Overstated headline

I’m disappointed. The New York Times headline says, “Where an Orgy of Shopping Meets Shopping for an Orgy”.  Cool.  I’ll take three orgies for Christmas gifts (I have interesting friends), can I have them gift wrapped?  I was disappointed to find:

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 4 – The season of the holiday shopping orgy has arrived. In San Francisco on Sunday, they took it literally.

“Holidays are a time for intimacy,” said Carol Leigh, a k a Scarlet Harlot, a pink-haired former call girl who was selling her own brand of perfume, Whore Magic, along with feather boas and other “sex positive” gifts at the holiday bazaar at the Center for Sex and Culture. “It’s winter, so it’s time to keep warm.”

While shoppers in suburban malls trolled the aisles for iPods and salad spinners, at the Belle Bizarre, as it was called, they could pick up a used copy of Sophocles’s “Oedipus Cycle,” a Delta Burke bustier, a Post-it-note-style pastie, or a candy garter belt or G-string, a new spin on candy necklaces sold at Kissable Cutie, a booth operated by Contessa Carlton, a professional escort.

It is probably safe to say that the average American mall would not feature a sign that said “U.S. Out of My Underwear.”

The bazaar, where Santa Claus was not spotted, was a benefit for the sex and culture center, a nonprofit organization that specializes in adult sex education programs. The money raised from the sale of geisha hair clips, suede chokers and the like is to help finance the center’s Exotic Dancers Education Project, a support program for sex workers that addresses issues like filing taxes and “avoiding sex worker burnout.”

There’s more but it wasn’t much more interesting.  The local shops in the Seattle area sound just as interesting.

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