San Diego, ~2000 — present.
SDBM stands for San Diego Burning Man — a regional Facebook group and, more usefully, a name for the web of people who circled through the San Diego alt/BM/kink/maker scene from roughly 2000 onward. It was never a formal organization. More of a gravity well: camp founders, fire spinners, photographers, leatherworkers, hackerspace people, and at least one watermelon samurai.
The overlap was messier than any single label. Pamarie was a trauma therapist and a Burner. Felicia ran a spare bedroom as a Tantra studio and was embedded in the OTO scene. Magnus had a shop — a former Hells Angels house retrofitted with plasma cutters, a forge, and a wood CAD cutter — and he ran Fight Club BDSM parties there. It’s where I met Becke. That’s the sentence. Everything that followed — the 2006 wedding, the long marriage, Dylan — traces back to a man who thought two people ought to meet.
Core:
- Pamarie Pedjoe
- Felicia Swayne
- Sally Shaw
- Magnus (Michal Bludworth)
- Russell “Figment” Ramsey
- Fabiola “Fabi” Elias-Ramsey
- Mark Hinkley
- Greg Young (“Smokeblower”)
- Barbara Young
- Morrigan (Jona Jackie Briggs)
- Meloney McCartney
- Jan Imbrescia (“Juwanna Brownie”)