You won't find a whole lot of smut at Bianca's Smut Shack. You won't find a whole lot of Bianca in that corner of the Web, either. What you will find, according to Jill Atkinson, one of the "Bianca Trolls" who runs the site, is "a nice, friendly, warped little place" that happens to harbor one of the liveliest house parties in cyberspace.
At most Web sites, there isn't much more to do than passively observe. But at Bianca's, guests know they're in for something different the minute they open the primitive map and start wandering through the dozen rooms and nooks of the shack. Visitors will find themselves in the midst of a perpetual love fest where inhabitants can talk back to their hosts and to each other. "This is a totally participatory thing," explains co-founder Chris Miller.
Bianca's Smut Shack was started just over a year ago, when a small group of friends with an idea for a site stumbled upon a mysterious woman who became their inspiration. "There is a real Bianca," says Atkinson. "She doesn't want any pictures up. She prefers to be an anonymous muse." So, the devoted trolls do the housekeeping around Bianca's, with their namesake figurehead stopping by now and then to peek inside.
When the caretakers opened the bathroom for visitors to post graffiti, "the user feedback was so intense we started putting up other places in the shack where people could leave messages," explains Atkinson. "It's so cool that it's evolved into this community. It's totally user-generated." Now, partyers can swap Kool-Aid recipes in the guest book on the altar, flame Newt in the kitchen, or discuss their "daily dump" in the loo. It's prurient, perhaps, but hardly hard-core.
There is some smut to be found, if you know where to look. In the bathroom's communal stall, rapid-fire posting creates the closest thing you can get to a live group grope with Netscape. Those who prefer a subtler form of seduction can park their libidos in the chatty Pillow Talk Lounge.
Bianca's packed shelves include a fair amount of dirty stuff, but they also offer plenty of other titles. On the bookcase, there's information on alternative publishers like RE/Search and Loompanics. Sex-toy fun facts, provided by San Francisco's Good Vibrations store, are in the bedroom. In the movie room, guests post their own reviews of current releases, both explicit and mainstream.
Right now, the shack is an ongoing, all-consuming labor of lust for its landlords. "We do it in our spare time," says Miller's partner, Dave Thau. "We get a kick out of it." Server and connection time is donated by the folks at commercial Web-page developer ThoughtPort Authority "out of the goodness of their hearts" and in exchange for a mention on the smut shack site. Since ThoughtPort's computers are not the fastest, and system crashes are an all-too-regular occurrence, a "Keep Bianca Open" fund has been set up for the acquisition of new equipment.
As long as guests keep dropping by, and as long as the system can hold them, Bianca's will keep on sprawling. "It's developing out of our control," says Miller with pride. "It's unstoppable now." What started out as a humble shack in the wilderness of the Web has evolved into a prime piece of virtual real estate.
Bianca's Smut Shack: bianca.com/shack/
SCANS
Smut Hut
United States of Identification
