Fantasy Makers (sessions)

From Robin's SM-201 Website
Jump to navigation Jump to search


Fantasy Makers
FantasyMakerLogo.jpg
Map: click for map
Phone: 510-234-7887
Website: fantasymakers.com
Hours: Mon -Sat: 10am-8pm
Equipped: click here
Payment: Cash only
Fetlife https://fetlife.com/users/951903
Twitter: https://twitter.com/FantasyMakerssf

The Fantasy Makers play group started, as did so many BDSM-related groups, with a conversation at BackDrop Club. At the time (1989), BackDrop had just relocated to Richmond (CA), a medium-sized town in San Francisco’s East Bay area. The new clubhouse was like many of its predecessors: a fairly large warehouse building with lots of space, lots of promise, and few built-in anythings, just waiting for Robin to fire up his workshop and his ingenuity and turn it into BDSM Xanadu / Shangri-la.[Source 1]

For now, though, the building was mostly one big room and one big bathroom with the most interesting ten-station communal shower you will ever see. This was wonderful for parties and terrible for sessions.

There has always been a disconnect between people who enjoy social “scene" play and people who play in professional sessions. The former group attracts like-minded people who are open enough about their kink to attend parties, classes, workshops, slave auctions, etc., etc., etc. The latter group is heavily (though not exclusively) oriented toward privacy, sometimes to the point of secrecy – many are concerned about spouses, employers, parents, kids, etc., finding out what they’re into. The two groups have different needs that sometimes conflict.

The conversation that day was about how to handle conflicts. Not that we expected to satisfy all the grumblers, but we wanted to make everyone as comfortable as possible. We talked about building session rooms, whether or not to partition the bathroom, how we could adjust hours to accommodate both sessions and club activities. Then Robin asked the big question: “Why don’t we split club and sessions into two different locations and see what happens?"

To make a long story short, we tried it. Since there wasn’t a budget for two buildings, the sessions staff set up shop in a little apartment near the El Cerrito BART station. We were still the BackDrop sessions staff but in a different location. There was just a handful of us, working different days. Slave loRRett volunteered to keep the place supplied, comfortable, and harmonious while Master Robin concentrated on club activities.

The new arrangement worked for clients, but there were a lot of problems. Hours were limited to daytimes Monday through Friday, while most of the neighbors were at work, to avoid disturbing them with traffic. We started thinking about a separate building, all our own.

The Playhouse became a possibility when a friend of loRRett’s, after only a little arm-twisting, decided to invest in a house and lease it to her. The minute she got the word, we all ran over to the BackDrop clubhouse and started brainstorming with Robin, preparing to make ourselves a New Enterprise.

The new building would be residential. That suggested a lot of scenarios that weren’t totally BDSM: TV transformations, domestic scenes in a “real" domestic setting, adult babies. We decided we would offer any kind of play that didn’t involve either damage or prostitution. We took the BackDrop Staff Operations Manual and adjusted it to the nature of our soon-to-be new home. We decided to call ourselves Fantasy Makers, to reflect the broad spectrum of who we were and what we had to offer, but it wouldn’t be a business name – Fantasy Makers would be the people, not the place. loRRett’s alter ego Kris had a small consulting business, Management Systems, that would host the new group.

Our new home turned out to be a small 3-bedroom house in a mostly residential neighborhood in El Cerrito. We moved in on August 1, 1990, and immediately started making it our own. From the start, the Playhouse was “The House That Friends Built": Robin got us started with BackDrop's long-established clientele, not to mention the club's playbook and a wealth of useful forms and equipment. Local businesses delivered furniture and appliances and marked the bills “pay when you can"...we couldn’t have gotten started without them. We were delighted when we did enough sessions to repay their kindness promptly.

The clients were happy with us. We were never “new" – our telephone numbers, advertising, rules, and format were exactly the same as they had been when we were "official" BackDrop sessions staff, so the transition was pretty seamless. The name Fantasy Makers started showing up in local magazines and newspapers. BackDrop moved to San Francisco and formed a new sessions group there.

The original three Fantasy Makers (Lady Tanith, switch Rita, and slave loRRett) expanded to a half-dozen, offering sessions Monday through Saturday until 6 PM. Later, the Fantasy Makers would share their space with a Mistress who was closing her dungeon in Oakland, and she would start the “evening group", with hours from 3 to 8 PM. We decorated, collected equipment, filled the closets with costumes and wardrobe. Our clients liked us, and a lot of women wanted to join. Soon there were ten of us, split between day and evening...

And our little playhouse was getting very, very crowded! Our three sessions rooms were clustered around an open living room. We had a single bathroom, and if a session involved the bathroom, the rest of us were in big trouble! Space was nonexistent, privacy issues demanded constant attention. To make matters even more complicated, our “perfect" landlord was buying the house specifically for our use; he let us act like it was our property. We didn’t want to let him down – what could we do?

Our problem was solved by a family friend. Steve’s career path included real estate brokering, mortgage brokering, and homebuilding. One day, when we were grousing about the lack of space and the lack of privacy, he said, “Why don’t you build a second story?"

This got our imaginations going. It took us another year and a half, but the landlord let us do it, the city let us do it, and our request for volunteers brought us offers of help from clients and staff people. loRRett morphed into Kris for a while; she and her husband Geoff scared up some loan funds with Steve’s help, then started scrounging materials and temporary space. Steve got us the engineered drawings, talked Kris through the permit process, trained volunteers without building experience, and got us a professional framing crew for the roof removal and framing.

The move into temporary quarters happened in August 1996, right after our sixth anniversary. The temporary Playhouse was just a few blocks away. Sessions went on there, while our real home was full of volunteers hammering, sawing, nailing, stapling, installing wires and pipes. One of our clients had a discount at a local lumber emporium and got us wholesale rates. We added one session room, 2-1/2 bathrooms, a student lounge, an office, a dining area, a locker room, and a smoking deck. We sweated and scrounged a lot, but on New Year’s Day, 1997, we moved back into the house as it presently stands, minus a few more recent frills.

Today, the active Fantasy Makers number more than twenty, with three to five available at any particular time. We’re a pretty diverse group – Dominant, submissive and switch, a lot of ages and ethnicities and orientations and body sizes, a couple of TG ladies and a couple of men. Add the Graduate Fantasy Makers who have become independent players, and we make a noticeable addition to the world of fantasy fulfillment. We even have a spinoff of our own: Mme. Sage, who founded The Gates, got her start as a Fantasy Maker.

In 1999, the Fantasy Makers' Academy (www.fantasymakers.org) was added, allowing the Playhouse to be used for Sunday classes, workshops, and the occasional party. It continues today, under the capable leadership of its Headmistresses, Ms. Atheris and Ms. Tatiana.

You may also check our Fantasy & Role playing for more information---

Sources

Chain-09.png
Jump to: Main PageMicropediaMacropediaIconsTime LineHistoryLife LessonsLinksHelp
Chat roomsWhat links hereCopyright infoContact informationCategory:Root