For those of you not familiar with the Kink.com family of websites, Kink.com is one of the hottest places on the internet for a choice selection of BDSM and other fetish related porn. A couple of years back, they bought a large armory in San Francisco to use as their production studio. This lead to several protests, but eventually things died down.
Now, a new controversy has raised its head. Now the SF weekly reports that a new community center is being built in the same location.
Now a private group could stir things up again by leasing from Kink founder Peter Acworth the Armory’s “drill court” — a massive interior courtyard that resembles an airplane hangar — and turning it into a community center with youth-oriented programs.
Real estate lawyer David Klein is heading the Armory Community Center project, a for-profit venture he says should be up and running within 18 months. By turning the drill court into a full-time community center, Klein feels he’ll be adding something crucial to the Mission: an affordable performance venue, a spot for family events and farmers’ markets, and a home for children’s sports leagues.
Isn’t Klein worried what his Mission neighbors will think of sending their kids to a place right next to a hard-core porn studio? Definitely. “My job is to keep working with the community to break that connection,” he says, insisting no ties exist between his project and Kink, which also technically rents its building from Acworth. “We have the same landlord. That’s all.” To help solidify the divide, Klein is building a separate entrance for the Community Center on the Armory’s 14th Street side.
I wish them luck with the project, but I think it may be a bit much.
MV
The House of Void 