The Center for Sex Positive Culture (CSPC), formerly known as The Wet Spot, is a non-profit, membership-based organization located in Seattle, Washington. It organizes events and provides space for several sex-positive subcultures, notably BDSM, swinging, and polyamory groups. CSPC welcomes people of all sexual identities and seeks to encompass all consensual sexual practices. The Center is a 501(c)(7) recreational club; its sister organization, the Foundation for Sex Positive Culture (renamed Pan-Eros in 2018), is a 501(c)(3) charitable and educational organization. For kink readers, CSPC is a major Pacific Northwest model of a dedicated physical club for BDSM and allied communities.
History: from Beyond the Edge Cafe to The Wet Spot
The organization held its first event, a fundraiser, in March 1999. It was founded that year as the Seattle Sex Positive Community Center. Socially it is an outgrowth of Allena Gabosch’s Beyond the Edge Cafe, which hosted BDSM-related events. Several regulars started discussing a dedicated space; one famously hoped they might get two hundred members. The idea became more popular than they envisioned: in its first year The Wet Spot registered about two thousand members. In September 2007 they reached ten thousand registered members, although not all were current members. In 2007 the organization also changed its name to the Center for Sex Positive Culture and opened a second, “annex” building.
2008 media scrutiny
In November 2008 the Center was scrutinized in a KOMO-TV report regarding its non-profit status and the sexual activities which occur there. The story was criticized by Dan Savage and others for inaccuracies, and was later pulled from the station’s website. The episode is familiar for BDSM venues: local television frames consensual adult play as scandal, community writers push back, and the hit piece sometimes disappears without undoing the stigma.
Building problems, Gallery Erato, COVID, and reopening
After building problems with newer space, shutdown, and acquisition of another venue, CSPC regrouped under a new board at Gallery Erato and started organizing events again, though at a lower frequency than at the original Interbay location. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, both CSPC and Pan-Eros were required to cease in-person operations as of March 2020, which also led to cancellation of that year’s Seattle Erotic Arts Festival. Both organizations pivoted to online events, and in mid-2021 resumed some events with limited capacity and protective measures. That arc—closure, digital pivot, careful reopening—matches what many U.S. kink clubs experienced, with the festival cancellation as a visible Seattle casualty.
Sister organization and scene function
The split between the 501(c)(7) club (CSPC / Wet Spot tradition) and the 501(c)(3) educational arm (Foundation / Pan-Eros) lets social play space and charitable education sit side by side. The Seattle Erotic Arts Festival has been part of that wider public face. On the ground, CSPC’s value is concrete: membership structure, event calendar, multi-subculture welcome for kink, swing, and poly, and a membership roll that grew from café talk about two hundred people to thousands of registered members. From the 1999 fundraiser through annex expansion, the KOMO fight, Gallery Erato rebuild, and COVID recovery, the Center for Sex Positive Culture remains a core Seattle institution for consensual kink and sex-positive community life.
