Noname Jane becomes dessert, Bozzio and Coolio share stage at Exotic Erotic Ball

I am not, like many of my colleagues, a Clinical Sexologist, so I don’t really know the difference between Erotic and Exotic, especially in the context of the Erotic Exotic Expo and Ball (EEB) that will be celebrating its 30th anniversary this weekend in San Francisco.

More to the point, since everything I do is erotic, there’s nothing too exotic about it. Regardless, this weekend’s festivities are going to be a blast.

Perry Mann founded the Exotic Erotic Ball in 1979 as a freakout fundraising event for his friend Louis Abolafia, who was the Nudist Party’s nominee for president.

“I have nothing to hide,” Abolafia (who died in 1995), said. Abolafia also coined the slogan “Make Love Not War,” and that is the guiding principle of the event.

The Ball has grown each year. In addition to the Human Petting Zoo, sex clinics, bondage demonstrations, erotic art exhibits, live bands, and the Blue Room (for discerning couples), the Ball and its accompanying Expo has for the last several years been held at the massive, State of California-owned Cow Palace, which says a lot about the grooviness of the Bay Area.

In advance of my journey to San Francisco Friday, I talked with EEB executive producer Howard Mauskopf, who works with Perry Mann and a staff of 30 to organize the 2-day event.

Gram: San Francisco might have rainbow flags in every window, but it seems just as often a polarized town, wherein one fetish or orientation can get very militant about itself in relation to others.

Mauskopf: It’s a wild party but it’s also laid-back, almost hippie-ish. A lot of the people who will be there have attended this for the past 30 years. With that comes kind of an attitudinal throwback to the Peace and Love years. There’s no threat. Whether or not you’re a participant in that lifestyle, you won’t be threatened, you’ll be amused. You’ll experience sensory overload. Everybody is peacefully coexisting. That’s the thing that I’m most proud of.

Gram: So it’s live and let live, no matter what “community” you’re from?

Mauskopf: It helps if this event has a deeper meaning, which it does. We’re conscious about not standing on a soapbox. Plus, we don’t say we’re a straight event or a gay event. There’s nothing in our marketing that says people wouldn’t be wanted. And so if it were being marketed as a (swingers’) “lifestyle” event we’d lose our broader appeal.

Ticketholder demographics cover several decades. From innocent and virginal 20-somethings to ancient lechers in their 30s. And even older.

Gram: In addition to sybarites and voluptuaries jetting in from all over the world, describe the entertainment.

Mauskopf: Danny Bonaduce will be back. Everybody loves him (Bonaduce looks a lot like Perry Mann, in fact – GP), and Mini-Kiss will be back, the tiny Kiss cover band. Impotent Sea Snakes (“from the seemy underbelly of southern freak culture”) haven’t played the Ball in nine years, but Buck Fuck and the band will be reuniting for the show. Tila Tequila will be there celebrating her birthday, as will Coolio, and we’ve brought back the Blue Room for couples.

Gram: What’s the Blue Room about and why did it take a hiatus?

Mauskopf: The Ball never took it upon itself to be a swinger event, but you’ve got to respect that vibe. Frankly the Blue Room did better some years than others, and became less of a focal point. But the 30th anniversary is a big year, so we thought we’d bring it back.

Gram: How do you make a place like the Cow Palace – so named because it was built to house livestock shows – ready for the human livestock of an Exotic Erotic Ball?

Mauskopf: This year there’s new management at the Cow Palace, and we’ve brought in some excellent food concessions. We’ve got oysters, chocolate-dipped strawberries, and Laurene Wickett from “America’s Top Chef.” And we’ve worked to corral the 80 or so exhibitors from the Expo portion into logical areas. And those same exhibitors might start putting on shows of their own when the Ball starts.

The big exhibitor items this year include Tesla’s electric roadster and the RealTouch haptic orgasm device. The latter will be demonstrated by men from Raging Stallion and Naked Sword, two of San Francisco’s venerable gay studios (now imprints of VOD pioneer AEBN). The RealTouch enables users – or parts of them – to interact via a masturbation sleeve with specially-coded porn videos that send signals to tug, squeeze, and lubricate, depending on what is happening in the video.

Porn stars in attendance will include Adrianna Nicole, Noname Jane, Sinnamon Love, and Shawna Lenee as well as fetish pinup Ancilla Tilia.

But I am especially excited about the performance of Missing Persons (or Dale Bozzio of Missing Persons and a hired band she is calling Missing Persons), because the squeaky-voiced, rail-thin, and sexually terrifying Bozzio intrigued young Gram when he was an infant.

Gram: How many people are you expecting?

Mauskopf: We usually get about 10,000 people to the Expo and Ball and this year we’re hoping for 15,000. Most people buy their tickets pretty close to the event. Expo tickets are $20 each day and General Admission to the Ball is $79, which will also include a pass to the Expo, which will be open downstairs.

There is also a VIP pass for $175.

I have been to dozens of adult conventions at this point and the vibe at the Exotic Erotic Ball, which I last attended in 2006, is definitely the friendliest. The entertainment was also much more of the point; it’s like you’re going to a concert in which everyone in the audience wants to get laid.

And No Name Jane is doing a bit where she lets audience members lick chocolate off her. It makes you forget that San Francisco is where those terrible Body Snatchers invaded.

Here are some photos I took at the 2006 Exotic Erotic Ball, featuring Thomas Dolby, Vanessa and Violet Blue, Devinn and Sunny Lane, and Monica Mayhem.

Previously on Porn Valley Observed: No Name Jane – the cross and the pentagram; Whither Coke Chain?; Noname Jane is born as Violet Blue departs
See also: Exotic Erotic Ball, RealTouch