The question of San Francisco escorts

[SteveStacks]

The escort scene in every city is something of its own microcosm and the SF escort scene certainly has its own traits.

 

San Francisco has always had more free sexual options (and for a while - perhaps still? more restaurants!) per square foot or per capita than even NY or LA. It’s a small town geographically and SF proper just doesn’t contain nearly as many people as other cities of its reputation. Yet it supports a comparatively huge number of sexual outlets for all types of tastes.

 

Where NY is about money and LA is about fame, SF is sensuality (both of the culinary and the sexual kind.)

Ultimately the fact that so many free sexual options are available to so many members of the population heavily colors the sort of worker that chooses to make a living in SF.

 

Here, there are a dozen guys as cute as any escort at any given time that will happily provide sexual services to men of all colors, ages and weights if that man puts some effort into looking. San Franciscans are sluts (and I love them for it.) They are busy hooking up for online sex when their NY and LA compatriots are focusing on their careers. If you’re an escort whose primary goal is to make as much cash as possible, SF is NOT the place to be.

 

At this point there's also more money (and more people and thus more clients) in both LA and NY than SF so it makes sense that those cities will have more escorts for the demand, and consequently, with a higher number of escorts in general, you have a higher number of quality escorts.

A lot of great escorts who are very good at their job opt to move from SF for just those reasons. And just like any profession, as long as they’re not hurting anyone to do it, an escort (or any professional’s) choice to focus on forwarding their career is not something to be ashamed of.

 

On the other hand, not all escorts have the same agendas, and to say that SF simply lacks great escorts is a bit reductionist. What makes a great escort? The escorts who choose to stay in SF are often of a particular type, and it’s a type with its own charms.

 

Most of the most socially engaged, bright, artistically talented, and passionate men in the industry I’ve met were in SF. There are a lot of different reasons to escort, and money isn’t always the primary one for all of us.

 

The conventional way of thinking is that escorting is the exchange of services for cash.

A client (who has more money than the escort) gives some of his money to the escort in exchange for the hot body of the escort (who has a hotter body than the client.)

That model works for many people, but it doesn’t seem appealing to me personally.

(Maybe it’s just that I’m not hot enough? *grin*)

 

Escorting for me isn’t by definition an exchange of services for cold cash. But rather (at it’s best) it’s a process involving two people coming together and bringing whatever assets to the table they each have to spare (whether that’s time, money, cock size, wit, sexual ability or whatever) and using those resources together to create a particular kind of space where a certain quality of human interaction can happen that’s often very difficult to find otherwise (particularly in the increasing chaos of the modern world.)

 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that these encounters are some sort of mystical tantric exercise where “breath is shared and incense fills the air.” I’m just talking about that feeling you get when you meet an old friend for coffee and you laugh your ass off reminiscing, or when you take a drive up the coast with your boyfriend and stay unexpectedly at a sea cliff B&B instead of driving back that night, or when you end up having hot sex on a conference table with a consultant on a week long assignment at your office while finishing a project after hours on the last day of his assignment.

 

It’s that space where you trust whoever you’re with enough and can trust that they like you enough, for you both to let the intense, or the unexpected happen.

 

SF has some good guys, but those guys can be harder to find because what they’re offering isn’t always apparent in a picture online...and what they offer isn’t for everybody...and many aren't as public, or savvy in forwarding or publicizing their careers as their more ambitious NY and LA counterparts...but they are here. . .

[buckguy]

Interesting analysis. Although SF is outsized in the gay world & the gay imagination, the Bay area is similar in size to a number of other metro areas with significant gay populations, which make for interesting comparisons apart from NY & LA. If Rentboy is any indication, the actual number of escorts tends to be roughly similar to cities in similar sized metropolitan areas (Boston, Atlanta, DC). "Roughly" meaning they all have ups & downs, but it's not unusual to see 50-60 listings in each city. Miami-Ft L usually has more, but that area tends to be more of a leisure destination than SF, which is a significant business center and more of a convention destination. SF usually has more guys than Chicago which is much larger and many more than Philly (unless you count Premier). The "free" options idea makes sense up to a point. Web-based hook-ups are common in many places and cruisy gay ghettos still flourish in some places. If I ever got desperate enough I could probably have hooked up with someone on any given night at the Ansley Kroger in Atlanta. Given that visitors are an important part of the escort market, It would be interesting to know if visitors to SF differ in terms of who they are (business or professional or creative types) and how they travel (alone or with friends) and where they stay (with friends or a hotel).

 

SF has a different variety of escorts than other cities--fewer men of color, more kink, and fewer twinks. Although there are complaints about number, there isn't the complaining about reliability that's common with LA (I had two guys flake out on me on a recent trip), DC (a bad market), Atlanta (even worse than DC), or Boston. I haven't noticed that much complaining about the reliability of NYC guys, but New York isn't that service oriented and I wouldn't be surprised if I'd just missed it. My own luck in SF has been pretty consistent on the few times I hired there.

[Guest zipperzone]

>The conventional way of thinking is that escorting is the

>exchange of services for cash.

>A client (who has more money than the escort) gives some of

>his money to the escort in exchange for the hot body of the

>escort (who has a hotter body than the client.)

 

That is not always the case. How about the "Average Joe" type of client who makes 40K per year and has to scrimp & save and deny himself for months to be able to afford a night with a top notch escort who easily earns way over 100K?

 

This scenario might be more common than you would think!

[SteveStacks]

Thanks for the added analysis Buckguy! I think those are all very astute observations. I have heard similar things as well....

 

I don't disagree with you at all Zipperzone, my argument is that the conventional reductionist idea that escort = hotter/client = richer ISN'T accurate, and that for example, the scenario that you described isn't that unusual.

I totally agree with you.

 

This industry is a complicated one, since it is wholly about people and their individual tastes. My argument is that that human element is what the exchange is about at it's best and that shouldn't get lost.

[+ Charlie]

Steve, what a well-written and intelligent analysis! I suspect that you are right about perspectives: I am truly a New Yorker, and San Francisco is culturally confusing to me. My hook-ups with SF escorts have never been bad, but vaguely disappointing, as though we were not on the same wavelength.

[SteveStacks]

Thanks! I'm sorry to hear that your experiences in SF weren't quite satisfying....i hope you have better luck next time...i'm sure there are guys here you'd click with..it's just a question of finding the right ones i guess...there are worse quests to be on *grin*