When we think of the sexiest place in town, the no man’s land near the 101 freeway underpass is not the first place that comes to mind. But for a few hours last week, one unmarked building in the area, by some metrics, could have taken the title.
Roughly 100 crates labeled “sex machine” were delivered Wednesday afternoon to an inconspicuous loading dock at 1750 Folsom St., across the street from Rainbow Grocery, according to a tipster. Once Gazetteer SF arrived on the scene, no one was around to answer our many questions, but given the package labels, the parcels appeared to be property of Red System Ventures, a “toy design, manufacturing, and distribution company” owned by Peter Acworth, the founder and former CEO of the porn site Kink.com, which operated for more than a decade out of the San Francisco Armory building on Mission Street a few blocks away.
“Yes, we had a shipment of 500 fucking machines for kinkstore.com,” Acworth confirmed over email.
On Kink’s online shop, there’s a whole category of sex machines, some of which can put you out some $1,500; these, however, were smaller models that go for around $450, Acworth said.
The warehouse at 1750 Folsom is Red System Ventures’ workshop, Acworth explained, where many of the company’s BDSM and fetish sex toys are designed and, once delivered, photographed for marketing. (Most RSV products are manufactured in China, as are most sex toys in general, Acworth said. “The Chinese are incredible manufacturers and it’s where the innovation is mostly happening,” he wrote.) Inside the warehouse, there is a “product testing room,” but Kink does not shoot its videos there.
Beyond his porn and sex toy empire, Acworth has been a fixture in the San Francisco real estate market for decades. In 2006 the British entrepreneur bought the Armory building, later selling it for $65 million in 2018; earlier this month, he sold three more properties for a combined $6.7 million, according to the San Francisco Business Times. He is also currently entangled in a legal dispute over a fourth property at 1799 Mission, next to Standard Deviant Brewery.
Despite any legal troubles, Acworth seemed to be in good spirits, generously offering to have his assistant arrange a tour of the Folsom Street warehouse for Gazetteer if we were interested. Maybe next time we’re in the area, picking up bulk dried beans, we’ll go check it out.
