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 I'm happy to say that over the last few years I've become totally bi…coastal, that is! Wink-wink! I manage to live in Manhattan and visit San Francisco as often as possible, which, last year, meant five trips west. So many people I know have been moving back and forth between the two cities we've been joking about running a human exchange program. When comparisons are made about the two metropolises, inevitably the conversation turns to which city is sexier.  Since Rudy Giuliani cleaned up Times Square, New York has been experiencing a shortage of strip clubs and sex workers, while San Francisco still boasts a bounty of establishments with lotsa skin. There are definitely more nipple-friendly nightspots, many more sex toy emporiums and oodles of boutiques with lingerie, fetish attire and sky-high stilettos too. So for shopping, lap dances and other "commercial" sexuality, San Francisco wins.I was lucky enough to be the guest of honor at a sex house party a few years ago (oh, Manhattan can only WISH it had a place everyone called the sex house!) and it was immediately obvious how much more open San Franciscans are about their sexuality. Rather than offering a polite handshake and leaving you guessing about their private lives, the way a New Yorker would, people introduced themselves with almost too much information. "Hi, I'm Joe," one gentleman enthused, "I'm a bi-switchable top with a fetish for jockstraps!" I wasn't sure how to respond. I now know that the proper reply would've been "Right on," but at the time I merely nodded and smiled. There are people I've known for a decade in Manhattan and I have NO idea what their fetishes are! Okay, so that's a slight exaggeration. But you get my drift. People in San Francisco just assume that everyone's a freak and they're all eager to let you know precisely what kind of freak they are. In New York, we're all neurotic, though that's something we're not eager to share. And of course, one of the things we're all neurotic about is our sexuality. So for openness and honesty and a high comfort level with sex in general, San Francisco wins.  I don't really know which city first pioneered the tattooed, pierced, Betty Page, rainbow-hued, dreadlock, urban savage look, but both places still maintain a healthy underground of hipsters. However San Francisco has actually elevated it to an art form. With the enormous expansion of what might be considered the extended Burning Man community, there's a sprawling network of creative, alternative, colorful folks. And some of these people actually work. In banks. With their rainbow hair. Because it's San Francisco.For some reason people are just used to seeing the counterculture thoroughly integrated. Maybe it was the dot com boom, with all those kids skateboarding around their loft offices, that convinced everyone that you needn't be wearing a Brooks Brothers suit to be a business whiz. In Manhattan, if you have a relatively straight job you'd better be sporting a relatively straight look. Which leaves us sadly behind in the alterna-babe Olympics. We have no armies of bindi-wearing bellydancer earth-mother-goddesses serving us coffee at Starbucks, no trannies behind sales counters (with the exception of the above-mentioned "commercial" sexy establishments) and no radical fairies, with their enormous piercings and spiked hair, anywhere above 14th Street or below Canal. Our kinksters keep to themselves, and there are far less of them. So for more interesting, intense and awe-inspiring sexy urban savages, San Francisco wins. Whenever I'm in San Francisco I try to hit as many parties as possible. Wait, I do that at home too. Yeah, but the parties I find in Frisco are way looser than their Manhattan counterparts. Space is, of course, at a premium in New York. We just don't have big houses (see above complaint about lack of "sex house"), accommodating bars or sex clubs. I mean, how many square feet does The Power Exchange have? All devoted to deviant behavior! Sure, there are people in New York trying to throw sexy stuff, swing parties, fetish events and other endeavors aimed at alternative lifestylers, myself included. However, it gets more difficult every year to find suitable spaces, properly perverted proprietors and, well, enough room. And don't get me started on the dearth of Jacuzzis! So for sexier soirees, naughtier nightspots and more carnality available for public consumption, San Francisco wins. Which leads me to the question, What AM I doing still living in Manhattan? Well, the one thing New York does have more of is people. More people means more energy. And we all feed off that energy daily. It is our sustenance. Lacking sunshine and convertibles, poppies and fog, peace and love and more massage therapists per square inch than anywhere else on the fucking PLANET, we feed off each other. And my hunger simply hasn't been sufficiently sated!
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