SigMa To Hold “Kinky Yard Sale” This Weekend
After four decades, D.C.'s all-male BDSM, kink, and fetish non-profit is closing due to financial difficulties.
“SigMa was always hand to mouth as far as finances. And the pandemic really just killed it.”
Peter Delate, a former board member of SigMa DC, the all-volunteer D.C.-based male BDSM, kink, and fetish organization, is explaining why, after a nearly 40-year run, the organization is dissolving.
There’s no single cause for the organization’s decline. Several factors — lack of cash flow, sparse attendance, lack of new leadership — all played a role.
“SigMa has always been paycheck to paycheck,” Delate says. “It wasn’t hugely viable as far as finance is concerned, except for a small period in the early nineties where we had a positive cash flow.”
The group was founded in 1984 as an outgrowth of a regular gathering of BDSM enthusiasts in a private home in Alexandria, Va., SigMa. It was incorporated in the District of Columbia three years later.
Over the decades, SigMa maintained both a play space with equipment and toys for people to use, as well as educational classes and demonstrations for BDSM and kink play, toys, and techniques.
“Some of our classes, no matter what era we were in, were well attended, others not so,” Delate admits. “It just depended on the interest of the week, because kink, like anything else, goes through some eras of more interest than others. Is this the year of CBT [Cock & Ball Torture]? Or is this the era of TT [Tittie Torture]? Or is this the era of flogging? It’s just where people’s interests lie.”
Additionally, SigMa held some “perverted picnics,” weekend getaways at locations in rural Maryland and West Virginia.
“Sigma provided a space where people could explore and or play,” says Delate. “And when they were at a space where there could be more nudity, [the events] were a little bit better attended.”
Delate says the decision to shutter the organization was an “easy” one.
“It would seem that the interest in the organization, and helping it, was not there,” he says, noting that SigMa attempted to have a weekly Wednesday event at the Crucible post-COVID, but it was so sparsely attended that the Crucible stopped holding the event.
Additionally, the organization faced a rent hike in pre-COVID 2020 that endangered its ability to hold on to its R Street play space.
“As long as we had a physical space, we got by,” Delate says. “Unfortunately, at the same time, the board was dealing with a renewal of the lease. Up to that point, Sigma had either a benefactor or someone who would co-sign for the lease. At that point, they did not.
“The landlord and the Sigma board, whoever was dealing with it, really couldn’t decide what their best and final offer was going to be,” he continues. “So that dragged on, and they never reached a decision. And unfortunately, right then, [Mayor Bowser] closed the city. So that did it.”
Equipment from the R Street play space was moved into storage, where it has remained for four years. SigMa plans to hold a “Kinky Yard Sale” on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 21 and 22, from 9 to 5 p.m. each day, at 2526 12th St. NW. The group hopes to sell off close to 300 dungeon and play space items.
Among the nominally priced items for sale are gags (only $2!), blindfolds, restraints, nipple torture toys, boxes of examination gloves, various insertables, rope (lots and lots of rope), a sling with chain (only $25, a steal!), a heavy-duty puppy cell with lock and key, a large puppy crate that folds so that it can fit under a bed, a tall heavy metal cage with locks, several big wooden crosses, saw horses (both wood and metal), and memorabilia, such as vintage Drummer magazines and gay leather flags. Also listed for sale: “Many containers of wipes.”
Some items will be free, like the five tall gym lockers that can be bolted together if so desired.
SigMa will donate all proceeds from the sale to the Baltimore-based Foundation of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom and the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago.
Delate doesn’t think an organization will rise to replace SigMa and notes that even in New York, three similar organizations have dissolved.
“It’s a change in attitude,” he says. “It’s the way people hook up and the way they learn things — apps and then what people read or see online, like ‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ and they may see a [how-to] video of it, which may or may not be correct [in terms of techniques]. I don’t know, but some I’ve seen are wrong.”
For people interested in pursuing kink and BDSM activities safely, Delate has a few tips.
“One is don’t go home with somebody or to somebody else’s home who you’re not 100% sure about, or where you can’t somehow protect yourself,” he says. “But the other is the correct way to do stuff is out there, and there are legitimate organizations to learn from.”
SigMa’s “Kinky Yard Sale” is Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 21 and 22, from 9 to 5 p.m. at 2526 12th St. NW (between Clifton and Euclid Streets NW). For more information, visit www.sigmadc.org.
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