Nothing risqué, nothing gained. |
The words sound the same and somehow I managed to incorporate both into this Mystery Date!
The seed was planted by an email from the freshly launched Yelp Deals (Yelp’s answer to Groupon, remember it was 2011). There at the bottom was a special deal for the San Francisco Armory Tour. Armories are usually pretty cool right? Well this Armory definitely had a unique SF twist!
The behemoth of a building (220,000 sq. ft.!!!) has quite a varied history. The San Francisco landmark was originally built in 1912 to service the National Guard and through the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, the oldest building in SF became famous hosting the Golden Glove boxing matches and dubbed the Madison Square Garden of the West. In the 70’s, George Lucas filmed much of the original Star Wars there. Wow right?
Here comes the risqué part… In 2006, the building was purchased by Kink.com, a San Francisco-based internet pornography producer specializing in BDSM. The risky part was taking my wife of 5 months on a fetish tour! What would we see? What would she think? What would I think? This was going to be a mystery for the both of us!
The behemoth of a building (220,000 sq. ft.!!!) has quite a varied history. The San Francisco landmark was originally built in 1912 to service the National Guard and through the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, the oldest building in SF became famous hosting the Golden Glove boxing matches and dubbed the Madison Square Garden of the West. In the 70’s, George Lucas filmed much of the original Star Wars there. Wow right?
Here comes the risqué part… In 2006, the building was purchased by Kink.com, a San Francisco-based internet pornography producer specializing in BDSM. The risky part was taking my wife of 5 months on a fetish tour! What would we see? What would she think? What would I think? This was going to be a mystery for the both of us!
We walked up to the ominous building and checked in for the tour. We were directed to a normal looking lounge with a ping pong table and Kathleen and I wasted no time starting up a game. She still didn't know what the tour was about, and honestly I didn't know what we would be seeing in the coming hour!
The tour wound its way through five floors of rooms that included; movie props, a medical exam room, a large wrestling theater, dungeons, a room full of ropes, a room full of custom made toys, a class room for those "hot for teachers", and others. By far the most interesting part was the upper floor, a sprawling and decadent fancy room used for large group events.
The tour wound its way through five floors of rooms that included; movie props, a medical exam room, a large wrestling theater, dungeons, a room full of ropes, a room full of custom made toys, a class room for those "hot for teachers", and others. By far the most interesting part was the upper floor, a sprawling and decadent fancy room used for large group events.
The best photo we got from the tour!
While certainly not the most romantic Mystery Date, it was interesting to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and meet some really nice people working in one of the most popular online industries. Sometimes you got to get risky for the risqué!
