She Sells Sex Toys, On Bogart Street

Late on a weekend night, customers could be seen flocking to an event space on Bogart Street in search of the sex positive, femme-run “Lucky Night Market.” It was located on the third floor (IDs were checked at the door), a room flanked by the Manhattan skyline and filled with disco lights and the sound of beats spun by someone named DJ Haram. There were dozens of tables, from which sold various sex toys and vintage lingerie. Potential customers could be seen wandering from the tables, to a bar in the back to a ring-light, illuminated photo booth, chatting amongst themselves.

The self-described “naughty marketplace” ran for one night only and was first of its kind. It was put on by Audiofemme, a NYC based music and culture website with what it calls an “intersectional feminist perspective.” The market’s debut ran from 5pm to midnight the Friday before Valentine’s Day, populated by over 30 vendors, as well as a scantily clad cupid roaming the aisles offering aphrodisiac mushrooms.

Erotica author Casandra Charles, whose tenth book “Joy Ride ” comes out this April, was there to table various guided journals and couple card decks depicting different sex positions.

“My cards are all black and brown faces,” said Charles, gesturing to her spread, “All the other decks I saw were mainly white couples.”

At a booth run by the fairly popular mushroom-infused chocolate startup Alice, workers there offered tastings of their various mushroom-infused dark chocolates. Their so-called “functional” mushrooms purportedly help with relaxation, libido and mental clarity. The subject of a sympathetically promotional profile on the Forbes website, the female-led California brand is a part of what they’re calling a “mushroom renaissance,” where the psychedelic edible is now getting marketed for everyday use.

Tricia Wise, a local influencer who goes by the online moniker Safe Slut, was one one of the organizers of Lucky Night and she was there too, selling thongs, toys and tinctures in front of the DJ booth.

At luxury spa Ultra Ray, passersby could test out locally made scents like amber infused-blossom or sandalwood-and-leather-infused royale. A cheeky-beaded jewelry brand called Reap What You Sew, sold necklaces with phrases like “REALLY GAY” and “DON’T TALK TO ME.”’

“Our Lucky Night Market will be a space to celebrate sex positivity and pleasure, removed from the lens of traditional patriarchal trappings,” promises Marianne White, who co-founded the Audiofemme site.

One of the first tables at the market was being operated by members of a sex worker solidarity group called Old Pros. The activist nonprofit, founded in 2020, served as Lucky Night Market’s partner in the sex worker space. According to a handout the group was distributing, decriminalization does not just apply to prostitution, it “means removing criminal penalties against buying, selling, or facilitating sexual services.”

The key here is the phrase ‘sexual services.’ Prostitution laws are determined state by state and it is some form of illegal in almost all 50 of them. While in New York, the sale of sex toys is legal, the solicitation and sale of sexual conduct are considered varying degrees of misdemeanors.

However in Texas, for example, anti-prostitution laws prohibit the intention to sell “obscene devices,” described colorfully in the laws as “ a device including a dildo or artificial vagina, designed or marketed as useful primarily for the stimulation of human genital organs.” According to those laws, “six or more obscene devices or identical or similar obscene articles is presumed to possess them with intent to promote the same.”

As the group’s founder Kaylin Bailey puts it, policing prostitution is a “canary in a coal mine” for crackdowns on birth control, access to abortion and the continued legality of sex toys. Had this market taken place in Texas, some of vendors and their customers could be in danger of a court case.