not enough, The Fetishistas’ team at Slave2Fashion will also include several of the webzine’s much better-looking contributors, who’ll be participating in the fashion performances. Look out for such launch edition luminaries as Los Angeles’ very own Ms Marina, Chicago’s VonLivid and Miami’s Jolie Vaughn among the fashionistas strutting their stuff for your entertainment.

It promises to be quite a night — and quite a weekend. I hope as many of you as possible will turn out to support it. See you there!

www.lakinkball.com
www.thefetishistas.com (goes live Feb 16)

NOW THAT THE BALL IS OVER…

I hope I can be forgiven for the absence of new postings over the last couple of weeks. It hasn’t been for lack of anything to say. The truth is that covering the Skin Two Rubber Ball Weekend creates an enormous workload (even if you’re not working on the magazine any more). And since that long weekend of 5-8 October, it has felt to me as if I’ve done nothing in my waking hours at all except view, adjust, retouch, crop, save, resize and resave pictures in Photoshop.

I had a photo pass for all the events and this meant that as soon as I’d recovered from the After Party after the After Party after the Finale, I was faced with around a thousand digital images to sort through and selections to supply to various clients, not least Skin Two itself, within fairly tight deadlines. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Finally, though, my various obligations have been discharged and I can get back to updating my blog and working on my fetish webzine launch which is scheduled to happen in November (and about which there will shortly be much more info here at Fetish Dayz).

As you might expect, there will be major coverage of Rubber Ball Weekend in the forthcoming ’zine. But as a taster, you’ll find a report with 12 of my favourite RBW pictures — including this one of Viktoria at Torture Garden’s Rubber Ball night — in the Fetish Dayz Features section of this site.

Click here to take you there.

LOS ANGELES TURNS OVER A NEW LEAF

People have often complained that Los Angeles is surprisingly lacking in quality fetish events given that it plays home these days to such a vibrant community of creative pervs. But that could all be about to change, thanks to the efforts of two local promoting talents who, in different ways, are both making fresh starts in LA with two very different kinds of fetish event this very month.

James J, who was until recently involved in promoting the Los Angeles Bondage Balls and other LA fetish events, has severed his ties with former partner DJ Courtney in order to spread his wings and run his own promotions.

And his first event is no small coup. It’s the launch party for O — The Power of Submission, Ernest Greene’s adult video remake of legendary SM novel Story of O for the Adam & Eve label.

The Surrender of O party on Thursday September 14 at Boardners will feature performances from the cast, which includes Carmen Luvana in the title role and Greene’s missus Nina Hartley (both seen right) as well as bondage/SM queen Claire Adams. There’ll also be rubber fashion, dancing, BDSM play and numerous giveaways.

The following Friday, September 22, sees the debut of an entirely new kind of perv event for LA — a fetish dinner and cabaret night called Masque. The brainchild of Kink In the Caribbean promoter Robert Fluty who recently moved to Los Angeles from New York, Masque has been inspired by the success of the Twisted City fetish dinner cabaret Fluty organised as part of the Absolute Kink Amsterdam perv-fest back in April.

The venue for this event, The Entertainium, has been described as one of LA’s best-kept secrets. It’s a fully licensed downtown movie studio with numerous theatrical sets and themed rooms — including a jail cell set (below) that will surely have special appeal to Masque’s target audience.

The evening’s entertainment reprises that winning teaming from the Amsterdam event — MC Paul Nathan and the Porcelain Twinz — plus top fetish model Emily Marilyn, hot new LA contender Natalie Minx and others. At midnight, the Entertainium floors will be cleared and the play equipment brought on for the Eyes Wide Shut after-party. Unlike most LA events which close at 2am, this will go through until 5am, with a complimentary breakfast served at 3am.

Knowing the Los Angeles scene and both promoters as I do, I reckon both events will be well worth attending if you’re in the locality. If you are, but can’t make either of those dates, you might want to circle President’s Day Weekend 2007 (February 16-18) in your diary, because I hear that’s when these two talents will be teaming up to promote an event together for the first time. Not just any event, either, but Los Angeles’ first full-on fetish weekend, headlined by a big party called the Kink Ball.

If these guys deliver together in the way they have individually in the past, then mark my words — we could be seeing the start of a significant shift in the West Coast’s ‘must do’ pervy partying habits.

www.surrenderofo.com
www.othepowerofsubmission.com
www.whatismasque.com
www.myspace.com/surrenderofo
www.myspace.com/whatismasque
www.kinkball.com
 

A TASTE OF FETISH, BERLIN STYLE

The first half of 2006 was a very busy time for globe-trotting pervs, with the temptation of half a dozen big fetish/BDSM weekends staged in the UK, Europe and the US in the spring and early summer.

In-depth coverage of big international fetish fests like these will be a feature of my forthcoming dedicated website, but for a taster right now of one recent European event — the German Fetish Ball in Berlin — check out the GFB photo story in Fetish Dayz Features.

Miss Von Livid enjoys a cocktail at the German Fetish Ball weekend’s Friday night Revolution party (photograph by TM)

www.german-fetish-ball.com