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Comfort & Joy is teaming up with GenderBlender and Beaverton and we are proud to announce the 5th rendition of QUEERiCULUM! 

What is QUEERiCULUM?

An all-day, queer-centered educational urban retreat with a variety of fun skill share playshops with diverse topics ranging from cerebral, social, and artistic to technical, sexual, and historical. Multiple concurrent tracks give you several options to chill, create, learn and play all day before Queericulum ends with a delicious community dinner theatre experience.

SCHEDULE: 

NOTE: This schedule is subject to change, even as late as the last minute.

11am-1pm: Rope Bondage Basics w/ MzFur in the Detention Hall (front room)

What is your relationship to… bliss, restraint, intimacy, suffering, control, vulnerability, play? Deepen your selfawreness and strengthen your connection to others through the sensuous art of rope bondage!

In this introductory course, we will explore a range of sensations in rope, practice a few basic ties, then mix up what we’ve learned, creating some playful to challenging shapes. Participants are welcome to bring a partner, find one at the class, self-tie, or watch.

Before we tie, MzFur will cover:

• consent & basic kink negotiation
• negotiations specific to rope play
• risk awareness for rope bondage & basic nerve anatomy
• body awareness for the top and the bottom

*Please attend fragrance free/ no cologne or synthetic oils

Suggested Student Supplies:

• a mat &/or sheet to tie
• 2-3 24-30ft ropes, ie. 6mm hemp, jute or solid braid nylon (some loaner rope will be available)
• Water and warm clothes plus a snack for after.
• A notebook and pen

About your teacher:  MzFur strives to create collaborative learning environments where kink is accessible to all genders, orientations, body types, and abilities. www.boundintent.com

MzFur is a dedicated explorer of sensation with a curious and sadistic nature. Their first emergence into the kink scene, was amongst the Radical Faeries where they built skills in transforming trauma and conditioning through play, ritual kink, and the path of the ordeal.

In 2013 MzFur became a student of rope, which quickly became a personal practice and a passion. Seminawa, a love. They began teaching with Hitchin’ Bitches Bay Area, and created the Woven Un-conference. In 2017, MzFur launched Bound Intent, integrating their background in healing and ritual with their love of bondage. They continue to teach workshops at retreats in the NW, host PRAXIS: a monthly Intermediate Rope Lab, and offer an annual series of classes at VoxBody Studio in Oakland.

11am-12pm: Alternative Housing Options, Thinking Outside The Box For Your Future: Are You Ready When The Shit Hits The Fan?" w/ Mark Kliem, in the HomoRoom (middle room)

How long will San Francisco still be affordable for renters? Why are you still making your landlord rich? How do you envision your retirement years? Is there life in other cities? Is there life in (gasp) suburbia? How do I get a piece of land in the mountains? What is Tenants In Common, Co-buying, Land Trusts, Tax Auctions? How do I achieve housing security? How do I invest in rental property? Where is low priced housing close to San Francisco and Oakland? We've all heard horror stories about tenants losing their rent controlled apartment, roommates from hell, and finding yourself approaching retirement totally unprepared. I want to help you make plans, take some risks, and hopefully get you thinking outside the box when it comes to real estate.

About your facilitator: Mark Kliem has been a real estate investor, house flipper, and landlord for nearly 20 years. He is now in the business of helping other people buy and sell homes. He's lived in the Bay Area 37 years and flipped houses in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley. He is currently specializing in Vallejo, CA and the North Bay. He grew up in Detroit and currently owns six rental properties there. Ask him how he bought a house for $4,000!

11am-12pm: Hippity Hoopla w/ Action V Jackson of the Electric Spectrum Circus in the HotMess Hall (yoga studio in the back)

Simple tips and tricks to make you go from beginner to "feeling" like pro in 45 minutes. Hoops will be provided, but participants are encouraged to bring your own, if possible.

12pm-1:30: Making Money with Your Queer Magic! w/ Matthew VanHorn & Caleb Arring, in the HomoRoom (middle room)

The truth is that queer people are magical, fierce, and FABULOUS and that is worth its weight in glitter. This playshop will help you discover what your QUEER magic power is and how to get paid for it. With equal parts strategy and transformational exercises, this playshop is for anyone who wants to pull in more ABUNDANCE and quite possibly change the world at the same time. Great for those already self employed, unemployed, and those in job jail (a.k.a. working for someone else).

About the facilitators: Matthew and Caleb are a cis/trans queer power couple with a passion for empowering and showing fellow queer entrepreneurs what is possible with the right strategy and support! Check them out at www.lgbtqentrepreneur.com

12pm-1:30: Butt Stuff w/ Max Capacity & Joshua Mann in the HotMess Hall (yoga studio in the back)

Wondering about butt stuff, but feeling... stuck? Join Ass-Mancers Josh and Max in an open, frank discussion about best practices in moving THROUGH the miry tunnel of despair to more comfortable, confident, and open sex at the back door. Then, after a brief intermission, we'll dive back in for a Hands-IN demonstration, showing you some tips and tricks for getting in and making their blissful eyes roll back. Bring your questions, insights & experience, or even your favorite lube or butt-toy and reasons why you like 'em.

About the facilitators: Josh is a Bay Area bodyworker with growing experience in internal massage. Find out more at MannBodywork.com/booking. Max hosts monthly butt stuff parties SoMa that are offer a friendly, no-attitude space for exploration and play to folks of all genders and experience levels.
 

1-2:30: Power of Introverts w/ Benjamin Patterson in the Detention Hall (front room)

Based on Susan Cain's book, "QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking". At least 1/3 of the people we know are introverts. We live in culture that believes introverts are defective or underdeveloped extroverts and rewards extroverts with the belief that the loudest person in the room has the best idea. We'll exlore where these ideas come from along with the often unrecognized strengths of introverts with the objective of empowering people to be their best selves instead of trying to conform.

1:30-3: The collective power of our melanin rich histories used as medicine: A Community exercise for queer BIPOC w/ Paradise in the HotMess Hall (yoga studio in the back)

Attendees can choose any media of artistic expression in order to document their own marginalized lived and observed experiences as a way to help collectively heal from and accurately bear whiteness to the traumas brought on by white supremacy, colonialism, and capitalism.

About your facilitator: Paradise is a queer gender non binary indigenous child whose ancestry spans across many diasporas and migrations, with the good fortune to have been born and raised in Southern California. Since 2008 they’ve been weaponizing art through a variety of mediums, encompassing visual art, music, and literature in order to raise awareness and money for many POC oriented proletariat/anarchist causes. A universal and unwavering theme/s that span the entire body of their work is one of anarchist critique. Paradise’s art over the last ten years has evolved and expanded greatly in output and form, all the while retaining a cohesive narrative centered around creating radical forms of community in order to subvert and wage war against the American capitalist machine from every facet of our daily lives.

Suggested Student Supplies: Students should bring paper, pens, markers, musical instruments, arts and crafts supplies, even a smart phone with a notepad app would suffice, any material for any medium desired to explore the themes of the workshop is encouraged not provided.

1:30-2:30: Tea Break in the HomoRoom (middle room)

Enjoy a social tea time with other students at the Center's fabulous tea bar in the center room. The Center features a fabulous tea menu at fair prices and the cacao is out of this world good.

2:30-4: Drugs: Good bad and ugly w/Ariel Vegosen, in the HomoRoom (middle room)

It's time to talk about how drugs impact and affect our community, our leadership, our sex lives, our club lives. This past year we lost important members of our community to drug related death, we in the past have had key leaders deal with drug addiction, lots of us self medicate. So lets talk about it.

About the facilitator: Ariel Vegosen is a professional workshop facilitator, gender inclusivity expert, the founder of Gender Blender (www.genderblenders.org), performance artist, ritualist, and lover of all things glitter. Ariel is proud of 14 years on playa, co-creating this years queericulum, and being a genderqueer superstar!

3-5pm: Queer Erotic Figure Drawing w/ Dot in the Detention Hall (front room)

This is a drawing workshop with nude models (both male and female) with sexy/erotic poses. Artists of all levels are welcome. You may bring your own drawing materials or we will provide some basic materials. We will be doing poses that last up to 20 minutes.

About your facilitator: Dot is most known for his work as a photographer (see his work at www.PhotoByDot.com), but he got his start doing drawings and paintings. Dot was always bothered how art classes were very hostile to any suggestion of sexuality or eroticism. This class will bring some of this sexiness back.

Suggested Student Supplies: You are encouraged to bring your own drawing materials (paper, pencils/pens/watercolor/etc). Please do NOT bring any materials that put out fumes that may bother some of the other artists. Basic art materials will be provided for those who don't bring any.

3-4:30pm: Ritual Construction: creating rituals that work, for yourself, the faeries and the world w/ W’Fang in the HotMess Hall (yoga studio in the back)

Explore the core elements of ritual, learn what works for three and three hundred, dogma-free.

Suggested Student Supplies: an open heart and a notebook

About your facilitator: W'fang has been dancing with faeries all over the world for nearly 30 years, and has no plans on stopping. you've seen them or their work at many faerie events, in rfd, and in various queer anthologies spanning the last three decades. the pronoun of choice is to please use a different one every time, or at least never the same one twice in a row.

4-5pm: Queer Credit Clinic: Issues and DIY Fixes, w/ Spencer Watson, in the HomoRoom (middle room)

Let's discuss some common credit barriers and issues which face LGBTQ borrowers in the financial marketplace, discuss the elements of “good” credit, how to avoid mistakes or fraud in using your credit, and how to improve the health of your credit – if it has suffered damage – by using the rules of the game to your advantage with DIY fixes.

About the facilitator: Spencer Watson is the Organizing Director for the LGBTQ Credit Union Coalition, which is building support to launch the world’s first queer credit union. Ze has assisted hundreds of clients with understanding credit and financial problems, and how to fix them, as a Credit Counselor for the Consumer Credit Counseling Service in San Francisco. Spencer is a 2018 graduate of Berkeley Law, where their studies and clinical work has focused on protecting consumers against unfair, deceptive, or abusive treatment in the marketplace. In 2017, Spencer interned with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office of Fair Lending.

Suggested Student Supplies: An electronic device (laptop, tablet, or phone). If they have specific questions and/or wish to get a head-start, students can bring any credit reports or records of any items of note about which they have questions; they can also obtain their legally-guaranteed free once-per-year credit report online at www.annualcreditreport.com.

5-7pm: Tantric Foreplay w/ Demian Quesnel & Julio Ruiz in the Detention Hall (front room)

Tantra is that Asian body of beliefs and practices which, working from the principle that the universe we experience is nothing other than the concrete manifestation of the divine energy of the godhead that creates and maintains that universe, seeks to ritually appropriate and channel that energy, within the human microcosm, in creative and emancipatory ways." So, what we are going to do is use some tantric techniques to connect with sexual energy that can then be used as foreplay or as an experience in itself, without explicit sexual manifestation. It is all about connecting..

About the facilitator: I am an elder of the community who has been a spiritual adventurer much of my life. I have done the Grail [shematrix], & Sex Magick [at Wolf Creek], amongst other things. I have learned a few things along the way that I am happy to share.

Suggested Student Supplies: Bring a towel and any sex supplies, depending on your intention, and a willingness to encounter non-threatening hard-ons. The space created will be safe and respectful of individual boundaries. Participants can be clothed or not, as they are comfortable.

5-7pm: Bringing Your Heart to Hookups w/ Evan Kavanagh, in the HomoRoom (middle room)

Are casual encounters really only about getting off? In the world of Grindr and Scruff is there room for you to bring your heart to hookups? Yes, there is. We will explore in ourselves and as a group what prevents us from being open-hearted, when it is wise not to, and how we can all be happier in hookup culture.

About your facilitator: Evan is a longtime spiritual seeker involved as a practitioner or leader in meditation, Buddhism, recovery (25 years) and informal tantric work (research for this session, lol!) Evan has enjoyed careers in the performing arts, Buddhism, and now medical philanthropy.

Suggested Student Supplies: Bring one item which says something about your identity or your history. It can be a tattoo, a piece of jewelry, a book, photo: whatever. You will be asked to tell someone what this item says about you.

CRAFTY ARTY PARTY from 4:30pm-6:30pm: 

in the HotMess Hall (yoga studio in the back

Merman Moana’s Grotto, 4:30-6:30pm, in the HotMess Hall (yoga studio in the back)

Learn how to make jewelry, crafts and how to draw and paint that’s ocean related.

About the facilitator: Merman Moana is a merman whose goal is to promote and inspire oceanic conservation and preservation and supporting the LGBT community.

Suggested Student Supplies: Students should bring their own pencils, markers, paints, beads, drawing pads, sketchbooks, and glue.

HomoHackery: Put a Light on It w/ Blue, 4:30-6:30pm, in the HotMess Hall (yoga studio in the back)

Using found everyday objects as a start point, students will learn how to soldier a low voltage connection, integrate wiring and LEDs into found objects (old picture frames for wall pieces and climbers rope for bracelets provided - xtra hugs if you bring a beautiful found object of your own!) and wire a basic switch circuit.

About the facilitator: Blue bounces between scales - working on the very large and the very small, making a wide range of things from building façades to burning man sculptures to pinkie rings. Next up: autoilluminating lashes...

Suggested Student Supplies: Find something beautiful - hopefully no smaller than your finger and no larger than your arm - that would look good with the addition of glitter, tulle and point lights.

Mask making w/ SandPiper, 4:30-6:30pm, in the HotMess Hall (yoga studio in the back)

We’ll make custom plaster masks and decorate them with paints and natural materials. This is best done as a partner activity, so bring a friend.

Communal Dinner & Theatre & Storytime, 7pmish

We'll wrap up our day together with a community dinner with our M.C. Ariel Vegosen and special performances by Paradise, Alabama Slamma, Ziva Hadar, Ed Of All People, and more, plus some storytime where we as a community can share some of our stories and lessons. 

A limited number of dinner tickets will be available on site for purchase for $10 and we'll have a selection of vegetarian and vegan Peasant Pies with salad.. All guests are also welcome to bring their own meal (alcohol is NOT permitted at the venue) if you prefer/need or order from any of the nearby eateries. We are a short walk from the Lower Haight, the Fillmore, Divisidero Street, and Hayes Valley so you will have a huge selection of options.

About Gender Blender:

Gender Blender is a community committed to creating safe, awesome, fun, creative spaces for trans, gender queer, gender variant, gender nonconforming, queens, kings, and those of us that are shape shifting the gender binary. We run a fabulous Burning Man theme camp, teach workshops all over the country, and throw super sexy play parties that center Trans and non-binary people in the Bay Area. We are celebrating our tenth year on playa. Join us at genderblenders.org

About Camp Beaverton:

Camp Beaverton is a group of queer women / trans / genderqueer / lesbian / bisexual / heterosexual / LGBTQIA+ or folks who are simply as wayward as the playa is dusty. We celebrate sexuality, self-exploration, and respect for one's journey through this life. This amazing group of Beavers congregates in-person, online, regionally, and at the Burning Man festival annually. Visit us at www.campbeaverton.org/

About our Venue:

The Center SF is an anchor of transformation in The Bay of swirling change. We honor the old and welcome the new. We are turning our best practices into ritual. We are thriving.

Amazing Tea Service available all day long

Please respect the space: There will be no alcohol or smoking of any kind in the space or on the patio. Please take your smoking outside to the curb.