Good Vibrations always has something interesting going on for us to check out. There are two different artistic erotic events happening this week at the Polk Street store that might be of interest to you if you haven’t been over there in awhile.

First, on Tuesday, they’re having an erotic reading that sounds interesting. It’s a one-hour reading of erotic poetry that relates to all of the silly mistakes that people make when it comes to sex. There’s always something silly in sex if you’re willing to look at it. The reading is free and starts at 6:30.

If visual art is more your thing then wait to head over there until Thursday. That’s the night of an opening reception for a multimedia erotic art exhibit that’s going on display. It’s from 6-8 and is free with wine and whatnot. The artists being featured are Sadie Lune, Apaulo Hart and Ana Bedolla.

Have a great time if you make it to either of these sexy events!

I am still going through my collections of old writings and I keep stumbling upon things that I wrote about San Francisco after I first moved here. I wanted to share a long piece that I wrote with you here. It’s about the first time that I came to this magical city and then the first experiences of living here. It’s about relationships and finding yourself and how San Francisco can help you with that.

The facts at the end of the story no longer apply - these days I’m in a traditional relationship and don’t mind being called his girlfriend at all. In fact, I love the situation that I’m in now because it’s perfect for me and who I’ve become in the years that I’ve lived here. But I think even that fact points to what is so great about San Francisco - that you can change and this city will not fail to embrace all of your changes.

And although the circumstances of my own personal relationships might have changed since I wrote this so many years ago, what hasn’t changed is that I’m one hundred percent in love with this city and wholeheartedly believe that it’s a great place to be single because just being here can fill you with love.

Here’s that old article from quite a few years back:

Single in San Francisco

Every once in awhile, I experience a few moments of unadulterated appreciation for where I have gotten in life. The best way to describe these moments is to think of them as an out-of-body experience, where I suddenly manage to escape the whirling monologue of my own brain and catch a glimpse of my life from an outsider’s perspective. When this happens, I am always impressed, because I always find that the current “me” is someone that all of the younger versions of me would have hoped to be when she grew up. Despite the fact that this happens on a semi-regular basis, I am always surprised each time that it occurs.

When I was eighteen, working at a local bookstore and trying to make grandiose plans for my life, I found myself wanting to see the world. On a long weekend, I impulsively got in to my pick up truck, with only a backpack in tow, and headed to San Francisco. I knew virtually nothing about the city, but understood internally that I had to follow my compulsion to go there. My journal from that time focuses on two things; the immediate love that I felt for every aspect of that city and the constant confusion I felt in trying to figure out how my newfound affair with feminism fit in to my life.

The only problem that I had when I visited the city for that first time was that the overwhelming joy that I felt just being there was splayed out across my face and this unbridled emotion drew unwanted attention from strangers everywhere I went. Random people on the BART trains would try to strike up conversations with me. Random men. I was no stranger to this experience. My outgoing attitude and ever-changing body had been attracting attention for years. But this was different, because I was at a point in my life where I wanted desperately to learn how to deflect that attention appropriately and yet had no parameters for learning how to do so.

I was at that stage in an intelligent young girl’s life when every possibility seems open to her. It is an amazing time in life. It is also immobilizing. I felt that every decision I made was going to fully impact the way that I experienced the rest of my life. And because of that, I was constantly assessing my own actions, reactions and interactions. What I was learning was that my experience of the world around me did not seem to neatly align with the experiences I felt the world was asking me to have.

This came out in a multitude of aspects in my life. It came out when I decided, two months shy of graduation, to drop out of my college preparatory high school in favor of being a student of life. I wanted desperately to find a way to live creatively without being restricted by the limitations of a formal school or work life. I was learning, through people’s reactions to that behavior, that it was not acceptable for me to behave in this manner. Defiantly, I worked to connect with people living unconventional lives, people who would appreciate this type of alternative lifestyle. But I found that I didn’t seem to fit in to their visions of how I should be either.

My journal from that first San Francisco trip details a conversation I had with a local street performer, a man named Marcus who made his living off of swallowing fire and escaping from a straight jacket. We talked of many things, but what stood out was that he seemed baffled by the fact that I, as a girl, would just get in to my truck and head to San Francisco on my own. In return, I was baffled by the inability of someone who appeared to live such an unconventional life, to understand where I was coming from in my urge to do such things.

These little interactions clued me in to the fact that I was somehow living a different life from what was expected of me. But where this fact truly stood out was in my experience of romantic relationships. I had my share of them, starting off with the traditional high school relationship complete with the limousine at prom and the dramatic fights about who said what first. I also had my share of the less conventional of them, mostly consisting of affairs with men like the bisexual grad student who tried to convince me that any relationship I had with a man would be oppressive to my individuality as a woman. Neither the traditional nor the standard anti-traditional relationship seemed to fit in to my life. As a result, I stayed single much of the time, and though it was sometimes lonely, I was usually comfortable with it. It gave me time to write, a hobby I was increasingly enjoying.

There was a part of my young self who was a complete romantic. Maybe I didn’t want to be thinking about corsages or white dresses, but I did dream of spontaneous vacations with attractive men who knew that roses could win a girl’s heart even in spite of herself. There was also a part of my young self who was a complete individualist, insisting that I could never be completely myself within the confines of a monogamous relationship. That first San Francisco journal shows me wavering back and forth between the desires of those two selves. I wrote one day about walking across the Golden Gate Bridge, wrapping my arms tightly around myself against the chill of the spring wind, and wishing desperately that I had some sort of partner to talk to about the confused feelings in my head. I wrote the next about the simple pleasure of waking up alone in my hotel room, with no one to consult about the day’s plans because it was all up to me and me alone.

That trip took place eight years ago. In some ways, it feels like it was just a few months ago that I threw my backpack in to my truck and headed west. In others, it feels like a lifetime has passed. I have spent the intervening years learning to balance the two different sides of myself, working to strike harmony between my romantic side and my fiercely individual streak, working to reconcile the dropout’s beliefs with my over-educated understanding of academia, working always to understand what will make me happiest in life.

A few days ago, I was sitting at my favorite local café, writing a story due on deadline that afternoon, when I suddenly had one of those out-of-body experiences. The story I was writing was partially about the way in which I had successfully avoided a conversation I didn’t want to have on the BART train. And I suddenly got this glimpse of my life as it is today from the perspective of that young girl I was when I visited here for the first time.

I live in San Francisco now not too far from Pier 39 where I had met Marcus, the street performer, on that first trip to the city. I make my living as a freelance writer/blogger, choosing my own schedule, living out the dream I always had of being able to survive in an unrestricted, creative environment. I have become confident enough in my own ability to navigate the world that I feel comfortable refusing to engage in conversations with random men who do not interest me. I also feel comfortable talking to those random men who do.

What I have discovered about men is that they can fit in to my life in ways which are both traditional and unconventional. I have a partner of sorts who lives in another state and who comes to visit me occasionally. When he does, we walk around the city with our arms around each other, enjoying the romantic possibilities in the air. He even buys flowers from the street vendors for me sometimes, through which I have learned that I am more of an oriental lily kind of girl than a roses one. When he is not here, I sometimes have casual affairs, which he knows about and is comfortable with. There’s a friend of mine that I sleep with sometimes, although I always leave before morning because I have also discovered that I prefer to wake up on my own than in the arms of someone else, no matter how much I may trust them. When not indulging in such affairs, I sometimes go long stretches without dating anyone at all, during which time my creative side seems to flourish, and I indulge in the creative passion of a life lived without focus on romance.

What I have discovered about myself is that if I am willing to approach my life with the creativity I use to approach starting a new story, I can create situations within which I can thrive. The one constant which runs through that first San Francisco journal is that I was seeking to define myself. I did so in the only way that I knew how at the time, which was to define myself in opposition to the things which did not work for me. The biggest of those things, at that time, was the label “girlfriend”. Through all of my changing relationships, I refused to identify as anyone’s girlfriend. To this day, I hesitate at the word and the things it implies.

The other day, when I had that out-of-body experience in the coffee shop, that familiar wash of emotion crossed my face. A random man sitting near me saw it happen, and it provoked his interest. He asked me what I was writing about, and my eyes glittered as I answered him, “my girlfriend”. He turned back to what he was doing, somewhat miffed perhaps, but I didn’t feel bad, because it was the truth.

What I have discovered about San Francisco is that it woos me in a way that no individual ever could. It entertains me, it seduces me, it humors me. It also challenges me. It acts as a mirror for the part of my self that I absolutely adore and allows me to change as time passes. It satisfies every need I could possibly fathom and yet it leaves me wanting just a little bit more. Rather than creating confines for me, my relationship with the city allows me to grow more and more each day. And I don’t need any sort of out-of-body experience to know that my eighteen-year-old self would be very jealous of the love that I experience every day as a woman living in this city.

It’s almost time for the annual Film Noir Festival to get going over at Castro Theater. There are a lot of sexy films showing this year, as usual. However there’s one night in particular that stands out as a sexy night for this event. It’s the Bad Girls of Film Noir night.

This fun double-feature movie night happens next week on January 27th. The two movies playing are:

• One Girl’s Confession. A 1950’s film featuring sexy star Cleo Moore, known as The Poor Man’s Marilyn Monroe in a somewhat sadomasochistic plot.
• Women’s Prison. Ah, do you even really need to know more than the title to get an idea of what this bad girls’ film is all about?

I just ran across an interesting article about sexy chefs in the San Francisco Bay Area. On a list of one dozen sexy chefs from around the world, the people who are cooking in the kitchens of San Francisco and the surrounding area are ranking high. Two of our local chefs made the list.

This isn’t all that surprising really. No matter what we do here, we tend to do it with sex appeal. San Francisco chefs are bound to be among the world’s sexiest because:

• They care about being healthy. Healthy leads to hot. It’s just a natural equation.
• They’re definitely creative. We love creativity here and being creative is definitely sexy.
• Sexy sells in San Francisco. And what’s sexier than luscious food? Luscious food cooked by luscious chefs of course.

I’m going through some old posts that I wrote for various blogs over the years. A few of them are posts that never got published anywhere so they’re just sitting around. One is about the End Up, the bar/dance club in the SoMA. I actually haven’t been there in years and am not sure I really agree with my original assessment of it but I thought I’d share it anyway because it’s an accurate reflection of what I thought about this sexy space when I first moved here and was more interested in the gay dance club scene than I am these days.

Here it is:

END UP AT THE END UP

San Francisco is not known for being a city which stays up all night long, but for those of us who have the urge to keep the party going after the bars close, the End Up meets our dancing needs. It opens at ten on Thursday night and stays open until four on Monday morning and no matter what time you stop in, there will be DJ music pumping and bodies grinding on the dance floor. Since you can stay for hours, you can take advantage of the different settings it offers. In addition to the thump of the dance floor, there’s the casual relaxation of pool tables at the back of the bar and the reprieve of cool breezes on the large back patio.

The End Up (http://www.theendup.com/) opens at ten o’clock on Thursday nights and just keeps going until four o’clock on Monday morning. That’s right – you can head there for standard weeknight club dancing (Fag Friday night is my personal favorite because it has the best music) or you can stop in around lunchtime and either way, the music is pounding and the bodies are moving. But what people who are not familiar with the place should know is that there is more hooking up on the dance floor at this club than at any other place I’ve ever been to in San Francisco, which is saying a lot, since I frequent some of the seedier bars of the Castro and Polk Street semi-regularly. The End Up is designed in such a way as to be timeless – it never feels too late at night or too early in the day when you’re dancing there – and this below-the-belt action on the dance floor only adds to the surreal sense that you’re in a secret pleasure den.

I’m always intrigued by the random combination of events that take place in the city. For example, I once saw a yoga/champagne class which is forty five minutes of yoga and then fifteen minutes of drinking champagne. It took place around noon after which most of the participants returned back to work. This odd combination of activities is perfect for San Francisco where people have diverse interests and even when the interests aren’t the same as mine, the pairings interest me.

Perhaps that is why my attention was captured by the Squidlist listing for an upcoming Femina Potens events called A Taste of Rope: A Wine and Rope Sampling. I’m not into the whole bondage/rope/domination and submission thing myself. It’s just not my thing. But the event sounds interesting for San Franciscans who do like that sort of thing.

As the name suggests, it’s a night of wine tasting as well as exploration with rope play. Dominants will be drinking their wine out of wonderful goblets while submissives will be blindfolded and drinking theirs out of doggy bowls. It sounds like it’s going to be an elegant event for people who are interested in D/s, rope and wine. “Dress is fetish, formal, lingerie, or nudity.”

This event happens at Femina Potens on January 23rd at 8 pm. It’s for an intimate group of only 30 people (15 couples if people are coming paired up). Cost is between $50 and $75 per couple depending on which souvenirs you want and activities you partake of. Your requests for specific types of rope will be honored and it should be an interesting way to check out this community if you’re not close knit with it yet.

If you do go, I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Project Runway is about to begin again. This time around there are two people starting out on the show who are from the San Francisco Bay Area. There’s a cute girl named Amy from Oakland and a San Francisco boy named Jay Nicolas. Just wanted to point out that SF Indie Fashion has their intro video posts if you’re interested in learning more about their sexy style.

What do you think? Love them? Hate them? At least a little bit curious about them?

Earlier this month I took a free (by donation) tour of some of the murals in the Mission. The tour was absolutely amazing. I learned so much about the history of the area and really enjoyed the short trek. While I was looking at the murals I realized that a lot of them have sexy images interspersed throughout them. I thought I’d share a selection of sexy photos that I took here on the blog this week.

Please note … there’s a lot more to these murals than the sexy side of them. All of the murals have a story behind them. They’re mostly about real people who have lived in the community at some point in time. They are socio-political pieces of art. The sexy bits here and there are just a fraction of what these murals are all about. I totally recommend the tour if you want to get a real sense for the meaning of these murals. (You can get an idea of what I learned from my Diary of a Smart Chick post).

But on to the sexy snippets:

Read more…

An artist I know, Mirena Rhee, sent out an invitation recently to come to the opening reception of Selections 2010. This is a juried exhibition of art featuring the work of more than 20 different local artists as part of the first Open Studios of the year. It’s an interesting art exhibit but I hadn’t thought about mentioning it here on the blog until I also received an invitation to it from Erika Meriaux.

Meriaux is an artist that I’ve mentioned here on the site before (first featured in my initial list of seven sexy local artists). She does beautiful paintings that draw their inspiration from archetypal sources like mythology. Her renderings of the bodies of mythical creatures are sensual. It is these images that first caught my attention as far as her art goes but I was then impressed by the detailed messages that seem to lie beneath the more obvious grab-you sensuality of the curves of her figures.

I’ve checked out some of the website links for the other artists who will be featured in this show. One whose work I’m interested in learning more about is Monica Denevan. She does portrait photography and although it’s not designed specifically to be sexual there is an edge of sexiness that streams through her work. A leg beautifully emerging from the open door of a car, a woman’s body resting beautifully inside of a peaceful boat … I’m intrigued by the work.

This exhibit is at the California Modern Gallery at 1035 Market St. The exhibit is already up but the opening reception will be Thursday, January 14 from 6-9.

I just picked up this year’s Green Zebra. For those of you who don’t know this is a coupon book that is similar to the Entertainment Book except that it’s filled only with coupons from local, green businesses. I got one last year and loved it. Although I admit that I didn’t use it as much as I could have, I did get back more than the $25 I spent on it at the beginning of the year. Plus the coupons in it encouraged me to check out one new restaurant that I probably never would’ve bothered with so that made it worth it. I’m planning to try to use it more this year.

Here’s my top ten picks for the sexiest deals that are offered in this year’s book:

1. Cafe Gratitude. Okay, so I’ve been here once and I’ll admit I have mixed feelings about the place. The menu is written in affirmations so when you order you say things like “I am peaceful” and then the person who brings your food says “you are peaceful”. It’s a little odd. But then again, it’s different and different is good. Plus the food is yummy. Plus they do community seating (seating you with strangers) so you can get to know new people which is kind of a fun, sexy idea. Top sexy picks off their menu would be I Am Fiery, I Am Succulent, I Am Luscious, I Am Sassy, I Am Bliss and I Am Passionate. The coupon is a 2-for-1 on desserts.
2. EAT at 111 Minna. I haven’t been to this “social dining experience” yet but I do love 111 Minna and this coupon makes me interested in checking it out. The coupon is for free entry, a free savory dish and a free sweet dish. Yum!
3. Kabuki Springs. Sometimes sexy is all about indulging in your own sensual experience. Kabuki Springs gives you the chance to do that with their hot tub and spa experience. Their Green Zebra coupon is for a free bath when you book a massage or facial. There’s also some money off a retail item.
4. Harbin Hot Springs. Even sexier than Kabuki Springs is Harbin Hot Springs which is a clothing-optional retreat that provides a naturally sexy day trip getaway from the city. The coupon is for a discount on a day pass or camping.
5. Hotel Carlton. Get away for a night without leaving the city at all by treating yourself to a vacation-like stay in this local hotel. Their philosophy is “peace through travel”. Oh and they have a free nightly wine reception! Get 20% off their best rate using Green Zebra.
6. She-Bible. I haven’t been to this new Noe Valley store yet but it’s supposed to have some sexy summery dresses that I’m interested in checking out. The coupon gives you 15% off when you spend $100 or more. Not sure what’s up with the name but their online store looks flirty and fun.
7. Spud. I am all about trying out this green grocery delivery service. They apparently deliver local, organic foods directly to your door and are supposed to be affordable. What’s sexy about that? Well if you agree that green and healthy are sexy things then you shouldn’t have to ask. The coupon gives you about a $25 savings.
8. Green Festival. If you agree that green is sexy then you definitely ought to check out the annual Green Festival in the fall. Use the coupon to get 2-for-1 admission.
9. Keetsa Mattress Store. Need a sexy new bed? Get one and get a free pillow from this place. Makes me want to curl up under the covers with someone!
10. Spring Pilates and Yoga. These sports are sexy because they tone you up, make you fit, ease your mind, balance your life and cause you to glow from the inside out. The coupons look great: save $28 on four sessions as a new student, save $30 more on a ten-session set and get even more savings if you want some private session. Delicious.