Despite the day’s schedule still being unannounced, the upcoming WordCamp conference looks to draw many a passionate fan and developer of WordPress come mid-August. Sure, I may have taken advantage of Blogger-sponsored libations in the past courtesy of the city’s unending schedule of 2.0-themed happy hours, but I’m really a big fan of the easy-to-use WordPress platform (which SF Metblogs and my personal blog are published on). The Mission Bay-based day costs $20, and volunteering is also an option if you’re interested in being the keeper of the ever-popular T-shirt/sticker/frisbee chochkeys and attending for free.

I was invited last night to attend a rather San Francisco¹ event — live tag-team nude model wrestling at the Fortress of Pornitude, Kink.com. The local web porn provider — whose purchase of the early 20th century Armory building caused a small stir in early 2007 — streams and webcasts more than a dozen porn channels² featuring nubile women (mostly) and men doing forceful, lascivious things to themselves and one another.

NB: Most of the links in this post from here on are NSFW and shouldn’t be clicked if pornography offends you. The language in this post after the jump also contains NSFW descriptions.

The all-girl wrestling match was held, with a live audience³, as part of kink.com’s Ultimate Surrender channel, which consists exclusively⁴ of this wrestling-as-porn subgenre.

Like many, I was curious about the Armory, a former National Guard facility which sat as an abandoned hulk over Mission Street for thirty years before the porn company moved in and cleaned up the building. And the prospect of watching several naked women cavort wasn’t unpleasant either, so I was quick to accept the invitation of Thomas Roche, an acquaintance from the erotica-writing game, who works there.

post continues after the jump

Score one for the Chronicle’s copy editors today with their headline in the wine section, Mastering the margarita, which is supposed to ring a bell for Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece The Master and Margarita (which has nothing to do with the Mexican party beverage and not a whole lot to do with the cat on its cover, but is really a satire of 1930s Soviet repression).

This is one of those situations where, as a reader, you don’t know whether to cheer because we have (presumably) erudite headline writers, or boo for their lowering a great work of world literature for the purpose of a bad pun. But if only one reader buys the book and reads it because of this blog post, it will have put a small weight on the side of literature.

[Photo by Jeremy Hatch.]

I went down to the beach near Crissy Field to check out the parade of ships I blogged about yesterday; here’s my Flickr set of the event. My main thought when looking at these is: wow do I need a better camera. SFGate has a bunch of interesting stuff about the event, including more photos, at this link.

Being one of those crazy bike riders (of the fixed gear variety) I was pretty damn psyched to hear about the new Chrome store in SoMa. (yes I know you If you used to be able to swing by their warehouse and buy stuff before but this is like a store store for real and shit) If haven’t heard about it yet that’s because when I say new, I mean BRAND NEW – as in the grand opening is next week! We stopped by yesterday but unfortunately too late and they were already closed, hopefully today we’ll be more lucky. I’m only in town for a few days so I’m going to miss it, but for people who live here and ride bikes, or who live here and enjoy awesomely designed bags I highly recommend blocking off some time next Thursday (July 31) and swinging by the new store at 4th and Brannan and partaking in the festivities.

So there you have it.

Supervisor Chris Daly wants to close Market Street to all but mass transit traffic.

As I wrote in May, that idea has failed in city after city. In Chicago, State Street — “that great street” — utterly died when they tried it there. They re-opened the street to all traffic a few years ago, and the street is recovering.

Market Street isn’t some quaint pedestrian mall like Boulder’s Pearl Street, and it never will be. It’s a living artery in a major city. Daly’s plan would be an economic and social disaster.

Special alert for all lovers of sailing ships, Decemberists fans, and people who once wanted to be pirates — oddly enough, I fall into all three categories — today, starting at noon, 32 full-masted ships will begin a 1 1/2-hour parade in the San Francisco Bay. To quote the event webpage:

These majestic marvels of medieval engineering, from ports of call all over the world, will make their way past thousands of spectators lining Crissy Field, Marina Green, Fort Mason, Aquatic Park, and locations all along the Embarcadero. The first vessel will pass under the Golden Gate Bridge at Noon. The Parade will last approximately 1 1/2 hours from start (at the Golden Gate Bridge) until the finish (Bay Bridge). Once the vessels pass under the Bay Bridge they will sail to their respective berths. Vessels will be open for tours beginning Thursday July 24th at 10:00 am.

That’s right, folks: from Thursday you’ll be able to walk the boards, though hopefully not the planks, of these wonderful things. The parade and subsequent events are organized by the San Francisco Maritime National Park Association.

Sorry about the short notice, but I just learned about this event ten minutes ago. I’m going to rush out to Crissy Field right now; photos will be posted later.
[Source: SF Funcheap.com]

Comedian Michael Weiner, who broadcasts nationally as the right-wing radio talk show foamer Michael Savage, has added parents of autistic children to the long list of people he has insulted, flamed and defamed in his long career. The former Alan Ginsburg groupie said Monday he was trying to “boldly awaken” parents who refrain from disciplining their autistic children. This week he refused to bow to the demands for an apology, though he admitted his assertion that 99 percent of autism cases were misdiagnosed was “hyperbole.” He has already lost one sponsor over the incident.

Weiner’s home base is local station KNEW at 910 AM.

Maybe I went to Sunday’s Good Magazine party at 111 Minna with expectations that were too high. But last year’s subscriber event seemed to draw a bigger and more excitable crowd, not to mention a larger number of sustainable and creative companies. Nau was notably missing this year, but that could be part of their near-miss closing and upcoming restart.

Still, to be fair, the sidewalk party and its solar-powered stage are a fun excuse to spend an afternoon sipping Dark and Stormys (or chai if that’s more to your liking). I like the work the magazine is doing to make young people more aware of international affairs, even if it takes boxed wine vendors to get us to put our money where our mouths are.