Treasure Island Media Gets Slammed

You could be forgiven for being surprised that Treasure Island Media’s new release, Slammed, isn’t receiving more media attention.  I suspect, knowing that’s what TIM are looking for, media outlets are refusing to play their ‘outrage’ game.  That certainly seems to be the case over at The Sword (NSFW).

The latest film from San-Francisco based bareback studio Treasure Island Media (TIM) is directed by their British Director Liam Cole, and shot in London.  According to The Sword (NSFW, trailer also available), it depicts men shooting-up Crystal Meth before then engaging in bareback sex.

Crystal Meth is not the same issue in the UK as it is in the States (thankfully) and so whilst the documentary argument of Cole (i.e he’s just recording the sex that is taking place around him in London), doesn’t make sense for a US-based studio like TIM.  If it’s so important to document this, why haven’t they done it before in the States?  Why not record the same group of men shooting meth and having bareback sex over three or five years?  Show the impact of the drug on their sex, bodies and mind.  I suspect the films at the end of that series wouldn’t sell as the men’s bodies increasingly show the ravaging effects of Crystal, but if it’s all about documentary, that would have been a logical argument.

You might think it’s just a predictable behaviour tactic from TIM.  I don’t agree.  I recall (I hope, rightly) studio honcho Paul Morris financially backing a US documentary on Meth, designed to highlight the negative consequences of Meth.  I recall him being concerned about the impact of Meth on communities of men.  Is that position incompatible with releasing Slammed?  It’s perhaps a moot point but it does raise questions.  Not least, where is TIM going?

It certainly seems to be a studio that feels a bit lost at the moment.  A website and social-media overhaul has made the online presence slicker and more professional looking, but it has also stripped the studio of a lot of soul.  Nothing more so than the painful use of social media.  Fake Twitter accounts which seem more an attempt at satire than arousal are an awkward miss-step.  The Sword (NSFW) also reported on these fake accounts, singling out the account of Ethan Wolfe.  It’s embarrassing and hasn’t improved since the story, continuing the dull, almost humorous updates.  I’ve never been aroused by the tweets, but I’ve laughed quite a lot.  I’m not sure that’s usually the intention of a porn studio.  Contrast this with the genuine account of Jackson Taylor (depicted as a TIM exclusive on their site NSFW), in which his account manages to appear erotic, sincere, and interactive.  That’s how you do it boys.

Where would I go?  Well, I think there’s still a lot of scope for TIM to document the patterns and flow of sex lives.  This could be done in a conscious longitudinal way, recording the way that individuals frequenting venues/locations transcends the anonymity we often associate with random hook ups.  These hook ups are rarely random, and I think it would be interesting to document a journey into bareback sex (as ‘Ryan Sullivan’ did from the production point of view), to document the desire of bareback as well as the act.  Then again, maybe I should stick to the day job.

Launch of Web and App Resource for Strip-dancers

Teela Sanders and Rosie Campbell have produced some excellent new resources for those working in the strip-based industry.

They’ve launched a website:   http://www.dancersinfo.co.uk/ and there is also an Iphone App which can be downloaded for free (where you can set up a password) – search ‘dancers’ in the App store and Dancers Information is listed in the top 10. The resource focuses on personal safety at work; tax awareness and self employment rights and top tips for working. They consulted heavily with the dancer community, as well as drawing on findings from a large research project and specialist input from HM Revenue and Customers and on safety at work from the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. Some sections are written by dancers for dancers. The website has ‘Top Tips’ for dancers in English, Romanian, Russian and Spanish. Both resources have links to the original research on which this project draws: http://www.sociology.leeds.ac.uk/research/projects/regulatory-dance.php

A Very Special Prison Closure

Sad news for San Francisco barebackers and tourists to the city, with the news last month that the sex club Mack Folsom Prison has temporarily shut.

A notice on their website informs patrons that: ‘We are moving…Sometimes bad things happen for a reason.  You may not understand or see it at the moment, but later you look at it and realise that it turned out to be a good thing.  So we hope that out bit of bad news leads us to a better Mack Folsom Prison.  On March 10th of this year we lost one of the owners by heart-attack.  Our heads were still spinning when we were notified that the landlord decided to terminate the lease.  Mack Folsom Prison’s last day at the current location was May 6, 2012.  We are taking this opportunity to find a new location that we feel would be suitable for us to create a space for men as unique as Mack Folsom Prison is.  We will keep you posted here, and we’re looking forward to serving the men of Mack Folsom Prison soon!  The Staff and Management’.

Sad news indeed about one of the owners.  It’s easy to think ‘so what’ but such is the powerful history of San Francisco in terms of identity formation and particularly in the response to HIV/AIDS that the very presence of these clubs serve as a powerful monument to sexual history.  Their existence, and the banishment of saunas, the presence of a venue called Blow Buddies, the geographical positioning of these venues today – far from the tourist strewn Castro – speaks volumes about who ‘we’ were, who we are, and who we are becoming.

Whilst other venues fussed about whether your shower product could be still be smelt on entering the club (no, really – beware of using Original Source and then visiting Blow Buddies), Mack celebrated uninhibited, sleazy, raw, un-prentious sex.  For many the venue was a cesspool, a venue guaranteed to ensure that you leave with more than you came with.  A free gift for every customer and so forth.  Of course, officially, men subscribed to the safer-sex guidelines which the city requires but it was a venue where drug use, if not the effect of drugs were not unknown and bareback sex was in abundance.

It was a bit tatty, not huge, and the raised platform ‘towers’ had ladders which you always wondered whether you’d break your neck on.  Yet it’s hard to under-estimate the emotional hold that such venues have on guys.

As such, like it or love it, it was a very special venue and it’s closure of significance.  You might therefore think that a reopening is a certainty.  You might well be wrong.   Playspace opened last year (video tour below) which you can check out here, adding another sex club venue to the city, and is also placed in the South of Market district.

The website splash screen for Playspace instantly positions the club as a safer-sex/condom venue (which also indicates fucking in contrast to the oral focussed Blow Buddies) yet read their safer sex section and it’s far from preachy:

‘PLAYSPACE recognizes that sex for men comes in all shapes and forms. We encourage all our clients, patrons and friends to remember that for guys into other guys it’s important to include routine STD/HIV screening every 3-6 months. San Francisco has lots of opportunities and places for free to low cost testing, or ask your own doctor to test you during your regular visits. Many STD’s don’t have any signs or symptoms and can be missed or shared without regular screening.’

Then again, the rules inside the club (which you can see in the more atmospheric video below taken at their opening) has as rule number one ‘No bareback sex’.  How far this is practised I’m not sure.  I’ve not seen the kind of online postings that Mack attracted but nor have I visited this venue myself to evaluate behaviour.  I would be fascinated to see how these two venues – one relatively new, one relatively recently closed, are shaping bareback behaviour in the city of San Francisco and how regulatory safer sex frameworks are playing out in reality (does anyone sense a research grant bid coming on?)

Watched it?  I’m guessing you want to see/know more about Daniel don’t you?  You’re a predictable lot.  Anyway,  I’ve also seen an Internet posting that the old Mack venue is now owned by someone else who aims to re-open a new sex club there – although that was meant to open on 1 June and it doesn’t appear to have done so. Another spanner to potentially throw in the works.  How I miss San Francisco.

Check out the Mack website here.

Ben Dover and the Future of Porn

The Annual Erotic Awards and their utterly brilliant golden penis trophies have become a fixture of the sexuality calendar.  They are however, utterly useless at updating their website.  Although the finals took place on the 26th May, I still have no idea who the winners were.  Anyway, one of the finalists (perhaps a winner) was the pornographer Ben Dover (Carry on humour lives) who was nominated for the Lifetime Achievement Award.  Today, Dover also has an online store, his own clothing and events packages.

The straight porn producer regularly makes an appearance in his films, or at least his dick usually does, with scenes often ending with him getting in on the action.  He’s also been the subject of a BBC Four documentary back in 2009 on trying to make it as an actor.  In the same year, he also appeared on the BBC news channel complaining that it was increasing difficult to make money in the porn industry and suggested that the government set up a task force to tackle porn piracy.

It was therefore not all that surprising to see that Dover and his company, Golden Eye International turned to the courts for action in tackling piracy. Golden Eye International Ltd took action on behalf of 13 adult entertainment companies, stating that it had a list of 9,124 IP addresses which had illegally downloaded some of their films. It also had a draft warning letter demanding £700 for copyright infringement ready to go. If all 9,124 customers paid £700 it would amount to £6.3 million.

The High Court determined that any potential settlement sum should be negotiated with each individual recipient. In total Mr Justice Arnold rejected claims from 12 of the 13 porn production companies. O2 – the company at the centre of the claims – had to hand over the details of people using IP addresses which Golden Eye said illegally downloaded films from Ben Dover Productions.

Read more here, and here.

It’s an interesting approach, especially given that I suspect most of his fans will at some point have watched his material via illegal downloads.  It’s a serious headache for the porn industry as they seek to respond to the fast-evolving contemporary media landscape.

For IP law watchers, it was pleasing to see the court limit a tactic which previously ACS: Law got into a spot of bother over (and ultimately went out of business), as this blog eagerly points out.

Sunderland Swingers Venue Shut

I was sadly a little slow getting to this story.  The Sunderland Echo reported that a swingers club will swing no more. Organisers of Secrets, in Villiers Street, Sunniside, Sunderland, had hoped to gain planning permission from the council. According to its website, the club also proposed to launch overnight accommodation at the venue, which boasted a “dogging room” with full-size car, as well as holding sex parties across the country. However, bosses claimed recent “publicity” in the media meant any bid would have been unsuccessful. They now propose to move to another undisclosed location.

I was so excited when I first heard they were going to have a dogging room – it reminded me of the XXL Cruising Club in Berlin which has a VW Van as part of the cruising zone to give you that authentic cruising encounter.  I do hope Secrets goes on to be wonderfully successful.

No Sex Please, We’re Cruising

There was a time when ‘gay’ men cruising meant wandering around parks and other public spaces in the quest for an ephemeral sexual encounter.  A fleeting rendezvous with a stranger and danger, with the aspiration of an ejaculation at the end of it, and a potential arrest.

In our modern de-sexed times in which happy clappy homosexuals play out with ‘the adults’ and pursue sensible recreational pursuits rather than wandering around parks at 3am, the new ‘gay’ man interprets cruising as a brief vacation on a floating hotel with naff entertainment, an excess of bars and restaurants, and hordes of other human beings also pursuing the same activity.  The danger element has ceased to be about whether you’ll be arrested, and become about whether you’ll have an Italian captain and/or dice with some stomach bug which will reduce your itinerary to a bed and lavatory (but not in a good way).

Or, at least so it was.  It was revealed today that two ‘West Coast Americans’ as some reports put it (I did wonder if that was code for screaming homos from California) have been arrested for having sex.  According to Pink News, two men from California (see, it was code) have pleaded guilty to charges of breaking Dominica’s anti-gay laws after being spotted having sex on a gay cruise ship which was in port.

This was a ‘gay cruise’, which unfortunately gives the impression that it’s alright to be on a gay cruise, so long as you don’t have sex.  Which – and this may just be me – seems kinda ironic.  It’s a reminder that homosexuality has culturally ceased to be a sexual identity, and is instead a social label that can be disassociated with a particular sexual act or set of acts.  What exactly renders a cruise ‘gay’ if people cease to have gay sex?  A fondness for gratuitous photographs of Tom Daley? An uncanny instinct for interior design?  Are we reduced to an identity defined by social stereotype?

There have been those who took to social media sites to question visiting an island which has less than welcoming laws for its passengers, to which the organisers responded by commenting: ‘these [anti-gay] statutes don’t pose a concern to us in planning a tourist visit’.

Needless to say, the Daily Hate – sorry, Daily Mail – has brought itself to orgasmic delight at the story with mug shots and a range of publicity photos which make it look a rather jolly holiday to me, and which are sure to leave many Daily Mail readers with sleepless nights (and not in a good way.  DM readers don’t do that sort of thing).  If you want to read it, Google it.  

Anyhow, in this new world it’s all about sun, sex and ahem, sightseeing.  No hanky panky, we’re homosexuals is arguably the new mantra.  That said, I don’t want to be seen as being critical or cruise organisers.  Oh no no.

Imagine a cruise where you could get some enlightening academic chat from someone talking about the history of cruising, or laws around the world and homosexuality, or HIV and barebacking.  That would surely add an extra sprinkling of delightful joy to your voyage.  Well…funnily enough, hello cruise organisers, I am available for booking!  Have anti-dysentery tablets, will travel (although no Italian Captains thank you).  Alongside the danger of arrest and dysentery, let’s add the possibility of encountering Chris Ashford in the Oceanic Theatre talking about an older form of cruising.

Mason Wyler and Bareback Inspiration

HIV+ former (?) porn performer, Mason Wyler has once again caught the attention of this blog with a  tweet yesterday which you can read below.

Mason has wrestled with a career that appeared to go off the rails after being diagnosed as HIV+, a desire to study in Texas, and balance university life with the life of a self-described slut.  This recent tweet suggests that he is either a) conscious of a reaction but curious what his followers think, b) genuinely clueless as to what his reaction ‘should’ be c) pleased about this and thus sharing among his followers to contribute towards his sexual persona.

Mason has flirted with bareback porn in recent years, and there is still probably a means to make some money that way.  I’d be surprised if he made the move to treasure Island Media given his previous performances which seem very much performances – rather than raunchy sex caught on camera.  Nonetheless, Mason does seem to be revelling in the status as an HIV+ barebacker.  If he does go back into making more porn, that continued status would mark him out as fairly unusual and at a time of Law condom laws, it would also render him a counter-cultural sexual warrior.

The Voracious Escort Habits of Lawyers

The Orlando Sentinel – surely the reading choice of ever Brit – carried a rather wonderful piece this week concerning Scott Rothstein who is embroiled in a  little local legal difficulty following a spot of fraud which led to his imprsonment and the downfall of his law firm.

Apparently, the Fort Lauderdale law firm maintained a condo across the street where he and his law partners would have sex with prostitutes/sex workers and then come back to work.  Rothstein is reported as saying: 

“There were probably times when we spent $50,000, $60,000 a month on escorts,” Rothstein said. “It just depends. When there were political things in town, more. Big functions, conventions, more. People in town to entertain, more money. But it was a lot of money just for the law partners that were using escorts. Some of them had fairly voracious escort habits.”

All of which got me thinking, how many other law firms do this?  Not on the same scale of course, or anything as obvious as arranging escorts in this manner in a local commercial harem, but putting people in the room with people who may be escorts as part of providing ‘a good entertainment mix’ for example.  None of which is to condemn, but I am curious as to the extent it can be found among the bigger city based firms in particular.

Just as high street solicitors must deal with those arrested for dealing with cocaine, and city solicitors must sometimes find a new dealer, it is a world that is not unknown to have some legal tightrope walking.  Drugs is a known cultural reality for some of our city-based elite in the course of commercial networking.  What of sex work?

Raw Desire, Depicting Bareback Sex and Calling Out Hypocrisy

Long standing readers of this blog will know that I regularly rail against the bareback hypocrisy.  Whether it’s celebrities such as Dustan Lance Black being exposed in a sex film engaging in bareback sex whilst telling others to always practise safe sex; porn ‘stars’ such as Chris Porter talking of his condom only stance, only to be revealed as having tried out for the notorious bareback company, Treasure Island Media – he claimed not to know they were a bareback company even though a video recording of his screen set suggests otherwise; or indeed safe sex advocates spending their day using charity or public funding to extol the virtues of ‘safer-sex’ whilst loving and engaging in bareback sex in private at night.  All highlight the hypocrisy which further erodes the safer sex message.

Yet now the porn blog, The Sword (owned by Naked Sword but with its own voice), seems to also be getting in the hypocrisy naming and shaming act. It may be my imagination but since the start of the new year, the blog seems to have become much more on the ball in highlighting this issue.

We started gently at the end of last year with an interview with the performer, Connor, from Corbin Fisher, performing in one of their new bareback titles (further evidence of the way the porn market – and sexual reality- is moving) (NSFW story link here)

The Sword said:  ‘There has been a lot of controversy over the “condomless” scenes from Corbin Fisher. Talk about the testing process and why you feel comfortable performing without the use of condoms.’

C: Our testing process is second to none. I can say for myself, since I’ve been a consistently active performer for over four years now, that I have been tested every 30 days of my life for the last four years. We are tested for basically everything, and the company also regularly has us visit and consult with a doctor prior to shoots. We also always get tested a few days before each shoot to rule out any possibilities. I’d imagine the most sterile, controlled environment anyone my age could have sex in would be our sets because of the strict testing.

TS: So is it fair to say that you prefer going bareback?

C: Put it this way…personally, I don’t like watching any porn with condoms. It just doesn’t do it for me, and I watch a lot of porn! The way I see it, porn is here for fantasy, and to let your hair down and see exactly what you want to see. So, if the danger of contracting a disease has been ruled out to the greatest possible extent, why are we worrying about it? I think I can speak for a lot of people when I say, if I could choose it all the time, porn would be sans condoms.

So, this is a sort of ‘managed’ shift in position.  All fine and dandy.  Companies that previously resisted bareback now embrace it on economic grounds.  Performers now talk of their desire for bareback but is this just marketing, or a revelation of authentic desire?

On 1 January, they celebrate a new bareback scene from Sean Cody – also now amazingly embracing bareback.  They wrote (NSFW story link here):

‘I guess if you’re gonna do something, you might as well go balls to the wall and do it all. Sean Cody’s first bareback scene last week was nothing compared to this one, a three-way in which everyone (Dennis, Calvin, Jordan) fucks each other, Dennis gets double penetrated and then creampied, and everyone swallows cum. Happy new year! I’m glad that Sean Cody dropped the stupid euphemism (“unwrapped”) and is calling this exactly what it is: A bareback three-way starring three of the site’s best models. Unfortunately, that awful, hypocritical disclaimer still plays at the beginning’

Here’s that disclaimer:

Although – like the Corbin Fisher interview – there is an emphasis on testing they put the second part in which amounts to a ‘don’t try this at home’ kind of warning.

Next up, The Sword goes on the attack with Cody Cummings and a bareback video of him with a  woman (which they post here – NSFW).  They bitchily comment:

‘For the company that has staked its reputation on keeping its performers STD free and the company that famously fired Mason Wyler after he contracted HIV, this is a wild and sexy change of pace! Of course, you can’t blame them for allowing one teensy weensy moment of barebacking to slip in when it’s hot as this, and especially when it’s starring gay porn icon Cody Cummings. Because if anyone should be allowed to skirt the rules, it’s our king, Cody. Plus, there’s the aforementioned fact that Cody is having straight bareback sex, with a woman, and everyone knows that it’s always safer to bareback when it’s with a girl. The Sword salutes Next Door Studios for giving their #1 star Cody Cummings the freedom to perform as he chooses—raw and unprotected. Fingers crossed that he doesn’t catch anything!’

Wow, it’s a change of pace for Corbin Fisher, and – I think – a change of pace for Naked Sword too as they start to highlight these changes and continued hypocrisies.

As the ‘gay’ studios embrace bareback sex, it also creates a headache for long-standing bare backs studios such as Treasure Island Media.  They are featured in the new issue of Desert Knight News (see here – safe link) talking about their ‘vision’/’mission’ and this is increasingly important rather than simply defining themselves as bareback.  It’s nothing new – and the message is one familiar to those who know the company well but they are now clearly putting it out there in a bid to define their niche more closely.  They do not, for example, ‘make porn’, they don’t ‘direct guys’ (although some scenes suggest this does come in – especially from Liam Cole) but the Morris pure ideology is one of providing a natural habitat in which men can play and be observed.  The arousal comes in witnessing raw ‘authentic’ desire on display. No hypocrisy from these guys but we’ll see who The Sword goes for next…

Revised 21.33 4/1/12