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Published in the New York Times on February 12, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/12/us/12armory.html?ex=1172898000&en=b85c6675d985d06c&ei=5070
By JESSE McKINLEY
Published: February 12, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 11 — It is hard to imagine a city prouder of its sexuality than San Francisco, a place with an active strip club district, a union for erotic dancers and an annual parade on Folsom Street where those not wearing leather and chaps are the odd ones out.
So it came as something of a surprise when a kerfuffle arose because of the newest addition to the city’s sexual landscape: the State Armory and Arsenal building, a 200,000-square-foot landmark in the Mission District that was just purchased by Kink.com, an online pornography company devoted to bondage and sadomasochism.
Peter Acworth, the company’s founder and chief executive, said he planned to turn the armory into a full-fledged film studio, with dirty movies shot in the basement and less-dirty ones shot upstairs.
“I want to make films like ‘Secretary,’ ” Mr. Acworth said, referring to the 2002 mainstream hit about a woman who has a kinky love affair with her lawyer boss. “But with more sex.”
But somewhere between his purchase and the first paddling, Mr. Acworth has run into strong opposition from a group of neighborhood activists who long feared that the armory, vacant since 1975, would be converted into something truly taboo: condominiums.
Some of the previous efforts to use the armory were derailed by anti-gentrification forces who wanted more affordable housing in the Mission, an economically and racially mixed area where hipsters and the homeless are represented in equal numbers.
But this time around, opponents insist they are not being prudish, just prudent, considering the building’s proximity to schools and families.
“Everybody thought it was going to be housing, and then mid-January, we get this bomb,” said Anita Correa, who runs an arts theater in the neighborhood. “Everybody was taken by shock.”
Ms. Correa added: “The new owner said they would create jobs. But what kind of jobs are we talking about here?”
Mr. Acworth said his business was totally legitimate, with safe working conditions, willing and well-paid models, and a “condom-only policy.” (As for those jobs, Mr. Acworth said he was mainly talking about production assistants, including people working in props, sets, lighting and photography. “We have a very low turnover,” he said.)
Mr. Acworth, a 36-year-old Briton and a former doctoral candidate in finance, started his company in 1997 out of his dorm room at business school, uniting his interest in business with other interests, namely tying people up. And his sites — nine are up and running, and four more are on the way — have apparently hit a nerve: in 2006, Kink.com had about $20 million in revenue and about 70 full-time employees, Mr. Acworth said.
“I think it’s something that many more people are into than would otherwise admit,” he said. “And we present it in a friendly way. You see women smiling. It doesn’t look like abuse, so it attracts people that are curious about it.”
Sure enough, a visit to Kink.com’s main Web site shows women in a variety of painful-looking rope ensembles. Some are naked, some are nearly naked and some are, indeed, smiling. (Some, however, are not.)
The company’s current downtown offices are filled with editors and Webmasters who sit before row after row of large-screen computers, while bored-looking crew members haul lights, cameras and cat-o’-nine-tails from set — dungeon, jail cell, suburbia — to set.
Mr. Acworth said he was looking to expand his fast-growing business and fell in love with the castle-like armory the moment he laid eyes on its lower levels.
“The basement had a series of rooms that looked like dungeons,” said Mr. Acworth, who bought the building from a private developer for $14.5 million. “It just has such character.”
The Kink.com plan is the latest chapter in the long and somewhat tortured history of the armory, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. Built between 1912 and 1914, the brick-and-mortar building has long been a redevelopment challenge for San Francisco, with its landmark status and the city’s famously vociferous activist set derailing plan after plan over the last three decades.
Among the possible occupants have been a nonprofit rehabilitation clinic; a mainstream film studio and sound stage; and a gym that would have taken advantage of the building’s 70-foot ceilings to install a rock-climbing wall. In 2000, a plan for a dot-com office was derailed, as was a subsequent idea to use the armory’s enclosed drill yard — itself the size of a football field — to house computer servers.
The most recent plan before Kink.com’s purchase was for a mixed-use residential and office project that would have built luxury apartments and some lower-income housing atop and alongside the existing building.
Tim Frye, a historic preservation specialist for the San Francisco Planning Department, said the architecture of the armory — small, narrow windows; no elevator; poor insulation — meant that any major conversion would most likely have been complicated by the building’s landmark status.
“It’s not a friendly building,” Mr. Frye said. “It’s really imposing, and a lot of the preservation board thinks that housing wasn’t a really good use.”
Planning officials said Kink.com had no major governmental hurdles because it planned to do very little to the building, aside from fixing some windows and installing some shackles. But there will be a public meeting in April, they said, to hear any concerns from the community, at the request of Mayor Gavin Newsom. (Mr. Newsom has had his own sex-related problems, having recently admitted an affair with his campaign manager’s wife.)
Mr. Acworth said he wanted to be a good neighbor — he recently appeared at a local merchants association meeting and has offered to hold the next one — while still being a naughty boy. Kink.com has already shot its first scenes in the armory, which has ready-to-use settings, including a shower room, a boiler room and a collection of horse stables.
Mr. Acworth also predicted that his neighbors would eventually embrace his presence. “It’s a company built here in San Francisco with San Franciscans,” he said. “I just think it needs time to register.”
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Sex without love is an empty experience, but, as empty experiences go, it's one of the best.
-- Woody Allen
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