Dark, sketchy, neon red lights, crushed black velvet, secret curtains, dildos, rubber, latex. These are a few adjectives that typically capture the atmosphere of most sex shops.

I’ve been to sex shops around the world and despite the cultural and language differences, one thing manages to traverse all barriers: the tackiness of it all.

The outdoor display signs are usually neon red, purple or pink, and there is at least one letter that’s not fully working so sex shop now reads “S X S op”. The display windows are filled with mannequins in latex dominatrix or nurse costumes or covered with all the different types of porn on offer.    

Sure it’s fun to go in with a gaggle of your girlfriends and have a giggle looking through the lacy underwear and vibrators.

But what if you’re alone? Or what if you’re a guy buying a dildo for your girlfriend? Or what if you have a burning question and are looking for a butt plug to spruce up your love life? You don’t necessarily want to be caught dead going in or out of one those joints.

Some people are as much embarrassed as afraid to go inside because sex shops simply look so shady. They always make you wonder whether there’s an illegal sex ring happening just behind that black curtain.

Sexy shop, not sex shop
Well, Samantha Bard, owner of Shag in Brooklyn, New York, has changed that.

Shag is not your typical sex shop. In fact, it’s not a sex shop at all. Bard says she likes to refer to it as a “sexy shop.”

Conveniently placed at the corner of Roebling and North 6^th in the hipster neighborhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, Shag is a breath of fresh air compared to other sex shops.

With its bright sunny windows—sans red neon signage—one might mistake it for a cute little boutique. Inside, the walls are bright and white. It’s a classy and welcoming place.

Sexy art
Still, Shag stocks all your necessary items like vibrators, cock rings, dildos, racy lingerie, edible underwear, whips, and lubricants. Additionally, Shag also carries jewelry, decorative pillows, skin care products, sexy kitchen utensils (i.e. steal nipple-shaped placemats for hot pans), and plenty of batteries. 

Photo by JD

What is most enchanting is all the sexual art sprinkled throughout the store. It reminds me of the old woman’s house in the film “A Clockwork Orange” with all the phallic sculptures and colorful deviant art. (I secretely want that woman’s art collection!)

It may not come as a surprise that Bard was completing a master of fine arts (MFA) when she came up with the idea to open her own sex shop. Many of her art projects already dealt with sexuality, gender and intimacy. She says she was making life-size, life casts of genitalia, when finally it hit her—“I can make my own dildos!”  

Shag hosts monthly exhibit openings featuring new artists each month. The walls and glass counters display sensual paintings and prints. You can also get handmade seductive decorative mirrors and coasters.  

My absolute favorites were the Matryoshka-like penises, by Hally McGehean, featuring different shapes and sizes that stack onto each other like Russian nesting dolls. You can also get them featuring naked women or lingerie.

Photo by JD.

Photo by JD.

Love improvement
Shag also hosts events for singles and couples, such as massage workshops, rope bondage, female ejaculation and underwear-making parties.

Tonight they have a free workshop discussing sex for survivors of sexual as well as other forms of abuse.      

Another brilliant touch is the free sex book-exchange library they have. Donate a sex book and take one home for free!  It’s an affordable way to polish up on your technique.

Photo by JD.

I think it’s safe to say Shag is more than just a sexy shop, it’s a sex institute. Come in for a browse!

Shag
108 Roebling
Brooklyn, New York
11211-3310
(347) 721-3302

 - JD

Andy Warhol from Getty Images archive.

Sexuality, love, New York, objectified bodies, AIDs, intimacy, and identity. These are some of the themes explored in Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, the first major museum exhibit exploring homosexuality and concepts of gender in modern American art.

The show features diverse media such as paintings, photographs, sculptures and video.

 I attended this exhibit a couple of weeks ago and was quite impressed. It’s an extensive collection featuring portraits of or by all your favorite gay superstartists, like Annie Leibovitz, Andy Warhol, Alfred Stieglitz, David Hockney, Ellen DeGeneres, Georgia O’Keefe, George Bellows, Jess Collins, Jasper Johns, Marcel Duchamp, Robert Rauschenberg and many more. Yes, the curator was name dropping.

The New York Times praised the exhibit, but also said, “Like many events that are first of their kind, it feels both overdue and a little behind the times.” It is astonishing an exhibition like this has only now, in 2011, been established. Then again, it was quite astonishing that New York only now, in 2011, made same sex legal. But as they say, better late than never.   

Have pen and paper ready, because you will want to write down and Google some of the subjects in the photographs and learn of their influence in the gay community. It’s quite the history lesson. It was incredible to see portraits of literary trailblazers like Walt Whitman, Dejuna Barnes, Janet Flanner and Susan Sontag.  

I’m currently reading Just Kids, the Patti Smith/Robert Mapplethorpe biography so it was exciting to see photographs so close up. It’s interesting to see the connection and influences between the artists as well.

One of my favorites, which I had previously seen before is Nan Goldin’s portrait of drag queens Misty and Jimmy Paulette in a Taxi, 1991. The women/men, look like they’re going home exhausted after a wild night out, yet they still look so beautiful in the morning. If you’ve ever been to New York, you know it captures a very familiar moment whether you’re a drag queen or not.  

http://www.tate.org.uk/collection/P/P78/P78046_9.jpg

The exhibit can also be quite intense. I had previously seen the very powerful image by Therese Frare of AIDs activist David Kirby in London a year ago and it’s still just as sad and eerie to see again. The blown up image displays a bed-ridden Kirby, sick and skeleton-like in his last days before dying.

Maybe grab some tissues too. Either way, go see Andy Warhol in drag before it moves to the Tacoma Art Museum in Washington State.    

Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture
November 18, 2011 – February 4, 2012
Brooklyn Museum
4^th Floor
200 Eastern Parkway   

 - JD

Move over Lonely Planet, Frommer’s and Fodors. There’s a new travel guide in town with tips for the things that really matter to Globosexuals: sex, health and travel—and on a budget too.   

Off Track Planet (OTP) is a blog-turned-travel guide that targets the “young, sexy and broke,” or those 18 to 30-year-olds who push the limits and want to have as much fun as possible before growing up and settling in 9-to-5 jobs.

The guide, now in its 4^th edition, will be available at Barnes & Noble beginning in January 2012.    

On top of offering exciting travel destinations and activities like jungle backpacking in Malaysia or whitewater rafting in Colombia, OTP offers, uhem, practical advice—like how to get laid in India, curing hangovers the Mexican way, and keeping your genitals healthy. And yes, break up with your significant other before setting off on your sure to be life changing adventure.

OTP has fundamental backpacking tips like preventing and defending yourself against theft, eating healthy on the road, essential medical supplies to carry, and how to look less like a hobo when traveling for months on end.    

The tips can easily be applied to any country, as it solves the obstacles of a true backpacking experience. The guides are particularly useful for backpackers already on the road as they can offer creative detours of where to go and what to do if you’re in the area. And the OTP website can be accessed from anywhere in the world—provided you have internet access.

Even if you haven’t traveled or if your traveling days are momentarily behind you, the guide will inspire you to pack a bag and flee the country. The guide is extremely fun to read because of OTP’s raw and blunt writing style. To read it is to be transformed to a late, drunken night in some obscure bar in a foreign land with a gaggle of new-found friends or the floor of some couch surfer’s living room trading traveling mishaps and drinking cheap local wine. These strangers’ wisdom was always far more useful than anything Lonely Planet or Fodor’s guide could offer.

While the articles are helpful and fun to read, you will still need a map—so maybe don’t toss out your traditional guide book just yet. This is a magazine-size guide, which is best used as a reference to prepare yourself before going on your trip or inspire you to go to a particular country. It’s more of a Condé Nast Traveler for the debaucherous adventurer.

In one issue you will find articles about several countries, so if you’re simply going to one, the mag will not be sufficient to get you around. And remember, OTP is targeted to thrifty, younger travelers, so if you’re over the whole hostel thing, read it, reminisce and be grateful you can now afford hotels.

Either way, grab a copy, let your imagination wander and start making travel plans for the new year. For starters, here’s a list of 10 places to have sex around the world.  Already been there, done that?

- JD

The vaccine against human papillomavirus (HPV) is making headlines again thanks to governor and 2012 presidential candidate Rick Perry.

HPV is a sexually transmitted disease that can cause cervical cancer.

Being originally from Texas, I was proud (and surprised) Perry issued an executive order in February 2007 mandating 11- and 12-year-old girls to get the HPV vaccine. The order would have also made the vaccine free for those not covered by insurance (great!).

Perry came under attack as he was criticized for issuing the order in exchange for a $5,000 campaign contribution and them some. The order was eventually overturned.

Perry recently came under attack again during a Republican debate where he said issuing the mandate was a mistake.

Political controversy aside, the vaccine does prevent HPV and can prevent cervical cancer. What I didn’t know, however, which a great follow up article by NPR’s Morning Edition points out is that the vaccine may only protect for four to five years, so vaccinating girls as young as 11 may not protect them during their sexually active years.  

Also, according to Dr. Diane Harper, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine, said in the article that 95% of women infected with HPV do not get cervical cancer. Pap smears, she says, are more effective in preventing cervical cancer.

The fact is that HPV is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the US, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 50% of sexually active people will have genital HPV at some point in their lives. FIFTY PERCENT. That is a lot of people.

Not only can HPV cause cancer, it can cause genital warts, and warts and warts. You can get them in your throat too.

Regardless of what Perry’s motivation was to pass the mandate and regardless of whether the vaccine prevents against cervical cancer, the vaccine prevents against HPV. That is a good thing. If you are a sexually active young girl, you should consider getting the vaccine.

- JD

Remember the Dead Kennedys’ song “Too Drunk to Fuck”? British brewery Brew Dog has the answer—and just in time for the Royal wedding.

According to Adweek magazine, three bottles of the pale ale, appropriately named Royal Virility Performance, contains the equivalent of one dose of Viagra, the sexual performance-enhancing drug.

The beer is also said to contain aphrodisiacs like horny goat weed and chocolate.

The beer was launched to commemorate the Royal wedding on Friday, April 29. Other brewers have also launched wedding-themed beers.

One 330ml bottle costs £10 or $16.66. They only have 1,000 bottles of the stuff so order yours before they run out. I unfortunately don’t live in the UK anymore, so if anyone can get their hands on a bottle let me know how it goes—or send me three.

- JD

Flexisexual (noun) |flek-se-sek-sh(ə-)wəl|

 There are heterosexuals, homosexuals, bi-sexuals, metrosexuals and beloved Globosexuals. In March’s issue of WIRED UK, the magazine defines “fexisexuals:”

A straight person who has occasional affairs with a person of the same sex. Like a bisexual, but not always attracted to both sexes—just occasionally enjoying a same-sex fling.

I think they’re on to something here.

The Daily Mail reported on it back in November 2010. They refer to it as “flirting with bisexuality” and “people who have a preference but refuse to bond by it.” The newspaper goes on to name the following as possible flexisexuals: Angelina Jolie, Drew Barrymore and Lindsay Lohan.

There’s already a dating website for flexisexuals, called—you guessed it—flexisexuals.net.

The term has angered bisexuals and homosexuals alike, as they see it as legitimizing their sexual preferences. Scroll down to the comments section of this article to see why they’re upset.

So this brings us to this week’s Poll:

- JD

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Burlesque sensation Dita Von Teese will be performing at this year's Erotica event in London.

It’s that time of the year again… No not Thanksgiving—London’s Erotica 2010, the world’s three-day adult lifestyle show. Get your best latex outfit, a note pad, your credit card and get down to Olympia Exhibition Centre!  

Highlights this year: Burlesque sensation Dita Von Teese will be performing each night at 6pm and relationship coach Jo Hemmings.

The event will also feature stylists, tantric sex, Japanese bondage, erotic massages, the latest pleasure products and much more.

Don’t miss this educational and fun sex event. The event is open to all adults, but does target couples and ladies.

Should be fun!

- JD

German pop singer, who was HIV positive, is sentenced to prison for having unprotected sex with lover and infecting him.

Now, what have we always told our Globosexuals? USE PROTECTION!

Nadja Benaissa, a 28-year-old German pop singer of the group No Angels, was charged with grievous bodily harm for infecting one man with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and attempted bodily harm for having sex with two other men who were not infected, theBBC reports.

She has been sentenced to an undetermined prison term of between six months and 10 years inDarmstadt, Germany.

Benaissa claims doctors told her the risk of passing the virus was “practically zero.”  

Aids campaigners have warned against criminalizing the transmission of HIV.

Now, when we say “Don’t let this happen to you,” we mean two things. One, don’t have unprotected sex—no matter how beautiful, famous, nice or innocent you think he or she is—because you could catch a deadly, sexually transmitted disease/infection (STD/STI)—like HIV.

Two, if you are carrying an STD do not hide your disease from your potential sex partner. You have an obligation to tell your prospective lover that you have a disease before you have sex—no matter how embarrassing and difficult it may be to admit. Your lover has a right to know and to decide whether or not he or she wants to engage in a sexual act with an infected person.

In some countries intentionally or recklessly infecting a person with HIV is considered a crime and can be charged with criminal transmission of HIV, murder, manslaughter, attempted murder or assault.

Ironically, there is not sufficient evidence that criminal law is effective at preventing HIV transmission. Studies have shown that criminalizing the act may discourage health initiatives such as HIV testing, counseling and informing partners. Nonetheless, you should know the law. Here is a list of laws in particular countries. Please add the laws of your country in the comment section.

Australia: In South New Wales the Public Health Act requires any person who has a sexually transmitted disease/infection (STD/STI)—including HIV—to inform any prospective sexual partner of their status and the risk associated with having sexual intercourse before intercourse takes place. The prospective partner must also voluntarily accept the risk involved. Sexual intercourse includes anal, vaginal and oral sex. Fines for violating: Up to $5,500.

Under the Crimes Act, a person who infects another with HIV is considered “recklessly causing another person grievous bodily harm” and can be imprisoned for up to 10 years.   

Canada: Criminal law requires people living with HIV to disclose their HIV status before engaging in behaviors that risk transmitting HIV.

New Zealand: The Wellington District Court in Auckland ruled in 2005 that an HIV-positive person does not have to reveal they are infected if they use condoms.

Russia: Placing another person under the risk of HIV transmission is punishable by limitation of freedom for up to three years. If a person who knowingly has HIV and infects another person is punishable by imprisonment for up to five years.

UK: A person can be charged for recklessly transmitting HIV to another. A person can also be charged

US: The law varies from state to state, but most states prosecute HIV-positive people who do not disclose their HIV status and expose another person to the HIV virus.

This is alist of cases and people who have been prosecuted for transmitting HIV or AIDs throughout the world.

As a treat—Antibodies, the music video by Poni Hoax. I don’t quite understand the video entirely, but the girl is clearly worried about being pregnant. Yet another reason to use protection.  

Use protection.

-JD

I’m sure they’re not the only ones…

But Aussies seem to be the only one who were surveyed.

According to a poll of 741 Australian travelers, about 80% said airlines should permit in-flight intimacy in private suites.  Although I can’t find the original survey, can you?

According to Travelmole the survey comes after Qantas’ Airbus A380 was configured to allow first-class travelers to have their own private “suite.”

If you look on the Qantas website, you can see that although you can turn your seat into a bed, it is not a “private suite,” per se. Surely you can squeeze two people in there—I’m sure you Globosexuals out there have done it in tighter places—but Qantas clearly designed it to fit one person.

It is also quite open so even if you are an adventurous exhibitionist, please be considerate of your fellow passengers. Smells and yells are not kosher in a small cabin—I don’t care if you paid thousands of dollars for it; so did the rest of the passengers.

By the looks of this Emirates video, however, their Boeing 777 first-class configuration could be a lot better for joining the mile high club.

For those of us who cannot afford 1st class—keep it in the toilets, ya’ll!  

- JD

I realize that’s not Matt Damon. But I’m sure most have seen the “I’m fucking Matt Damon” video made by American comedian Sarah Silverman by now. In the video gag, she “reveals” to her long-time boyfriend and American talk show host Jimmy Kimmel that she has been in fact, fucking Matt Damon.

In response, Kimmel and Ben Affleck make a “I’m Fucking Ben Affleck” video. You can guess his point.

So for this week’s quiz, I want to know—have you ever slept with anyone famous?

 - JD

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