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Press
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.
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Trade Show
Despite
Cyberdildonics and tantric sex swings, the sex biz trade show
Erotica USA is a decidedly unsexy event.
By
Albert Mobilio
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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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