Where Do You For A Good Spanking?

The urge strikes and you crave a spanking, or some bondage. You have a sweet leather outfit in the closet that you just have to wear but where can you go dressed like a dominatrix?

If you and your fetish are in Chicago, Galleria Domain 2 is the place you're looking for.

And if all goes as planned, there will soon be not one, but two, locations to serve your brand of sexual expression.

When you think of River North, you don't think BDSM---not yet, but maybe soon

All may not be going as planned, however. The neighbors are voicing their complaints. And the neighbors are the high-end sorts
who get really, really loud when sex clubs try to open up on their street.

Chicago's River North area swarms with suburbanites and tourists on the weekend, but the area is also home to the trendy and well-to-do who can afford the high rents and astronomical home prices. It isn't exactly a run-down, sleazy kind of neighborhood where you'd expect sex shops and street walkers waving at potential clients.

The people who invested big bucks to live in River North don't want to live near sex clubs. If they did, they would have moved elsewhere and made some other part of Chicago a fancy location. If you paid somewhere in the $2 million range for your pile, you'd squawk too if someone decided to plant a bondage parlor up the street from your home. A wine emporium is one thing, but kinky sex? Not In My Back Yard, thank you.

The owners of Galleria Domain 2 insist that their club is absolutely discreet in every way. It's going to be on the second floor so there's no window shopping that might alarm small children passing by. No alcohol is served so it's not like there's going to be drunken revelers spilling out of the doors half naked, dangling fur-lined handcuffs or waving leather whips overhead.

The club members have a safe word as well, so things never go too far and there's no need for the police to be showing up every weekend to rescue someone who's dominant partner got a bit over-exuberant.

But the people who live around the proposed location don't want to share their sidewalks with the sort of people who sit around and watch other people have sex. It's all too sordid and perverted for the average homeowner, and those average homeowners are howling to their alderman to put a stop to the club. Find something in the laws to prevent them from getting a permit, the voters are shouting, and if the alderman wants to be re-elected, he'll do all he can.

There's always naming and shaming if the alderman fails. The residents are free to set up bright lights and cameras on the street and record the faces of each and every person who enters and leaves the sex club. You want discretion, they could say. Here's your discretion right here. Posted online for anyone to see.

Before it comes to that, it's highly likely that someone in Chicago's zoning department could declare the club not compatible with surrounding land uses, and be done with it. No politician wants to upset voters who can afford to buy, and pay property taxes, on multi-million dollar homes. Money talks in Chicago. It's talking rather loudly on West Superior Street.