SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Local residents and neighborhood activists are taking their opposition to Kink.com’s acquisition of San Francisco’s historic National Guard Armory to the streets – literally.A protest was scheduled to take place outside of the Armory Thursday at noon local time, according to Bay Area ABC affiliate KGO-TV.

The protest was organized by a group calling itself the Mission Armory Collective, which has also begun a public relations campaign opposing the sale of the Armory to Kink.com, including an open letter by the group that was published Wednesday in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“We are working to stop the State Armory and Arsenal in San Francisco’s Mission District from becoming a center for human bondage and the mass distribution of degrading images of men and women,” states the letter published by the Chronicle. “We are opposed to Kink.com, the online fetish porn site, buying this San Francisco building for a film studio.”

“That is not the appropriate place for Kink.com,” said Sam Ruiz, one of the letter’s signatories, according to KGO-TV. “It’s in the hub of a residential community, the gateway to the Mission District.”

Peter Acworth, founder and CEO of Kink.com, has answered the public relations campaign against Kink.com’s purchase of the Armory with a campaign of his own, hosting community meetings where he has answered questions from neighborhood residents, and posting videos of the meetings to YouTube.com where they can be viewed by anyone interested.

“This is not a porn shop,” said Acworth, according to KGO-TV. “There are no customers that are going to come here. The only way you can get our movies is to download them off the internet. The only thing the neighbors are going to see is in the beginning of the day: a truck full of clothed people in it. At the end of the day: a truck full of clothed people going out — and that will be it.”

In their statement published by the Chronicle, the Mission Armory Collective argues that it doesn’t matter whether the activities going on inside the Armory are visible to the outside world.

“This is truly a quality-of-life issue for this neighborhood,” the Collective states in the letter. “Our community needs local development organizations to promote investment by Latino and other community-oriented entrepreneurs. “

“The Mission community needs positive images, not images of sexual bondage,” the statement continues. “The Mission has more than its share of gang violence and murder. Some young people, conspicuously present on Capp and Treat streets, are engaged in prostitution. Some 38-percent of our high school students drop out.”

The letter somewhat incongruously asserts that the Collective’s “stance is based on tolerance and respect, vital to the diversity of our beautiful Mission District.”

“We can and do tolerate the rights of our adult neighbors and consenting adults as they practice their lifestyle,” says the Collective’s statement, “but we also expect respect for the rights of our families as we seek to live in a healthy and safe community that inspires freedom from the bondage of illiteracy and the degradation of men and women…. We do not want our neighborhood degraded with these images and with what Kink.com symbolizes.”

City officials have said that Kink.com has met the zoning requirements for the area, which makes success for the Collective’s challenge to the sale an unlikely prospect.

The armory is approximately nine blocks away from the location where Kink.com has been shooting, a location that Acworth said the company simply had outgrown, according to KGO-TV.

The full text of the Mission Armory Collective’s statement, originally published on page B-9 of Wednesday’s edition of the Chronicle, is now available on SFGate.com at the following URL:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2007/02/07/EDGDRNVPL71.DTL