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Sex On Prime Time TV – Red Light District Tour on Travel Channel

Red Light Tour Chicago

The Travel Channel segment we filmed in May aired last night.  Woo-hoo!  It’s for a show called Extreme Tours and features some of the stops I visit hosting a Weird Chicago Tours Red Light District Tour.

Through the months of editing I kept wondering how they were going to dumb-down the sex tour for G-rated television.  On the tour we don’t hold back.  How was I going to do a sex toy demonstration, visit a BDSM Dungeon or do and say even a fraction of the stuff that normally occurs?

Filming the segment was an all day process and the producer and crew were awesome! I kept teasing saying things like, “so, can I say ‘big, fat, hairy cunt’ on TV? No? What about ‘large, swollen, natural lady triangle,’ is that acceptable?” You know me, I like to joke! They actually had me shoot 2 versions of many things, one dirty and one not as dirty so they had options.

They seemed exceptionally fair and balanced, however, prior experience I’ve had with the media taught me fair and balanced usually turns into outrageous and twisted when it makes its way to senior producers.  Although the crew seemed very open to pushing the envelope, I honestly thought once it got into editing and the higher-ups saw it, they’d remove anything the least bit racy.

Red light district tour chicagoKen and I do quite a bit of television.  Much of our TV dealings never see the light of day.  Things end up on the cutting room floor, pilots get filmed but never air and we’ve even been courted to host our own show.  We’re consistently filming  less that deals with our jobs in the ghost/history tour business and more with us as personalities.  Most of the TV folks talking to us about personality/reality based entertainment repeat the same mantra, “Let’s steer away from the sex stuff, okay?”

It’s too racy. It’s too taboo.  Mainstream TV isn’t ready for real people talking about having real sex.  Sigh.

I was pleasantly surprised last night when the Travel Channel piece aired. I giggled the entire time and kept saying “OMG!  I can’t believe they showed that! YES!”  And, well, of course there was an uttering or two of “Look at her tits!  They look awesome!”

There are sex toys, hand motions and boobs galore! Some of the highlights and things I was happy didn’t end up on the cutting room floor:

  • The shocker (“2 in the pink, one in the stink” or “2 in the goo, 1 in the poo”) The Shocker
  • We Vibe sex toy races (the We Vibe 3 beats the We Vibe 2 every time)
  • Simulating G-spot hitting penetration with an NJoy Purewand on my fictitious hand vagina
  • Me making a puppet out of a horse speculum
  • Burlesque performer Titty Perkins pasty covered boobs (I find it ironically wonderful that we couldn’t call her Titty, she was T. Perkins, but we could show 95% of her entire naked tits! LOL!)
  • A vibrating Jimmyjane Form 2  
  • Hitachi Magic Wand (they did cut out me advising people to try it on their hand covered crotches! Baby steps!)
  • Ken shocking someone with an electrifying Neon Wand 
  • Sex & Metal’s awesome Hand Traps 
  • Flogging (complete with moaning, dopey smiles and happy, sleepy eyes!)
  • Mistress Simone giving spanking lessons
  • Everything was presented in a non-judgmental, non-sensationalistic manner. It wasn’t “oh look at the freaks!” Rather, it was “these are average people exploring their sexuality, how fun and healthy!”  (However, I did get a kick out of the Oh Fortuna-esque music when they panned to the spanking bench in the full TV segment!)

Red Light Sex TourAll this on G-Rated TV!  Wow!  Could things finally be changing? Are we starting to be not so ridiculously uptight about all things sex?  Real people talking about real sex on prime-time family TV happened and no one freaked out, nothing exploded, it didn’t trigger the end of days, all the conservative parents’ daughters didn’t become spontaneously pregnant and run off with the circus— everything is still right with the world.  This is awesome.

Ken Melvoin-Berg Creator of Red Light District Sex Tours, only tour of their kind worldwide! And what really is the kicker, it was done without using the Fifty Shades of Grey angle just to jump on the bandwagon. It was refreshing not to hear that phrase uttered once during the segment.  Kink was around long before the book, the Red Light District Tour was around long before the book— it’s nice to be recognized on the quality/content of our work, not because it’s hot right now. Ken and I are so good at what we do because we are accessible, average, imperfect people who make the subject of sex not so frightening. Ken created this tour in 2005 because people wanted it. They’ve been filling buses for the last seven years because they want it THAT much (it even made #5 on MSN’s Top 10 Weirdest Tours in the World!).  I feel that came across in the piece nicely.

So big, huge props to Travel Channel for pushing the envelope and being ground breaking in my book.  THANK YOU!

If you missed Extreme Tours here is an internet teaser clip for the segment.  If I find the full segment posted anywhere on the net, I’ll pass along that info (the full segement spends time at the dungeon, has the spanking lessons, etc. UPDATE: Found a full clip of the episode RIGHT HERE).  In the meantime, try to catch a rebroadcast of Episode 1 of Extreme Tours.  Travel Channel usually reruns their shows quite heavily.

 

UPDATE:: Here is also the full segment that was posted on Youtube:

[youtube]http://youtu.be/PySsBqwcPJQ[/youtube]

 

What do you guys think?  Was this groundbreaking to you?  Do you want to see more real sex on mainstream TV?  Let me know in the comments down below!

 

If you want to know more about the products/places/people shown in this Travel Channel Sex Tour segment, visit the clickable product links above and check out Taboo Tabou, Skyscraper Heels and The Studio. Also keep an eye out for Titty Perkins who performs kick-ass burlesque acts throughout Chicago! 

Lastly, come on a Weird Chicago Red Light District Sex Tour.  There’s a lot more to the tour than what was shown on TV.  Weird Chicago was voted best bus tour in Chicago in the 2012 Readers Choice Awards.  Not too shabby!

(Also for your comfort, we no longer use the bus shown on the episode for any of our tours– Sex, Haunted, Serial Killer, True Crime & Gangster, Devil & The White City Tour, etc.  We’ve upgraded to cushy, air conditioned luxury vehicles provided by Windy City Limo & Bus. We want you to feel fancy!)

 

 *Yes, the product links are affiliate links.  I do earn a small percentage if you buy something using them.  Hey, maintaining this blog is expensive and a girl has to eat!

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