Image by my friend Richard Kadrey.
This week’s SF Chronicle column is an especially jubilant guide for SF Pride, Your Extra Sexy Pride Guide. I’m so excited for this weekend! Seriously, the honeymoon starts right now. In this column, I had a lot of fun doing one thing I especially love, which is calling and pestering local businesses and getting to feature them and to generally boast about our San Francisco Values. Here’s a snip:
Everyone loves a happy ending, especially here in San Francisco. Many say that the happy ending to a wedding is the honeymoon; fortunately for everyone in town for the biggest Pride celebration in the world this weekend, we’ve got newlyweds and happy endings a plenty. A whole city practically doubling its population and going on its honeymoon. We may, in fact, run out of dildos. The lube supplies could run short, prompting a citywide panic. The largest wedding reception-cum-honeymoon could drain our precious resources and begin the Great Strap-On Sally Famine of 2008.
Before you start stockpiling Astroglide and buying stock in silicone in preparation for the Y2K of San Francisco Pride 2008‘s marriage bed mob mentality, relax. Think about the kittens. Then, rest assured that our fair and beautiful city saw the honeymoon juggernaut coming, and that the bunkers are lined with porn and fortified with double-A batteries. Most of all, we’ve got a honeymoon survival plan for all, er, comers.
Your San Francisco honeymoon survival guide
1. Stock up on supplies.
No one wants to be caught with their pants down when their pants are down. White wedding, Pink Saturday — San Francisco has you covered. Get your eager beavers and other bits down to a Good Vibrations (goodvibes.com) location for all your sex toy, book and video needs. Get cheap lube and marvel at the selection at Phantom, where the blazing neon “Lube 4 Less” sign is not a joke. While you’re in the Castro, enjoy the generous selection of sex toys at the revamped Does Your Mother Know. And if it’s gay porn you need, visit Superstar Satellite Video where the selection exceeds reason and possibly the space-time continuum, and is well-chosen at that. Unlike in other cities, you can get safer sex supplies a-plenty at any Walgreens — especially the Castro location.If you absolutely can’t make it here for the honeymoon pleasure party, local online retailer Blowfish (blowfish.com) has its own honeymoon gift baskets ready for, uh, all your basket needs. Blowfish’s Here Comes The Pride, Bride(s) and Groom(s) Packages are four well-priced sex toy kits designed especially for same-sex romantic weekends, or for opposite sex his-and-her celebrations of the living-in-sin kind.
2. Be a tourist and see some art.
You have to leave the bedroom eventually, but I encourage you to not do anything in the street that might frighten the horses. OK, so we’re a little short on horses and kinda big on the ponies, but you know what I mean. Or not. Regardless, we have some of the most fantastic erotic and sex culture commentary art shows going this weekend, and you especially don’t want to miss a trip to Femina Potens. Run by brainy sexy beauty Madison Young, Femina Potens is more than a statement about sex culture and feminist sexuality: Right now it’s the most happening art space in the city. Every weekend bustles with packed openings or performances showcasing sex-positive artists and writers of all genders and orientations, and if it’s a tempest in an art world teacup, it’s a revolution in art and sex. Most of the astonishingly world-class art and performances are from locals, and you’ll hear short stories about first porn experiences one weekend, see Carol Queen perform another weekend, and have your eyes and mind cherry-popped by an art show the next. This weekend is the closing party for Untold Stories, a truly terrific show in a variety of media featuring the art of transwomen — catch it Saturday on your way to the Castro. (…read more!)
