At least the staff at the Seattle store have a sense of humor about their broken window. I love the note! It says “our window may be broken, but our hearts aren’t”. It’s hard to see in the picture but the rock is still in the window with little hearts on it.

Dan Savage, if you don’t know him by now, writes the best sex advice column ever. In the world. I’ve seen a lot of bad sex advice columns which illustrates how difficult it is to be funny, witty and give good advice. Dan does it swimmingly. He also lives in Seattle and I have to assume he’s stopped into Babeland at least once (I think he should be an honorary employee, actually). He suggests Babeland frequently on his column as a place to get quality toys and I always appreciate that.

This week, however, he really outdid himself. Dan turned to our very own Claire Cavanah for advice on when/if sex toys can be transfered from one relationship to the next. Claire gave some great advice which I’ll quote in a minute. But first, Dan’s description of Babeland:

Cavanah is the co-founder of Babeland (babeland.com), a woman-owned, totally righteous, continent-spanning sex-toy colossus

I love this!! I want to put it on a t-shirt. Reading this reminded me again of how proud I am to work for such a righteous colossus.

As for Claire’s advice on using sex toys from one relationship in another one?

“Lesbian sex-toy etiquette is pretty clear,” says Claire Cavanah. “Dildos and harnesses don’t survive the breakup….In the straight world,” Claire continues, “there’s a whole lot less attachment to specific toys, so reusing a dildo and harness is probably more common and acceptable.”

I’ve had to buy new toys myself to get the memories of the old person away. But what can also happen is that you buy a toy with a partner and then it ends up at their house when you break up. Unless you get two harnesses, you’re going to have to argue over who gets it in the breakup. That can be tough - sometimes it’s much easier to just spend the dough on a new toy. Have you ever lost a sex toy in a breakup? Any problems with using old toys with new partners?
Once again, thanks Dan, for the awesome description.

Ah, the Pacific Northwest, home of purple mountains’ majesty, the lapping tongue of the Pacific Ocean, trembling Douglas firs, and more vegans than you can shake a stick at. The PNW also finds itself home to a bevy of peepshows and strip clubs, most notably Seattle’s infamous Lusty Lady, and Portland, Oregon’s notorious reputation of having more strips clubs per capita than any city in the US.

At Babeland, we love our vegan friends (not to mention that quite a fair amount of our Babes are vegans themselves); we also love our sex-worker friends (and fair number of our Babes, have been, are, or have become sex-workers in their own right). To honor all these folks, we offer delectable lines of vegan lube, vegan cuffs , vegan floggers (BARE Leatherworks makes a 100% vegan flogger, available in our shops), and more; there is a professional discount for sex workers; in the past, we have played host(ess) to sex-worker luminaries the likes of Annie Sprinkle and Nina Hartley; and we often feature texts in our book section on the topic of sex work itself.

It should come as no surprise that in this wonderland of sex-workers and vegans (and sometimes vegan sex-workers), a vegan strip club was bound to pop up. And pop up it has: Our sister city to the South, Portland, has upped its own ante by birthing the world’s first vegan strip club– Casa Diablo– which opened its doors on February 1st.

Lillian Hogan, of wweek.com, writes:

Casa Diablo Gentlemen’s Club, stranded in outer industrial Northwest Portland on St. Helens Road, features attractive, well-shaven dancers, working for a man so dedicated to veganism he swears he’d rather give up sex than eat meat…

…Our stripper-happy city’s new joint is owned by Johnny Diablo, a 44-year-old Los Angeles transplant. He opened a vegan restaurant in September 2006, Pirates Tavern, in the same building that now blends strippers and soy. Pirates Tavern went out of business in December 2007, Diablo says, because most vegans live at the poverty level or below.

But Diablo, a self-described “ethical vegan” of 23 years, thinks Portland will support veganism and vaginas in part because Casa Diablo is Portland’s only smoke-free strip club.

Sexy carnivores are welcome to dance on his stage, although Diablo says most of his strippers are vegans or vegetarians. He says he tries to convert the meat eaters by offering them free vegan food and preaching his vegan ways.

The club’s main claim to veganism seems to be that strippers cannot wear any leather, fur, silk or wool. If a dancer slips up and sports snakeskin heels, Diablo says he pulls the woman aside to talk about “not bringing murder victims into the establishment.

Didn’t think you’d live to see the advent of a cruelty-free, smoke-free, and clothing-free club? Think again. While the news of the club’s opening is already sparking internet jokes and gossip galore, I do know one thing: This omnivorous Babe will soon be trekking to Portland in order to sample the vegan fare and tuck as many crisp bills as possible into the garters of our fierce, fearless, and hard-working sex-worker sisters.