The
following is a reprint of an article written in the
April 20, 1999 edition of Salon.com. The article has
been edited for relevent information.
Rough
Trade Show
Despite
Cyberdildonics and tantric sex swings, the sex biz
trade show Erotica USA is a decidedly unsexy event.
-
- - - - - - - - - - -
By Albert Mobilio
Soft
lights, soft music. A glass of champagne, a spiked
dog collar and an enema. If this sounds like a sexy
combination to you, keep a voyeuristic eye out for
Erotica
USA, a sex biz trade show coming soon to a town
near you. The Erotica show just closed in New York,
where it sparked complaints from expected sources
like New York's hall-monitor mayor and the Christian
Coalition. Both denounced the use of the Jacob Javits
Center, a government-owned convention hall, as a site
for the propagation of, well, propagation. Or at least
the urge behind it...
...Aside
from these tepid carnal visitations, this trade show
-- which will be moving on to South Beach in Miami
and Las Vegas -- was mostly about trade. Jay Servidio
runs Teleteria,
a porn Web design and programming company that really
wants you to profit from the Internet boom. Jay Servidio
and the gang at Teleteria
will set you up with a dripping wet Web site, provide
you with "live video streaming of girls, Asians,
guys, transsexuals, amateurs and dungeon," and
ensure you direct billing of "100% of the commission."
When I asked Jay Servidio how many porn sites the
Web could support, he launched into his spiel with
a button-holer's gusto. "Do the math," he
says. "There are 150 million people on the Internet
and only 30,000 adult sites. Every day another 20,000
people sign up. Every 500 hits yields a membership,
Christmas, Chanukah, every day of the year."
As if offering his own ringing reply to the big question,
"What Is Sexy?" Jay Servidio bore down close
on me and declared, "Making money is simple."
...
Erotica
USA very much wants to go mainstream. Even with videos
and magazines catering to female wrestler buffs ("Steel
Kittens"), submissives ("Bitch Mistress
Magazine," "Trampled"), foot fetishists
("Sole Desire"), enema enthusiasts ("Flash
Floods"), voyeurs ("Peeping Toms Get Spanked")
and traditionalists ("Bald Beavers," "Ass
Blaster" and "Goo Guzzlers"), the message,
says Kimberly Chigi, one of the New York show's organizers,
"is that sex is healthy and there's nothing dirty
here." And she's right, unless you think lucre
is filthy. The overheard talk all around the convention
hall was about franchises, turnkey sites, distribution
networks, synergy and "the power and profit of
sell-through." In the booth of the self-proclaimed
"Baroness" you found tourniquet-tight rubber
clothes, but whatever lubricity they began to cook
up in your autonomic nervous system was quickly short-circuited
by her poster announcing how we could learn how to
clean, shine and take care of our latex garments from
the Regal One. What is sexy? Well, money can be, but
cleaning up definitely isn't. How those latex briefs
and bras might get dirty is what you want to explore
at something called Erotica USA.
salon.com > Entertainment April
20, 1999
URL: http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/1999/04/20/erotica
Jay
Servidio is President of Teleteria,
Inc., a company that has been building and hosting
commercial and adult custom Web sites since 1994.
Teleteria's
clients are located all over the world.
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