YNOT – Two longtime players in different realms of the adult entertainment industry have come together on common ground. The result is TribalMale.com, a collection of never-before-seen-online gay BDSM content from the archives of Chicago’s venerable Bijou Theatre.The classic content, much of it produced by Bijou owner and GAYVN Lifetime Achievement Award holder Steven Toushin, dates from 1969 forward. Gritty and ultra-masculine, the material plays honest tribute to the history and future of the gay BDSM scene, to Bijou — the heart of Chicago’s sex-positive gay community and a worldwide resource for gay content of all kinds — and to Toushin himself.
The iconic BDSM community Wasteland developed and will manage TribalMale.com in concert with Bijou Video, which owns the rights to all the material. As the Wasteland bunch tends to do, they expended extra care developing not only a pay site, but also a community resource that incorporates consumer lifestyle reference information, videos, still images, and rare hardcore erotic recordings.
“My partner and I spoke about potential affiliate network [and] pay-site operations outsource partners for a dedicated gay BDSM subscription site featuring our material,” Toushin said. “[Wasteland President] Colin [Rowntree] and Wasteland.com were a solid fit. Their company has been successful in digital BDSM since the mid-1990s and [they] were able to complement our content resources well, including the established niche affiliate network SpiceCash.com.”
Rowntree said he has wanted to add gay content to the Wasteland experience for nearly 15 years, but until meeting Toushin and viewing the Bijou archives, he had not discovered any collections large enough, edgy enough or uncommon enough to adapt for the Wasteland philosophy.
“It was apparent from the start that Bijou’s library of classic gay porn titles, including many that cater to a gay male interest in BDSM and fetish play, would mesh well with our experience in the creation and promotion of specialty pay sites for a combined venture,” Rowntree said.
“The gay fetish and BDSM markets seem open for a new site that will celebrate authentic BDSM content, consistent with the quality standards required by Wasteland,” he added. “After being introduced to Steven — and the history of Bijou and its content library — we were happily shocked. The classic and masculine flavor of Bijou’s BDSM videos and audio stories were what we needed to make TribalMale.com a reality, and to offer up a solid gay BDSM addition to SpiceCash for our affiliates.”
Rowntree said the type of content featured on TribalMale.com breaks down into three main categories: S&M, arthouse/grindhouse and Levis/leather/Americana.
“Arthouse/grindhouse is a genre that was produced in the 1980s with large budgets, scripts and a whole artistic flair going on, like that found in the Centurians of Rome series,” Rowntree explained. “Levis/leather and Americana are classic tales of bikers, truck drivers, construction workers and all of the archetypes found in the Village People, but brought together in clever and often campy films.”
Centurians of Rome, he added, cost nearly $100,000 to produce, making it one of the most expensive gay films of its time. Reportedly, the opus was financed by a 1982 robbery during which $2 million went missing from a Brink’s armored truck.
“Lloyd’s of London, an insurer of Brink’s, thus became one of the co-owners of the film on a technicality,” Rowntree revealed. “And yes, we know, ‘Centurians’ is misspelled … but that’s how Hand-in-Hand [Films] named it, so we kept it.”
Rowntree said the site functions well as a consumer destination, but more importantly, it’s a fitting tribute to the man behind the movies. AVN’s Ann Oui called Toushin “a tireless activist in the service of unfettered sexual expression,” and with good reason. In 1989, Toushin received AVN’s Reuben Sturman Award “for legal battles on behalf of the adult industry” after enduring a legal circus of an obscenity trial which ended in probation and a fine. During the course of the festivities, the presiding judge repeatedly voiced displeasure with federal prosecutors’ handling of the Tennessee portion of the case. Related Utah and Nebraska indictments never went to court.
Those were not the only times Toushin faced prosecution for defending individual civil liberties and the First Amendment.
“[Toushin] has been a defendant in the United States justice system continuously from 1969 until the present,” according to his Wikipedia page. “He has defended himself and his companies in 21 obscenity cases, including two federal obscenity trials, and has suffered 35 personal arrests and [more than] 200 busts to his businesses.”
Despite everything, Bijou Theatre has remained in continuous operation since 1969, making it the oldest gay adult theater and sex club in the U.S.
For more information about promoting TribalMale.com, visit SpiceCash.com. The program pays affiliates up to $35 per join or 50-60 percent revshare and offers pop-up-free tours.
