After fine art and sex education, one of my ever-enduring interests is food. This should come as no surprise, as sex and food go hand-in-hand, as do sex and art, or art and food. Artists have always been on the cutting edge in portraying sex in two- and three-dimensions, and later using food in highly charged erotic pieces (a la feminist performance artist, Karen Finley, or Carolee Schneemann’s “Meat Joy”). Hence, it comes as no surprise when confectioners turn to portraying the erotic form via use of one of the most noted edible aphrodisiacs: chocolate.

California chocalatier, Joseph Schmidt, has recently come to the attention of the Babeland staff. Trained with European chefs, then embarking on a 6-year career as a pastry-maker, this Jerusalem immigrant finally turned his attention to chocolate. Now calling San Francisco home, Mr. Schmidt has since become known as the “Rodin of Chocolate.” His exquisitely detailed chocolate sculptures run the gamut from delicate floral arrangements, to bonsai trees, to the nude form.

While this edible art is sadly not for sale, you can still feast your eyes upon his online gallery. There you will find the ultimate amalgamation of my own (and many others’) holy trinity: food, sex, and of course art.

Happy anniversary Babeland! From one store in Seattle to stores in Los Angeles and New York and a huge website business, Babeland has really grown. I haven’t known it for 15 years but I’ve known it for 8 and throughout, as a customer or as an employee, Babeland has always provided amazing customer service.

AVN wrote a very sweet article about the 15th anniversary. In it, they trace some of the history of the store but they also talk about this month’s featured toys - the Babeland All-Stars. These are the toys that we consider the best sex toys of all time. Some of these are classics - like the Fukuoku, the Pocket Rocket, the Ducky and the always classic Hitachi Magic Wand. But a lot of them are newer toys. The Form 6, the Delight and the Sasi are incredibly new (the Sasi isn’t even out yet!). How do we know that these relatively new toys are really in the line up of best vibrators of all time? Because we’ve been talking about, testing and selling vibrators for 15 years. After you’ve worked at Babeland for awhile, you start to understand more quickly which toys people are actually going to like - which toys are going to be really useful for them. When the Delight came in, we knew it. Immediately.

I love all of these toys and I think it’s important to mention that the top 15 sex toys of all time aren’t just vibrators. There’s a fantastic harness and dildo in that list as well as the coolest butt toy around. And, if you want to restrain someone, I can think of no better way than the Under the Bed Restraints.

The AVN article also has a very sweet gallery of photographs both new and old. They mislabeled one of the photos as the Soho store when it’s actually the LES store, but other than that, they’re great!

Anyone else watch The Real Housewives of NYC on Bravo? If so, you might have caught a familiar site in the latest episode. This week’s episode featured Luann and her niece walking around the Lower East Side for some drinks and a concert. While in the neighborhood, they stop by our Rivington store and discuss the toys we had on display. There were some closeups of some of our Babeland All Stars all decked out for a red carpet extravaganza!