S.F. kinky naked romp a spanking success

They held the world’s biggest celebration of leather, bondage and sexual fetish in San Francisco on Sunday, and due to the event’s interactive nature, many people are now walking gingerly.

“Enough is enough,” said Lowell Clark, pulling up his blue jeans after emerging from one of dozens of spanking booths at the 25th Folsom Street Fair.

Clark, a 30-year-old San Francisco waiter, conceded he was a novice at the booths, where men and women in search of stimulation were struck with whips, paddles or bare hands. Clark was last spanked at the age of 6 at the hands of his mother in Oklahoma. A stolen pack of chewing gum was involved.

“I still don’t think I’ll steal anything,” Clark said. Still, he called the spanking a “stinging pleasure” that he would try “maybe once a year.”

It was just another scene from the city’s most unabashed bash – a public display of all things kinky that covered 13 blocks in the South of Market neighborhood and drew hundreds of thousands of people, many of them not wearing leather in key places.

There were naked people selling bondage gear and naked people seeking support for measures on the Nov. 4 ballot. There were naked people with cameras, taking pictures of other naked people.

One man wore only an 11-foot Burmese albino python, which curled around his waist. The arrangement seemed risky.

The fair is fun but also important, said Al Waddell, a 58-year-old entrepreneur from Oregon whose Paddle Daddy flogging implements were available in mahogany, hickory and walnut.

“It brings kink out of the closet,” he said as he tried to coax visitors a step further – onto his $645 leather sex sling, complete with metal frame and stirrups.

Previous Folsom Street Fair blogging.

And an unvarnished, not-safe-for-work look from Zombie at what really happens on the public streets of San Francisco during these “fairs” here and here.

Don’t click if you have a weak stomach.

How will Madame Speaker be transported to these energy-expending events in which she’ll be preaching about saving the planet…through energy vote-avoidance?

Reader Raymond wants to know:

Dear Michelle,

I would love to know what kind of aircraft and how much fuel Ms. Pelosi is going to use on her book tour. I guess the rest of us should “conserve” so she can uses as much as she wants.

Raymond Dougher
Collierville, TN

Good question.

Calculate Nancy’s carbon footprint!

I estimate she’s at 105 metric tons of CO2, with a likely 10 percent increase this month over the course of the book tour–25 percent if she hitches a ride on some Hollywood liberal’s Gulfstream.

Better stock up on those bogus carbon offsets, sweetie. America’s daughters are watching, you know.

Mike Setto, owner of Orion Keg & Wine Party Store, is boycotting Miller Brewing Co. products until he hears a major apology from it to the public.

Setto said he nearly went out of his mind when he saw the beer manufacturer’s logo on a poster depicting the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with Jesus and his disciples posed as scantily dressed homosexuals. “This is not against homosexuals. This is about the Last Supper, the poster where 13 half-naked people have sex objects in their hands, dirty sex objects and beer and the guys are pretending to be Jesus and his disciples, wearing face masks and all that,” Setto said…

… Setto, a Chaldean native of Iraq, has lived in the United States since 1970 and calls this the most embarrassing thing he’s seen since moving here. Chaldeans are considered one of the Christian minorities originating from the Middle East.

“For so long, there’s been trashing of religion, especially in this country, and I’m just getting tired of it,” Setto said. “One guy trashing another guy’s religion – there’s no accomplishment in that. It doesn’t make anyone’s life better. We should all respect other people’s religion and life would be a lot easier.” On the same note, Setto said, he is not upset with the homosexual community and said he has several homosexual customers who are very respectable people.

“I don’t care what or who Miller sponsors, but there’s a limit to how you do it. It’s just the idea of being on Jesus’ last supper and having sex objects in their hands. I just could not believe a multimillion dollar operation would allow this,” Setto said. Setto first saw the poster on a CNN newscast a couple of weeks ago, he said, but did not start to boycott then. He researched the issue on the Internet and when the salesman for Miller came to his store Wednesday, Setto asked him about it.

“He asked me, ‘How could Miller know about this?’ and I said, ‘Please don’t insult me and say they did not know,’ “Setto said. He decided not to place another order with Miller. Setto usually orders about 20-30 cases a week and figures he’ll lose a lot of money, but it’s not about the money, he said.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute. I sell their beer.’ It’s an opportunity; finally, I can do something to show my frustration,” Setto said.

Good for him.

Molson Coors Brewing Co. and SABMiller PLC plan to combine their U.S. and Puerto Rican operations, creating a beer powerhouse with annual revenue of about $6.6 billion.

The venture will be called MillerCoors. The two companies will share control of the venture, but because of the economic value of their respective units SABMiller will have a 58% economic interest to Molson Coors’s 42% interest.

Reader Jim wisecracks: “Imagine the street fair they can sponsor now!”

Swell.

***

Here’s Molson Coors’ contact info.

Wonder if their website filters will screen out photos of the Miller-approved Folsomfest, too?

You know, like the uncensored photos of the Miller-sponsored, Miller-approved Folsom Street Fair.

Now comes word from one of my readers that his e-mail to Miller spokesman Julian Green, which included a few of undercover investigative photojournalist Zombie’s photos attached to it, just bounced back.

The message?

The MessageLabs Email Security System has identified a file attachment in an e-mail sent by you that has been deemed to be potentially unacceptable by either your Domain Administrator or the Recipient’s Domain Administrator.

The subject title of the e-mail was: -
Folsom Street Fair

The recipient address of the e-mail was: -
green.julian@mbco.com

Here’s a snippet of one of the rejected photos. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. If anyone deserves a public flogging it’s Miller Beer officials:

Undercover Internet photojournalist Zombie, a brave, brave, soul, was at the Miller Lite-approved Folsom Street Fair last weekend. Zombie did the publishing of explicit photographs that no one else will do, breaking the MSM taboo. (Be warned: It’s not safe for work, not safe on a full stomach, and not really safe for home unless you are prepared for some really nasty stuff. Also: the page takes a while to load.) Note that Zombie was there less than hour:

I was at the fair for less than an hour altogether — not much more than 45 minutes. And in that short amount of time, I took all the photos you see here. Yet the fair was an all-day event, and lasted from 11am to 6pm — seven hours. So, one can extrapolate that a great deal more must have gone on that I did not record. What you see here is just a small random sample of what happened that day.

Here’s one of the tamer photos:

You’ll have to go to Zombie’s to find out what happened after the dog mask-muzzled guy on the sidewalk is forced to eat “food” from the dog dish.

Blech.

Were kids there this year? Does Miller care?

I encourage you to send Zombie’s report to Miller Lite, proud sponsor of the leather/bondage orgy, dungeon beds, casual public masturbation, public oral sex, and public erection competitions.

Yeah. Swell.

Contact Miller Lite’s public relations spokesman Julian Green at green.julian@mbco.com.

***

There is a hilarious warning on the Miller Brewing website:

You may not post or transmit to this Web site any unlawful, pornographic, obscene, profane, defamatory, libelous, threatening or otherwise objectionable material.

So you’re not allowed to send photos to Miller of the public sex scenes at the Folsom Street orgy that Miller sponsored.

Snort-worthy.

***

Slublog:

I’m not one who tends to believe boycotts are a good idea. But I’m also not inclined to support a company that sponsors events such as the Folsom Street Fair. The fact that it’s a primarily gay event is irrelevant – in their sponsorship of this fair, Miller is supporting public indecency. Public heterosexual contact would be just as offensive.

Miller Brewing Company is free to continue spending their money where they wish, but those who use their product are just as free to limit that company’s profits.

Newcastle, anyone?

***
Reader Jim M. forwards an e-mail he sent to Miller’s parent company:

To: media.relations@sabmiller.com
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2007 8:49 PM
Subject: Folsom Sponsorship

To: Mr. Nigel Fairbrass

Mr. Fairbrass:

As an investor in many companies across the globe, I was particularly alarmed to note your organization’s sponsorship of a alternative lifestyle sado-machoist event in the San Francisco area.

The first indication that something was amiss was the depiction of Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” as a gay S&M bacchanal, complete with appropriate leather adornments and environmentally unfriendly plastic sexual aids. Despite protests lodged regarding your sponsorship of the event, the sponsorship proceeded.

Here is a website documenting but a small part of one person’s experience at the event: http://www.zombietime.com/folsom_sf_2007_part_1/index.php.

I urge you to review the pictures, since this is what SABMiller supported. In addition to the gleeful participants, there were very young children in attendance as well as reports of underage participation.

I would appreciate your thoughts on why SAB deems this function to be worth of corporate sponsorship. Reviewing your website and the causes you claim to support, I have a hard time understanding why SAB would find The Folsom event consistent with its corporate goals and worthy of its “proud sponsorship”.

I will await your response before I begin alerting my investment advisers to dump any and all SAB holdings.

Cheers,
Jim

From Jim M.:

Miller is a subsidiary of a South African Brewer listed on the London and Japan Stock Exchanges: sabmiller.com

Here is the list of media contacts at their parent company:

Head of Media Relations Nigel Fairbrass
Telephone: +44-20-7659-0105
Mobile: +44-7799-894-265

Corporate Media Relations Manager Victoria McNamee
Telephone: +44 20 7659 0172
Mobile: +44-7713-246-957

Media Relations Executive
Briony Gilbert
Telephone: +44-20-7659-0115

Email: media.relations@sabmiller.com

The NYSun’s Josh Gerstein follows up today on the Miller Lite/Folsom Street leather/bondage fiasco:

One of America’s largest beer brewers, Miller Brewing Co., is reviewing its marketing practices after Christian groups complained about the firm’s sponsorship of a raunchy San Francisco festival, the Folsom Street Fair.

“We regret that our failure to adhere with our own policy led to an inappropriate use of our trademark and apologize to anyone who was offended as a result, particularly members of the Christian community who have contacted us to express their concern,” a company spokesman, Julian Green, said in a written statement yesterday. “We are conducting an immediate audit of our procedures for approving local marketing and sales sponsorships to ensure that this does not happen again.”

Are they really sorry, though?

While apologizing for any offense, Miller seemed to argue yesterday that it should be free to market to audiences whose practices are found offensive by many Americans. “It is important to understand that the Folsom Street Fair does not target the general public in its communications,” Miller’s Mr. Green said. “The fair itself and the organization’s Web site are only intended for the adult alternative lifestyle community.”

Tell that to the fathers of the twin toddlers in leather-studded collars.

More Miller mockery at Lone Star Times (barely-safe-for-work…don’t click if you want to keep your lunch down):

The Lone Star Times has Miller spokesman Julian Green’s contact info:

green.julian@mbco.com

***

It’s not just 17-year-olds who were welcome at the Folsom Street Fair leather/bondage orgy.

Check out the photos of two-year-old twin toddlers in attendance at the 2005 fair. (Hat tip – LGF commenters)

Look. At. The. Children’s. Clothes.

One is wearing a leather-studded harness. Via the Xpress Online:

The caption on the photo reads:

“Veronica Kruschel, 2, drinks water while her twin sister Zola enjoys the Folsom Street Fair environment. Their parents Gary Beuschel and John Kruse (not photographed) watch nearby while having a lunch break.”

More from the accompanying article:

Two-year-olds Zola and Veronica Kruschel waddled through Folsom Street Fair amidst strangers in fishnets and leather crotch pouches, semi and fully nude men.

The twin girls who were also dressed for the event wore identical lace blouses, floral bonnets and black leather collars purchased from a pet store.

Fathers Gary Beuschel and John Kruse watched over them closely. They were proud to show the twins off.

“They will see more than the kids with moms and dads in Iowa,” said Beuschel, who wanted to expose his children to San Francisco�s diverse community. “Every parent has to decide for themselves what is right for them. And I respect that. And we decided that this is right for our children.”

Beuschel and his girls were at the 22nd Folsom Street Fair, an annual leather event in San Francisco�s South of Market district, which showcased outrageous costumes, fetish attire, and a community obsessed with bondage, whipping, and spanking.

For crying out loud:

“Why do (these people) bring kids here? This is a leather fair for god’s sake,” said Bahran Aliassa, who was masturbating in public. He has been doing it annually for the past six years.

Oakland resident Veronica Charles, 36, was with a baby stroller and said her son was too young to understand. “I don’t think I’ll bring him here when he is 6,” Charles said.

Brought to you by the proud sponsors at Miller Lite…

***

Zombie was there at this year’s fair.

Just in case you needed not-safe-for-work reminders of what these toddlers were exposed to, watch here.

Or here.

***

Jessica McBride follows up on the Folsom Street Fair fiasco and finds that underage teens are encouraged to come and join the fun, frolic, and fetish.

Miller Lite: Beer of leather fetishists and their underage guests!

Here’s the Catholic-denigrating promotional poster for the Miller-backed fair via CNSNews.com, depicting the Last Supper as a gathering of S&M enthusiasts:

Take a closer look. The bread and wine at the supper table are replaced with sex toys. Swell.

In response to complaints from Christian groups, Miller has asked for its logo to be removed. And the Folsom organizers are now disingenuously arguing that they neeeever meant to offend:

There was no intention to be particularly pro-religion or anti-religion with this poster; the image is intended only to be reminiscent of the ‘Last Supper’ painting. We hope that people will enjoy the artistry for what it is – nothing more or less. Many people choose to speculate on deeper meanings.

The NYSun reports that while Miller requested that the poster be changed, it’s still sponsoring the event:

As of yesterday, the Miller Light and Miller Genuine Draft logos, are still on the poster on the fair’s Web site. It also lists the beers as “presenting sponsors” of the event, along with two “hardcore” pornography sites, Nakedsword.com and TitanMen.com.

Take a gander at the NSFW website for the Folsom Street Fair. Here are a few of the runner-up promotional posters…

The question isn’t whether the Folsom organizers should be allowed to promote their bacchanalia however they want. Go right ahead with your bullwhips, dildos, and chains. Knock yourselves out. Really.

The question is one of corporate responsibility. The question is whether a mainstream retailer ought to be lending its name year after year to a fringe group bent on alienating a majority of Americans who happen to be people of faith.

Miller’s answer:

“We are and will continue to be supportive [of Folsom Street Fair and the LGBT community],” said Julian Green, director of media relations of Miller Brewing Company, Wednesday afternoon.

Miller has not requested a refund of any sponsorship money, Green said.

Miller: The beer of open borders and leather-bound Christian-bashers.

Spread the word.