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Back by popular demand, Wry and his special guests discuss your interests, questions, and issues in this alternative panel that goes beyond polyamory. Non-monogamy, open relationships, casual sex, non-exclusive dating, threesomes, moresomes, swingers, and various non-sexual arrangements, such as BDSM play-partners, make out buddies, and anything outside the realms of tradition will be discussed. Participation in the conversation is highly encouraged in this Q&A format.
What: “Poly Talk & Wry Relationships” With Wry and Guests
Note: You can also purchase tickets on arrival if you prefer.
When: Saturday August 29, 2:00-5:00pm
Where: Stockroom Hall: 2811 W. Sunset Blvd. Located next to our retail store.
Sensual Domination is the use contrasting sensations to create an energy flow which sustains a deep connection between the top and bottom; when done properly, it can lead to surprisingly intense sessions. No expensive toys or complex techniques requiring hours of practice are necessary, just some planning and the ability to be fully present with one’s partner. This class is perfect for those looking to get started on their kinky journey, trying to get a partner to give kink a try, or even those with experience looking for a new point of view.
What: Sensual Domination with Master Feenix
Note: You can also purchase tickets on arrival if you prefer.
When: Saturday August 15, 2:00-5:00pm
Where: Stockroom Hall: 2811 W. Sunset Blvd. Located next to our retail store.
About the Instructor:
Master Feenix has been a house Dom at Bar Sinister in Hollywood since 2005. In that time he has played with hundreds of people, many for their first time, and has developed a friendly style that encourages people to give kink a try without feeling scared or intimidated. He has taught classes and performed at many events throughout Southern California, and has a particular passion for rope bondage.
Come join us for a hands-on class in all things Leather. Bring your kit, your leather and your partner, if you have one. Get your hands dirty learning the joy of boot blacking in this interactive class showing off techniques, answering questions, and practicing your shine. Hosted by The Southern California Leather Bootblack Title Holder.
What: Bootblacking 101
Note: You can also purchase tickets on arrival if you prefer.
When: Saturday August 8, 2:00-5:00pm
Where: Stockroom Hall: 2811 W. Sunset Blvd. Located next to our retail store.
About Your Hostess:
Danielle is a Bootblack and Leather girl located in North Orange County. She currently holds the first ever Southern California Leather Bootblack Title. When not out camping, biking, or flying with her Sir, she trains in Wrestling.
If you have boots or pretty much anything shineable on, she will jump at the chance to make you shine and flirt shamelessly with you while she’s doing it!
This week is a great one for fans of animal roleplay.
First of all, you may have noticed our Dog and Pony Sale going on right now. If you’re into any kind of animal roleplay, or have just been thinking about it, you should definitely browse through the sale page. The goods that are on sale represent some of our most creative items, going far beyond the selection of whips and chains that you find in your typical dungeon. A few examples:
- Pony Head Bridle Set: What pony wouldn’t be proud to be led around the corral in this beautiful bridle and harness set? Choose from black, white, or red leather, or black PVC. For those special occasions, you can order the black PVC set with a beautiful plume on top.
- Silicone Puppy Tail: Perhaps the most adorable butt plug you’re ever going to see. Combining anal stimulation with the fun of being a puppy, you can let your puppy waggle their tail for you, or you can take it in hand and give them a little extra pleasure by wiggling it around yourself.
- Leather Bunny Hood: Bunnies — underneath that adorable fluffiness, we know they’re full of wickedness and mischief. Bring that combination into your dungeon with this high-quality leather hood that’s perfect for sensory deprivation play; the eyes are leather patches with nine small holes that allow minimal vision, making sure that your bunny will have to follow wherever you lead.
- Molded Latex Pony Boots: Just what the well-dressed pony needs for a ride around the corral.
To tell the truth, we’re really enjoying this sale because it gives us a chance to show off the playful inventiveness that represents kink at its very best.
But those who are here in Los Angeles will have yet another chance to indulge their interest in animal roleplay. Tomorrow, the Antebellum Gallery in Hollywood is going to kick off their own Dog & Pony Show. Artists like Michael Manning, Dorian Katz, Victor Lightworship, and Rick Castro will be showing their own visions of dog and pony play fetishes through photography, painting, sculptures, and other mediums.
Featured in the main window of the gallery will be a installation created on-location by Midori, one of Stockroom’s favorite educators. She visited us just last weekend to present two workshops at Stockroom University, and if you’ve been watching her Twitter and Instagram feeds, you’ve already gotten a few glimpses of her work in progress. She’s using flowers on a wire frame to create a statue of Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the dead in Egyptian mythology, and it just gets more impressive the closer to completion it gets. The shots below will give you an idea of where it’s going, including a view of Anubis’s heart and digestive tract.
Our Dog and Pony Sale goes until Friday, August 7. The Antebellum Gallery will be kicking off their show with a reception from 7-9PM on Saturday, August 1. (Adults only, Fetish gear encouraged but not required.)
If you were keeping an eye on the Stockroom Twitter feed recently, you probably caught us showing off some shots from the July/August issue of Penthouse like proud parents. The photos are from a spread that’s part of Penthouse’s “Badass” issue, shot by TommyO and starring models Angela Sommers and Kendra James.
It also stars a lot of clothing from Stockroom, Stormy Leather, and Syren Latex, which is why we were doing the proud parent routine. Nothing validates our work more than seeing how people use our clothes and toys to bring their own imaginations to life. The imagination at work in the Penthouse pictorial is evident to even the casual observer, but the already vivid colors become just a little brighter if you know the story behind it.
 Angela Sommers and Kendra James in a medical scene. Every month, Penthouse invites a celebrity to come up with an idea for a pictorial. For the most recent “Badass” issue, they chose Jesse Hughes, frontman for Eagles of Death Metal to bring his vision to life. For inspiration, Hughes reached back over fifty years to an artist who had immeasurable influence on American culture, but who got little reward for his work during his lifetime: Joe Shuster.
Most people, if they know Shuster at all, know him for co-creating Superman with his childhood pal Jerry Siegel. With the 1938 introduction of Superman in Action Comics #1, Siegel and Shuster created not only an iconic character, but an entire genre. Imitators flooded the market, and eventually superhero comics evolved into the multi-billion dollar industry that we have today. Without Siegel and Shuster, our world would lack more than comic books; we wouldn’t have the blockbuster movies, video games, or television shows that now drive so much of pop culture.
 Angela Sommers in bondage. In a just world, Siegel and Shuster would have become wealthy within a few years. But before the first issue even hit the presses, they had signed all their rights to the character over to National Publications (now DC Entertainment) for a paltry $130 — about $2,000 in today’s money. In the decades to come, no amount of legal battling ever changed that.
While National raked in money, Superman’s creators — especially Shuster — struggled to survive on whatever work they could find after their ten-year contract expired. In 1948, a lawsuit to recover their rights to Superman failed; Shuster went through several unsuccessful projects, including a superhero book called Funnyman which flopped after only a few issues. By 1954, he was anonymously drawing kinky fetish art for an underground magazine called Nights of Horror.
In an unlucky series of events, those Night of Horror was blamed for a string of serial killings in a sensational murder trial in the 1950’s. the books were subsequently banned and burned, which makes original versions quite rare today.
Even among comics geeks, Shuster’s time doing kinky art was only faint rumor until 2009, when comics historian Craig Yoe identified the pictures and collected them in a book called Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Joe Shuster. In an interview on Fresh Air, he described how Shuster’s art style remained the same even though the content was so very different.
Well, these are like Superman gone wild. I mean, characters look quite a bit like Clark Kent, Superman, and his counterparts Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and the villain who plagued him, Lex Luthor. You think they’re the citizens of Metropolis, yet they’re in these very compromising sexual situations. I’ve been kind of amused and annoyed that some people have called the illustrations kind of quaint or charming because they are from the ’50s. But I think they’re anything but; there’s bloodletting and there’s whips and chains and a man menaces a young girl with a cactus…. The illustrations are quite strong, quite pulpy, yet beautifully composed, beautifully drawn, beautifully rendered in Joe’s strong, sure style.
That was the art that Jesse Hughes took as the inspiration for his Penthouse spread. Photographer TommyO says that the intent was not so much to reproduce the images themselves, but to capture the spirit of them in photographs. One of the biggest differences is that Shuster’s original art was black-and-white line drawings. The pictorial that Hughes and TommyO created uses color flamboyantly.
 A page of Shuster’s fetish art from the 50s. Note how much resemblance the characters bear to his most famous creations: Lois Lane and Superman. TommyO’s shots are lit strictly with bright primary colors that would be used in the printing process of a comic book: blue, red, yellow, and magenta. “Since he’s famous for his comic book images, it made sense to create a strong graphic element in the photography by adding wide swaths of color with gels on the lights. I don’t believe we used any white light at all that day,” TommyO said. “Shooting this set was a definite challenge, but one which I really enjoyed .The idea was to make Shuster’s art jump off the pages and into real, albeit fantasy life. His somewhat simple drawings left a lot of space to fill when using live models and locations. He also drew very minimal backgrounds in order to keep the attention focused on his characters.”
 Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes seated with Kendra James and Angela Sommers. Anyone who grew up on superhero comics — whether the Golden Age ruled by the holy triumvirate of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman or the modern era, where the stories travel almost immediately to the movie screen — knows how easily their fantasy world touches on the sexual. Even before Shuster moved to doing art for Nights of Horror, his reputation was built on creating stories that were pure id; good and evil clash without restraint or inhibition in comic books.
That’s why we especially love having been involved in this particular spread. The reality of the latex clothing that Syren makes has a huge amount of overlap with the fantasy of superheroes. It’s one of the reasons that it works so well both as fetish wear for the dungeon or as glamor wear while striding down the red carpet. It’s why we love what we do.
 Kendra James and Angela Sommers We had another great example of how those two realms overlap when Taylor Swift came to us to help outfit her music video “Bad Blood.” Swift has gotten seven nominations from the MTV Video Music Awards for “Bad Blood,” and we feel a little swell of pride in that, too. As both “Bad Blood” and the “Badass” pictorial show, the right clothes can bring the visual kick of a four-color comic book into real life. TommyO will be demonstrating that for us again very soon: he’s currently using the same fashions from Swift’s video for another Stockroom shoot.
Congratulations to Jesse Hughes, TommyO, Angela Sommers, and Kendra James on their fantastic work. We hope that Joe Shuster would finally be proud to see how even his most unacknowledged work is remembered.
We’re very proud to present not one but two great workshops from the renowned sex educator Midori this Saturday. Summer school will take on a whole new meaning as Midori gives her unique insights on control and dominance moves in rope scenes and how to make humiliation and embarrassment into a sexy part of your playtime. Don’t miss these exceptional workshops at Stockroom University.
Summer School With Midori
Workshop 1: Rope: Control & Dominance Moves
Saturday July 25, 12:00-2:00pm
Learn effective rope moves to enhance control. What ever style of bondage or rope play you enjoy, these skills will boost the emotional and psychological intensity. In this hands-on class you’ll practice safe moves that are body-smart for the top side and bottom sides. Whether you enjoy Kinbaku, Shibari, Westen, Predicament, Damsel in Distress, Take-downs or Confrontational play, these techniques will integrate well into your fun! No experience necessary.
Bring: Two or three lengths of rope that you usually play with. If you’re not sure, bring two or three lengths of 20 to 30 feet of ropes. Some practice ropes will be available to borrow or can be purchased in the retail store prior to the class. Yoga mat or towels are suggested but optional
Wear: Comfortable clothing.
Pair attendance is encouraged, but solos are welcome as well. If you come solo, you’ll be paired with other solos for practice.
Workshop 2: Humiliation Play: Make ’em Blush, Make ’em Squirm
Saturday July 25, 3:30-6:00pm
Note: You can also purchase tickets on arrival if you prefer.
Why do people get off on being embarrassed or humiliated? Is this a style of play you’ve struggled to understand? Do you want to understand how to do this well and avoid disasters? What are the potential psychological ramifications? What’s different for a one-time scene vs. playing with your life partner? Emphasizing emotional safety throughout, Midori will explore a wide range of play from light teasing and embarrassment to serious humiliation.
What’s the difference between a healthy and constructive scene and one that is destructive and harmful?
Are you trying to better understand this difficult subject? Have you questioned yourself on your desires or ability to make another squirm? Or have you ever secretly wanted to be put on the spot or shown how really naughty you are? Then this class is for you!
Midori will share with you a unique model she’s developed to better understand and create an experience that is hot for all the players involved.
Where: Stockroom Hall: 2811 W. Sunset Blvd. Located next to our retail store.
About the Instructor:
Midori is a renowned educator and writer on sexuality. Dubbed “the super nova of kink” by Dan Savage, she emerged from the Sex Positive Movement in San Francisco in the early 1990’s, soon becoming a much sought-after international presenter on sexuality, personal fulfillment and kinky adventures.
 Her reputation as an authority and leading expert on alternative pleasures stem not only from her unique and entertaining process of teaching concrete skills, but in her ability to deconstruct and distill complex matters of desire into surprisingly accessible lessons with eloquence and humanity. She’s known for tackling challenging topics with fresh and relevant insights. She calls this her “head-heart-hands” method to create a space where people are allowed individual self-exploration. Fundamentally she is motivated by helping people to create authentic and intimate relationships while emphasizing self actualization, shame reduction, acceptance and justice.
Her writing is extensive, ranging from numerous articles, columns, works of fiction, to instructional books. She is the author of The Seductive Art of Japanese Bondage, Wild Side Sex, and Master Han’s Daughter.
She leads transformative small group intensives, including Rope Dojo ®, ForteFemme: Women’s Dominance Weekend Intensive and Passionate Bonds: Creating Effective D/s Protocol.
When she’s not traveling and teaching, she’s creating provocative and haunting art and performances.
We are excited to welcome the legendary Entropy back to our University Halls to present a class on the Art of Flogging. During this hands-on course, Entropy will go over everything you always wanted to know about this type of impact play. Learn about the many types of implements used and what materials most are made of, as well as necessary safety, negotiation, and after care principles. In addition to the techniques of safe and sexy flogging, Entropy will also instruct us on how to care for our toys so they can provide years of pleasure.
What: Sticks and Leathery Bits
Note: You can also purchase tickets on arrival if you prefer.
When: Saturday July 18, 2:00-5:00pm
Where: Stockroom Hall: 2811 W. Sunset Blvd. Located next to our retail store.
About the Instructor:
Entropy is a long-time veteran and fixture of the LA BDSM club scene, having performed at legendary venues such as: Sin-a-Matic, Fetish Ball, Christopher St. West, Submission, Malediction Society, InSINer8 and countless others. He has taught annually at DomCon LA since 2009, at several Orange County Leather Assembly events, and founded the play space now known as “Purgatory.” (Held every Saturday at Bar Sinister.) In more than two decades of involvement in the public scene, Entropy has privately mentored and taught countless upcoming Dom/mes.
Entropy is considered to be the inventor of the two-handed flogging technique now known and used as “The Florentine.”
This Saturday, Stockroom University returned from a two-week break with a bang. Our own Hudsy Hawn and Grooby.com’s Marketing Director, Kristel Penn, worked hard to put together four of the most prominent trans adult stars to talk about a wide scope of issues around transgender people, whether in or out of the adult industry. Buck Angel, Tori Mayes, Morgan Bailey, and Michelle Austin joined us Saturday afternoon to speak honestly about their own stories and share their insights on issues like body image, pronouns, sexuality, and many other topics.
If you missed it, here’s a few of the highlights of the day, with pictures:
The tradition of buying dirty magazines may not be as robust as it once was, but we’d like to recommend that you take a look at the August 2015 issue of Penthouse Variations. It’s kind of special to us because it stars not only their usual mix of steamy writing and pictures, but an excellent cover image of model Angela Sommers in all her domme glory wearing several of Stockroom’s best items. The pictures were taken by fetish photographer Tommy O, who more than does justice to both Angela and our own gear. She certainly lives up to the issue’s theme: Whether you’re looking for a Demanding Domme or a Bitch Goddess or a little of both, she looks like she can deliver. (And then some.)
Below, you can check out the cover and a shot from inside the magazine:
On the cover, Angela is wearing Stormy Leather’s Aztec Leather Corset in pink, Stockroom’s Cleopatra Chrome Collar, and Syren’s Pia Frilled gloves in black and pink. (Soon to be available online.)
In this inside shot, Angela shows off another piece of Stormy Leather gear: the Stormy Zip Corset, a really nice strapless corset with multiple zippers that make it adaptable for use in a wide number of looks and environments.
Congratulations to Angela Sommers and Tommy O in putting together such a great shoot with our stuff, and thanks to Isabella Sinclaire for letting them use Ivy Manor Studios for the shoot. We love it when people play with our gear and look so good doing it.
Bruce Jenner caused a worldwide sensation when he recently made the announcement that he would be transitioning from Bruce to Caitlyn. And while some transgender individuals spend their whole lives pondering this decision, there are many inspiring individuals who have made the choice to be themselves no matter what the cost, with grace, courage, and honesty that inspires us all.
The panelists at this event include some of Los Angeles’ most well-known transgender stars. Each of our guests will share parts of their personal journey and discuss the respectful use of pronouns, sexuality, labels, and much more.
There will be an open Q & A forum where we encourage attendees to participate in this fun, respectful, and safe discussion.
What: “Trans Talk” With Buck Angel, Michelle Austin, Morgan Bailey, & Tori Mayes
Note: You can also purchase tickets on arrival if you prefer.
When: Saturday July 11, 2:00-5:00pm
Where: Stockroom Hall: 2811 W. Sunset Blvd. Located next to our retail store.
About the Instructors:
Buck Angel: As an icon of popular culture, Buck Angel’s message of empowerment through self-acceptance and being sexually comfortable in your own skin has struck a passionate chord with folks all over the world. Buck is not only inspiring people to think outside the box, he is redefining gender and educating an entire generation on the fluidity of sexuality and identity politics. Since Buck coined the phrase,”it’s not what’s between your legs that defines you!”, the term has become an anthem for men and women everywhere who have been inspired by this message of self-acceptance.
Buck Angel made history when he received the prestigious award from Adult Video News (AVN) for Transsexual Performer of the Year in 2007 for his groundbreaking work in the adult entertainment industry. As the pioneer of an entirely new genre, Buck has received international recognition and continues to be a huge box office hit in numerous markets. Visit his official website at BuckAngel.com.
Michelle Austin: Michelle is an award-winning performer, director, and producer. Since entering the adult industry, she has always been about changing the way people look at body image. Affectionately known as the BBW transsexual of adult entertainment, she has made her own brand as she continues to produce. Michelle is the mastermind behind one of the most talked about transman DVDs, Trans Men Adventures and is changing the way trans porn is seen with her site FTM.XXX.
Morgan Bailey: Morgan is a popular adult performer who has been the red carpet hostess at the Transgender Erotica Awards for the past four years. She’s identified and presented as female since she was 17 and now proudly identifies as trans. “I’m an open book,” she says. “So please don’t hesitate to ask.” Follow Morgan on Twitter and Facebook.
Tori Mayes: An award-winning transgender adult entertainer, Tori has sought to be a positive influence within the transgender community by educating fans as well as being a supportive and encouraging friend to people exploring and realizing their gender identity. This past February she was presented with the first-ever Transcendence Award at the Transgender Erotica Awards (TEAs), recognizing her as an ambassador within the industry with her professionalism and positive influence within the adult entertainment community. Tori can be found interacting with fans and friends on Twitter and Fetlife.
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