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“While not wanting to be prudish,” he said, “the fact that will be located in the proximity to a number of schools gives us pause.” Valerie Tulier, then a community activist with the Mission Armory Community Collective, told the Guardian at the time, 'What's bothersome is the arrogance of being able to think you can plop down this kind of business amidst a poor community of color that has vulnerable families and people who are in recovery programs.”Įven then-Mayor Gavin Newsom issued a statement regarding the purchase. Others claimed that the Armory could have been used for affordable housing - a development that some critics said was likely untenable for the building. (The shelter later relocated, citing the Armory’s new owners as the key reason.) When the building once deemed to be “cursed forever” by this very publication would be revived, it seemed as if the aesthetic blight of the largely-abandoned Armory was replaced with moral panic over Kink’s tenancy.Ĭity Planning Commission meetings filled up with detractors concerned about the building’s proximity to nearby schools and a women’s shelter owned by the nonprofit Las Casas de las Madres. The purchase was not announced for months as part of an NDA with the previous owner. Now, the Armory’s place in kink is just another quirky part of San Francisco’s lore: The Armory was bought in 2006 for just over $14 million by proprietor Peter Acworth to be the company’s headquarters and shoot sites. San Francisco Public Library/Wikimedia Commons But for years after the National Guard relocated in the '70s, it was largely abandoned, a dilapidated structure with loads of potential but a lack of investment to see anything through.Ī boxing ring set up in the Armory's Drill Court. It was once deemed the “Madison Square Garden of the West” when it held boxing matches in the 1920s. There's always these BDSM, dom-sub elements to a castle.”īefore its kinky reputation, the San Francisco Armory was an arsenal for the National Guard when it was first built in 1912 - a replacement for the armory destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and fire. … The trope of a castle goes deep in BDSM culture, right, like you have, the power dynamics of like a king and his servants. “You know, here was a building that symbolizes everything that we were. “I have to imagine that the decision to put the building on the intro of the videos was sort of a no-brainer,” he said. Porn consumption is something we’re embarrassed about as a culture … and so I think that, like, it serves as a wink and a nod to people who, you know, to be like, I know what that is, like, it's dirty.”Īnd its inclusion in videos was largely intentional, he said.

We live in a culture that really shames sexuality, adult sexuality. “We recognize it because you've seen it online, you know, we've seen it on a tube site or we've seen it somewhere else.

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Mike Stabile, a spokesman for, says that the image of the Armory as this almost-secret code feels akin to the hanky code or another secret, sexual lingua franca. In many ways, it’s since become an in-joke among kink enthusiasts and even casual porn watchers, with memes and TikToks dedicated to celebrating the “Kink Castle.” For history and war buffs, there’s its stint as a National Guard base, right down to its pivotal role in the 1934 West Coast Longshoremen's Strike nerds of another persuasion will probably appreciate that George Lucas filmed a couple “Star Wars” scenes within the Moorish Revival-style premises music buffs probably have stepped foot inside the Drill Court, a converted event venue within the castle, for a couple of shows.īut a large swath of people - including many folks who have never taken BART or the Bay Bridge into San Francisco - will probably tell you that the castle invokes furtive, often scorned desires reserved for secret dungeons and bedrooms.įor enthusiasts of kink and BDSM, an acronym for a whole range of sexual practices that include bondage, discipline, domination and submission, the building is hallowed territory - a photo of the Armory, with a BDSM flag proudly hoisted on top, featured prominently in videos created by for their decade-long ownership of the castle.

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