SF Weekly (San Francisco, CA), January 21, 2015
Summary:
Every month in the Mission, there’s a line around a corner of Mariposa Street as couples, triads, and local celebrities huddle in the fog awaiting admittance to the Verdi Club. The little-known haunt, which feels like a hip Elk’s Lodge, is where Bawdy Storytelling has been playing to sold-out crowds of several hundred people for years.
The show combines two of humankind’s oldest art forms — sex and storytelling — then adds some stiff drinks, icebreakers, free vibrators, and a few filthy ukulele songs.
Each show is a curated evening of true stories of sexual adventure told without notes by writers, comedians, rock stars, and real people. Past guests include Seattle sex columnist Dan Savage as well as local sex-positive bigwigs like Carol Queen of the Center for Sex and Culture and lesbian werewolf-fiction writer Allison Moon.
Bawdy also hosts events in Los Angeles and Seattle, but it began here in San Francisco.
The host and founder of Bawdy Storytelling, Dixie de la Tour, takes the stage at 7 p.m. sharp with plenty of Southern hospitality and San Francisco sex positivity. She’s been hosting underground sex events in the Bay Area for more than 15 years
De la Tour works with all storytellers, coaching and supporting them by bringing their story to the stage, thus ensuring the stories are brave, bold, and just polished enough for the show to really clip along. Performers only get 10 minutes onstage.
The audience is a mixed bag of San Francisco communities — burners, swingers, sex workers, techies, and even some tourists. The show is just raunchy enough to please the perverts of this city, but safe enough for vanilla folks to dip their toe into sex-positive culture for the night.
Subjects Covered: personal storytelling