Another pride is over. This year marked the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots so this was a special year. Babeland held two events for pride, a Queer Eye for the Sex Toy Buy workshop night and a Flirt Party. For both events, we decked out our stores in the finest rainbow decorations we could find and had fancy cupcakes and other delicious snacks for our participants. At the flirt party, folks grabbed a number and scoped the store for cuties. Once they found someone they liked, they wrote them a note and posted it on a board using that person’s number. The notes were flying back and forth all night!

We also had a color system to help people announce their intentions even more clearly. Wearing a red shirt or boa (provided for free) meant that you were taken, and just at the party to, well, party. Yellow meant your eye might be caught by someone special and green meant go, go, go!

We hope you all had a lovely pride and we’ll see you next year!

Here’s a bit more about our Kinky Crafting night for HBO’s Real Sex from the Babelander who ran the workshop, Jen May!

The Kinky Crafting event went really well! I had a great time working with the participants crafting some amazing toys. The Brooklyn store was the perfect place to hold the workshop/filming and the store looked great. It was cool to hear what everyone’s crafting experience was going in to the workshop – some people were really into crafting while others could barely get the hang of the needle and thread. We had projects for all experience levels so everyone was able to make something they felt really good about.

We have worked with HBO Real Sex on two other events – an oral sex workshop filmed in Seattle and the masturbate-a-thon filmed at our Mercer Street location. They offer really interesting programming on topics that other shows won’t touch and they are such a fun group of people to work with.

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Rabbit-Style

From our co-founder, Claire:

Babeland had the pleasure of working with HBO’s Real Sex this week. It’s Babeland’s third time doing a star turn on Real Sex, and it keeps getting better. This time the topic is Recession Sex, and the producers came to film a Kinky Crafts workshop at our cozy and community-oriented store in the great borough of Brooklyn. With the nation’s economy on shaky ground, people are more often using their ingenuity and common household items to get off, and Babeland is there to help. The workshop participants fashioned floggers out of bike tires and dowels, created masturbation sleeves from bubble wrap and towels, and from honeydew melons. They made flashy pasties, denim cockrings and restraints and sewed pockets onto their panties to hold their vibrating cell phones.

Jen May, longtime Babelander and sex toy aficionado, lead the workshop and had this to say about the experience, “At first I was terrified to be in front of the camera, but it quickly became really fun! It was like craft time in kindergarten or at summer camp, but for adults who like sex toys. I think the viewers of that segment on Real Sex will see how much Babeland really cares about their pleasure, through thick and thin.”

Check Babeland.com for information about kinky crafting events coming in the fall, and for information about Real Sex viewing parties!

Masturbation Sleeve

A list of the crafts

The crafts