Exotic Erotic Ball 25th Anniversary
It's a voyeur's paradise and an exhibitionist's dream -- a San Francisco original that has evolved from a drunken orgy in a Tenderloin penthouse to an international gathering at the Cow Palace, drawing everybody from CNN to dirty old men.
On Saturday night, the Exotic Erotic Ball turns 25 and, for better or worse, there is nothing like it anywhere else. Not New York, Los Angeles, Paris or even Amsterdam.
"Someone can come and see things for six hours that they've never seen or done," said Perry Mann, the ball's founder.
Besides a fetish hall and expo with more than 100 vendors, this year's ball is sponsoring a First Amendment panel for its silver anniversary -- returning the ball to its political roots, Mann said with a semi-straight face.
He concocted the ball as a way to raise funds for his friend Louis Abolafia, who ran for president every four years on the nudist ticket.
The Nudist Ball, a precursor, took place in Mann's Tenderloin apartment in 1978 and attracted a few hundred people. In 1979, it moved to California Hall on Turk Street and officially became the Exotic Erotic Ball, with 800 to 900 people paying $10 apiece.
The location changed over the years, attendance began to average 15,000 annually, and the price increased -- now it ranges from $49.95 for tickets bought way in advance to $200 for last-minute VIP passes.
"People who are coming to it are not, on a daily basis, exotic or erotic," said J.S. Gilbert, the ball's general manager. "I've been associated with the ball for 24 years, and people who know me would say I'm the least exotic or erotic person they've ever met. But I definitely become a voyeur that evening."
The visual overload can be relentless.
"I knew I was in for an interesting evening when, immediately upon entering the venue, I spotted a guy painting his penis green," recalled Redwood City resident Richard Marracq.
"You can't even tell what you're looking at sometimes," said ball producer Howard Mauskopf.
Dennis Hof, who runs the Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel in Carson City, Nev., put it another way: "This is the epitome of Halloween in America."
He said the ball used to be very edgy but is now mainstream, spawning dozens of imitators popping up in places like Las Vegas, Chicago and Sacramento.
"It only works in this city," said porn star Ron Jeremy, sitting in a cafe in San Francisco's Union Square. "It's been an abysmal failure everywhere else."
It's a common refrain among longtime ball-goers. They point to the city's flamboyance, free-thinking ways, status as a gay mecca and libertine Gold Rush past.
"It's more open and more accepting here," said Tabitha Stevens, who's been in more than 300 porn movies and will appear at the ball with Jeremy. "If you held the ball in Los Angeles, it wouldn't be as successful. People in L.A. are more stuffy."
On the other hand, for a sex-saturated town like San Francisco, the bar is inevitably raised higher. What does it take to be erotic and exotic in 2004 and keep the ball going a quarter-century after its birth?
"Men are not jaded by sex," said Jeremy, who estimates he's had sex, personally and professionally, with between 4,000 and 5,000 people. "Not until they hit 50, and then they'll say, 'Maybe a nice steak dinner might be more fun tonight.' "
Jeremy is 51.
As for women, there are more and more at the ball every year, say the regulars.
"They've had work and they want to show it off. All these boob jobs. I'm amazed," said Susan O'Neil, a survivor of 20 balls -- including the first one.
"It was black-tie optional, so people showed up with black ties and that was it," she recalled. "People used to be in corners doing strange things.''
Another ball veteran, Joe Sahagun of Hayward, said, "The moral fiber has calmed down, the music has gotten worse and louder, and there's a lot of commercialization."
He's going anyway, just as he has for 15 years, usually dressed as Friar Tuck or Al Capone.
"Me and Speedos wouldn't look great," Sahagun said. "I didn't spend 20 years building my body. I spent 20 years eating."
O'Neil will wear a girdle dress, thigh-high stockings and a short red wig.
She dug out other wigs from past balls -- platinum, magenta, burgundy and black -- and spread them on the dining-room table of her Sausalito apartment, along with hundreds of photos.
Except for the attire and the profusion of exposed genitalia, the ball could easily be mistaken for a photographers' convention. It's an extremely well-documented affair.
In 1983, a Hayward man and an San Anselmo woman filed a $10 million invasion-of-privacy suit when their photos ended up in Penthouse. The man had to quit his warehouse job because he was getting teased too much, and his fiancee's parents were threatening to call off the wedding.
The two plaintiffs lost.
"The judge said anything you do at a public event can be used," said their Oakland lawyer, Daniel Horowitz, on Thursday. "But once you're in there, you're letting loose, and I felt like I was protecting our San Francisco spirit."
In March, Republican legislators in California -- countering a move to outlaw gun shows at the Cow Palace -- sought to ban the ball as well.
They failed, too.
Much like sex itself, the ball seems destined to hang around -- even though some have found it more boring than bacchanalian.
"It was basically a playful carnal fest, populated by the intellectually underwhelmed and alcoholically overstimulated," said Guy Smith of Alameda, who went in 1996. "The most entertaining part, aside from an occasionally inventive costume, were the Christians out front preaching to everyone in line."
Napa resident Mark Hiza, who attended three years ago to provide medical aid, was struck by all the "horny, opportunistic older men looking for cheap fantasies."
"There were people who should never be naked in public, letting it all hang out," he said. "We noticed packs of men following women, grabbing them, taking pictures, and generally thinking with their 'other brain.'
"(And) one particular firefighter, dressed as a fairy, turned beet red when his captain literally bumped into him in the bathroom."
Despite the preponderance of alcohol and flesh, there is little trouble.
"It's actually a good event," said Lt. Eric Wollman of the Daly City Police Department. "I don't mind having it at the Cow Palace at all. Do we have problems with the people attending? No. They want to have a good time, and then they want to go home."
The lowdown
The Exotic Erotic Ball will be held Saturday from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m at the Cow Palace, 2600 Geneva Ave., Daly City.
Tickets at the door will cost $90 for general admission and $200 for VIP. Some of the proceeds will go to charity.
An expo will be open during the ball as well as from noon to 6 p.m., costing $10. For more information, call 415-567-BALL or visit www.exoticeroticball.com