Content warning: This article will talk about BDSM and Kink.
Kink and BDSM are not well understood by the public, and Fifty Shades of Grey arguably made it worse. But to my delight, and possibly yours, the Twin Cities metro has a surprisingly robust kink scene.
Not sure where to find it? First try FetLife, the online kink community, and then try going to any public bondage show. I’ve already written about one event that takes place at The Gay 90’s annex (Kinky Friday), but that’s not the only local avenue for kink and BDSM performance and education.
Nestled neatly in the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District, there’s this cute little goth nightclub—maybe you’ve heard of it—called Ground Zero. On any given Friday or Saturday night there are a number of goth-themed nightclub activities: stage shows featuring fire performers, alternative burlesque artists, aerialists, gothy vendor bazaars, DJs, and dancing. It’s every Buffy fan’s wet dream, and as a die-hard BTVS fan, I was delighted to find out this place existed.
If you know where to find it, Ground Zero has an additional offering most nights they’re open, which is only lightly advertised and not well explained. But if you’re in the right community, you might know it well: The Chapel Bondage Show.
What Is the Chapel?
It sits opposite the Ground Zero mainstage, with its own cash bar to its flank, fully equipped with pews, booths, and a pulpit. The Chapel exists and operates separately from the rest of the nightclub, though it’s run in close coordination with the owners, with a rotating cast of professional kinksters and pro-dommes.
What happens in the pulpit of the Chapel is one of Minneapolis’s best-kept secrets, except amongst kinksters who know where to find it. The pros who run the space essentially guide the nightclub in participant-fueled shows featuring rope bondage, flogging, hot wax play, and a number of other consensual activities as requested by the audience member who decides to volunteer (and pay) for the scene.
It’s pro-dommes and pro-tops showing the audience a good time through BDSM performance and education. People watch in awe from the pews, from newly minted 21-year-olds attending the U of M to married couples looking for ways to spice up their love life, to people with disabilities looking for a safe person to play with, and anyone who stumbles upon the Chapel during a night of dancing.
How Do the Bondage Shows Work?
The Stonewall MN Collective leads the Chapel on the first Friday of every month. The pros, labeled “tops” in the scene, solicit participation from the audience by sign-up. When it’s your turn to participate, or to “bottom,” you’re brought to the green room (situated behind the pulpit) to chat with the top, negotiate the scene, and talk through any anxieties, hesitations, or questions you may have about the performance, which can last anywhere from five minutes to 30 minutes.
Bats (FrikkinBats on FetLife) and Barbie (WarBarbie on FetLife), who head the Stonewall MN Collective, say that these negotiations are extremely important to the process, especially in obtaining medically relevant information that can guide the activities of the scene.
“The most common thing we do at the Chapel is explain to people that we are not here to abuse them, but to help them explore,” Barbie says. “As tops, we want to make sure that we feel good about what we did and that customers feel good about themselves the next day, which is not always true in our world around sex. It’s all stuff that you explicitly sign up for, and we would so much rather give your money back than have you do something you’re not comfortable with.”
This public display of kink and BDSM is important to the ecosystem of sexuality education and adults understanding consensual kink-play. Many people think that BDSM is all about abuse or pain, and The Chapel Bondage Show offers an accessible, though sometimes strange to witness for beginners, demonstration of consent, negotiation, and vulnerability that coincides with the titillating visuals of the show itself.
“When there’s not open and accessible spaces to explore impulses, you find a way to do that in more dangerous spaces. At the Chapel we normalize the taboo by modeling well-negotiated scenes that emphasize queer beauty and celebration,” Barbie says.
Sometimes what you’ll see in the pulpit (or just right of center) is an intricate shibari scene, with suspensions and harnesses created in cool displays of rope work.
Sometimes you’ll see an individual (of any gender or expression) handcuffed to a bar above their head, blindfolded, on the receiving end of (consensual) corporal punishment by flogger, paddle, switch, cane, bat, or a number of other tools.
Sometimes you’ll see a top pouring fire-burning candle wax onto a person’s bare skin while they whimper.
And it's beautiful.
“The Wu-Tang Clan of BDSM Education”
Minnesota’s kink scene is made up of a lot of individuals who sometimes band together to create groups that have parties that typically operate out of someone’s house. It’s usually a cisgender, straight dude’s house, and that dude is usually a “dom.” For newbies entering the kink space, especially trans folks or femmes, this can be a very weird dynamic to step into.
“The default of BDSM is men topping women because this reflects society now,” Barbie says. “No shame if that’s how you chose to play, but the power dynamics of BDSM as we practice it don’t rest on oppressive social norms, they rest on mutually agreed, consensual dynamics and play. It’s something all sex can benefit from. What if BDSM was a way of exploring what a more-free, more open, and more liberatory society could look like?”
“The space that we wanted that reflected queer people and a democratic space outside of people's living rooms didn’t exist, so we built it,” Bats adds.
Though members of Stonewall MN are varied, the people I interviewed are trans individuals whose personal mission is to bring trans joy to the BDSM scene in Minneapolis and beyond. “Trans joy is an act of resistance in a world that wants to destroy us. [The Chapel] is a space where you can come see us having a really great time,” Bats says. “Someone told me after their first scene, ‘This is the first time I’ve felt beautiful.’ This is our mission.”
Outside of the Chapel, Stonewall MN operates a shared studio where they put on workshops, educational events, discussion groups, and create BDSM scenes on a sliding scale for all community members willing to come to north Minneapolis and walk up a flight of stairs. “As a group, we want to train people to do different things, learn new things, and connect with other folks around these topics,” Bats says. “We know that our folks’ individual pursuits and interests flourish when The Collective as a whole succeeds; we’re like the Wu-Tang Clan of BDSM education except not as cool.”
If you’re kinky-curious, not sure where to start, and intrigued by the idea of practicing safe BDSM, I highly recommend you check out the Chapel at Ground Zero on first Fridays to scene with the folks at Stonewall MN. Find them next on the first Friday in November. I promise it’ll be time and money well spent.
Land o’ Lusts is a love letter to the bohemian underbelly of the Twin Cities. In each installment, writer Melodie KG—a Minneapolis-based consultant, nonprofit leader, and adult industry professional—seeks to dispel myths, uphold truths, and inspire conversations that reduce stigma for local sex workers, erotic professionals, risqué artists, and other deviants.
Have an idea for a story or profile? Interested in being interviewed? Have a (hopefully not literally) burning sex question? Reach out to me at contact@melodie-kg.com.
