For the second time ever, Fetish Week was organized this July in London. This year saw an expanded programme encompassing the whole week, although I had only the chance to enjoy the weekend part of the celebrations.
Arriving on Friday, I hit the ground running, with Rubberboyseraph, who was kind enough to meet me straight at Heathrow airport. We picked up a few friends on the way and went through the usual suspects of Regulation and Expectations. All of the major shops were running promotions (and free beer!), but alas I found nothing of interest to buy and settled for window shopping.
The Friday party of choice was the Nexus party, presented under the aegis of the BLF Berlin Leder Und Fetisch organization. Even though the dresscode for the party was black (as in black rubber, leather, or anything), several of my friends had gotten the mistaken impression that it was a Leather Nexus party, and were not interested in going. Maybe a promotion slip-up? In any case, the clientele that night was indeed quite leatherish, but not to the point of complete disaster. There were quite a few guys in rubber, uniforms and other interesting attires. The venue was Hidden, an established venue in Vauxhall, but unfortunately a bit too small and unorganized for a party of this magnitude. Late evening saw a minor catastrophe in the cloakroom, which at that point consisted of a huge, unsorted pile of bags (they apparently had not expected everyone to bring a bag along, which is quite usual in a fetish party).
On Saturday I had the privilege of coffeeing up with a local fellow kinkster (jameskink89). We discussed everything from pain play to UK politics, and popped in to Rob to see what was going on. After that it was time for a good old bondage session with a local top whom I was meeting for the first time. Pictures of that will follow later.
The Saturday party was the biggest event of the weekend, Full Fetish presented by Recon at the superclub Pulse in Southwark. Compared to Scala, the disaster venue of Full Fetish last year, Pulse proved to be spacy and airy enough, with a proper industrial vibe, proper darkroom area and efficient but slightly slow bars. The party died down surprisingly quickly, being somewhat quieter at 3am already.
Sunday concluded the weekend with the double party combo of Rubber Party and Deconstruction (the official ending party). Organized similarly as last year, in The Hoist, the rubber party once again suffered from an inordinate number of naked people, leftovers from the earlier naked party. They should really ask the naked people to leave once the rubber party starts, considering rubber is philosophically pretty much the exact opposite of showing lots of skin.
All in all, Recon’s Fetish Weekend is the only big, multi-day gay kink event in London, and Recon seems to have sorted out the practical organization fairly well. I would definitely recommend that you check it out next year.