MLC MUNICH

Founded in 1974 as the Münschner Lederclub (MLC — Munich Leather Club), the now Münchner Löwen Club (Munich Club of the Lions) is one of the largest gay male fetish, leather, and rubber clubs in Germany, famous among other things for its fetish parties; for having initiated in the 1970s Rosa Wiesn, the “gay days” of Oktoberfest, Munich’s world renowned beer festival which has now become the city’s second biggest gay event of the year; and for Under Ground, their club house which houses weekly parties for hundreds of Munich fetish folks.

JIM WARD (born in 1941)

Fans of body piercing are all in one way or another the children of Jim Ward who has been aptly called “the granddaddy of the modern body piercing movement.” Ward was a leading figure in establishing body modification as it currently exists. Along with Doug Molloy, Jim developed and standardized many of the now common jewelry designs, including the fixed bead ring, internally threaded barbells, the seamless ring or… the nipple shield the whole world saw Janet Jackson wear during her memorable 2004 SuperBowl performance! He was an itinerant piercer before opening the Gauntlet which he ran from his home from 1975 to 1978 when he moved it to a store, making it the world’s first body piercing studio. From 1977 to 1998, he published PFIQ (Piercing Fans International Quarterly), a magazine which disseminated information about piercing technique, jewelry, imagery, and individual styles of body modification and decoration.

PAULINE RÉAGE (1907-1998)

If SM owes its name to the writings of Sade and Sacher-Masoch, it is Pauline Réage (pseudonym) who wrote the most influential SM book ever published: Story of O. Published in French in 1954 (and translated in English the same year), the book is a chef-d’oeuvre of erotic fiction. Story of O is also a literary chef-d’oeuvre tout court; and not only had it been written by a woman, but its central character was also a woman, O., who abandoned herself to the pleasures of masochism. A literary as well as an erotic sensation, Story of O was adapted to film numerous times, it was translated into over 20 languages, it sold millions of copies, generated tons of writing, academic and otherwise, it has been a source of inspiration for cohorts of artists and a source pleasure for generations of kinksters.