10 sexy festivals from around the world

by Jessica Festa on

While sexy can mean different things to different people, sometimes there is just no disputing. From naked bodies covered in paint to scantily clad burlesque dancers to artistic bondage shows, there is a festival out there that will fulfill your idea of what sexy is.

New Orleans Burlesque Festival
New Orleans, Louisiana

The New Orleans Burlesque Festival takes place in New Orleans every year during mid-September. For three days, guests are treated to naughty striptease numbers, spicy parties, and, of course, tons of sexy burlesque dance shows. And you don’t only get to watch these hot acts, you get to learn them too, as the festival hosts an array of workshops, like the Stockings and Garter Workshop which will teach you how to sensually remove your hosiery, and Bumps and Grinds, where you will learn sultry, stage-worthy dance moves.German Fetish Ball Weekend
Berlin, Germany

Every year, the German Fetish Ball Weekend takes over Germany as the biggest international fetish gala and is the largest fetish and BDSM weekend in Europe. The weekend is packed with X-rated events from risque fashion shows, sexy performances, libidinous bondage shows, and parties where you will meet guests dressed in leather, lace, and less. This year, the event will take place from May 25-28.

World Body Painting Festival
Kärnten, Austria

The World Body Painting Festival is a body painting, face painting, and special effects festival that takes place in Austria each year. This sexy event incorporates art, fashion, music, entertainment, and parties with a BodyArt Fashion Show, hot DJ’s “dressed” in paint, and chances to gain skills in this unique art yourself. Have a great body painting photo? You can submit it to win Bodypainting Art Photo of the Year.

Sexy International Film Festival
Melbourne, Australia

Each November, the Sexy International Film Festival takes place in Melbourne, with promotional screenings also taking place in Perth, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. The event features films from all over the world covering topics on love, relationships, and of course, sex. Expect a lot of lingerie, nudity, and titles like “Dame Factory”, “Scenes of an Adult Nature”, “Grandpa’s Wet Dream”, and “Black and White Sex”. Submissions for the 2012 festival begin in March. For information on purchasing tickets, click here.

Exotic Erotic Ball & Expo
San Francisco, California

While the annual Exotic Erotic Ball & Expo didn’t take place in 2011, it will be back for 2012. The festival has been going on for over thirty years and celebrates sexuality and freedom of expression with live music, exotic dancers, masquerade parties, erotic performances, and sexy games like Lesbian First Kiss. And if that’s not enough, there’s a wild after party that will keep you up all night.

Kinky Salon
Global

While most people know Kinky Salon from their yearly Copenhagen event, the San Francisco-based company actually hosts events all over the globe that are devoted to a “safe and consensual exploration of sex-positive self-expression”. Attendees to the events can expect sexy art parties, exhibitionism, and carnal costumes. You can also check out the Kinky Salon Amsterdam, New York, and London.

Nudes-A-Poppin Pageant and Festival
Roselawn, Indiana

Nudes-A-Poppin’ Pageant and Festival is the biggest nude beauty pageant in the world. Since 1976, this event has been featuring showgirls, pole competitions, oil wrestling, and screaming ‘O’ contests as contestants battle it out to be crowned titles like Ms. Nude Entertainer, Mr. Nude North America, and Ms. Nude Rising Star. This year’s event will take place on July 21-22.

Carnival
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

When thinking of sexy festivals, Carnival is usually the first one that people think of. While not as obvious in erotic nature as many of the other events mentioned, the sexy samba moves, burlesque-style costumes, and nude dancing make Carnival a carnal treat. Plus, it helps that Brazilians are some of the sexiest people alive. This year the event will take place February 18-21.

Seattle Erotic Art Festival
Seattle, Washington

The Seattle Erotic Art Festival was founded by the Sex Positive Community Center (now the Foundation for Sex Positive Culture) in 2002. Through the arts, the event promotes feedom of expression and a sex positive community. Attendees can expect sexy performances, erotic installations, libidinous films, workshops, and after-hours parties. This year, the festival is expanded to take place over two weekends, June 16-17 and June 22-24.

Phallus
Tyrnavos, Greece

While many of these festivals tend to gravitate towards celebrating the female form, the Phallus Festival in Greece pays homage to the penis. This one-day fertility festival signals the beginning of Lent and honors the Greek God of wine, madness, and ecstasy, Dionysus. Attendees of the festival will have the chance to eat penis-shaped food, sit on penis-shaped furniture, kiss ceramic penises (and sometimes have them places between their legs), admire penis art, and wear penis accessories. A similar festival also takes place every year in Kawasaki, Japan.

[images via Kaylin Idora Photography, ChrisK4u, Exotic Erotic Ball, Wikimedia Commons, _Yuki_K_]

Metropolitan Museum of Art to reopen American Wing after $100 million remodel

by Sean McLachlan on


The Metropolitan Museum of Art is famous for its impressive collection of American art, including iconic images such as Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 painting Washington Crossing the Delaware. Now that collection has a larger, better designed home thanks to a $100 million renovation.

The New American Wing Galleries for Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts open Jan. 16 and total 30,000 square feet of exhibition space, which is 3,300 more than previously. It houses American art from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries and provides better lighting and access than the previous galleries.

Besides Leutze’s work, which has been given a new gilded frame, the collection is a who’s who of American art, including painters such a John Singleton Copley, Thomas Cole, and Frederic Remington. Cole’s painting View from Mount Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after a Thunderstorm-The Oxbow is also on display and is shown below. There’s also a large folk art collection, historic furniture, and work by important silversmiths such as Paul Revere.

Paintings by Emanuel Leutze and Thomas Cole courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Italian climber first to scale “Second Seven Summits”

by Kraig Becker on

An Italian climber by the name of Hans Kammerlander has become the first person to climb the “Second Seven Summits” after topping out on Mt. Tyree in Antarctica last week. This unique distinction was earned by climbing the second highest peaks on each of the seven continents – a feat that most mountaineers feel is far more difficult than the traditional Seven Summits.

In addition to Mt. Tyree, the Second Seven Summits consist of Ojos del Salado (22,614 ft) in South America, Mt. Kenya (17,057 ft) in Africa, Mt. Logan (19,550 ft) in North America, Dychtau (17,073 ft) in Europe, Puncak Trikora (15,518 ft) in Oceania, and K2 in Asia. Kammerlander knocked off K2, quite possibly the hardest climb in the world, back in 2001, but had no idea that he would go on to climb the other Second Seven at the time.

In 2009 he traveled to South America, and successfully climbed Ojos del Salado, located along the border of Argentina and Chile. It was after that expedition that he began to form a plan to take on the remaining five. The past two years have been focused on those mountains, and his quest to climb them all ended on January 3rd at the summit of Tyree.

The Italian mountaineer has had a long and storied career in the high places of the Earth before accomplishing this feat. He has knocked off 13 of the 14 8000-meter peaks and opened new routes on some of the world’s most iconic mountains, including Cho Oyu and Annapurna.

It doesn’t seem that the 55-year old is ready to hang up his crampons just yet.

[Photo courtesy of Hans Kammerlander]

Cruise accident “like a scene from Titanic” says passenger

by Chris Owen on

(Updated 8:10AM EDT) After running aground off the coast of Italy Friday night, an unknown number of passengers are reported dead as a luxury cruise ship sinks and dawn reveals details of the tragic accident.

“It was like a scene from the Titanic,” journalist Mara Parmegian on board for what was to be an 8 day Mediterranean sailing told the ANSA news agency.

Costa Cruises Costa Concordia ran aground on a sand bank near the Italian island of Giglio, Italy sending water pouring in through a 160-foot gash in the hull and forcing the evacuation of over 4000 passengers and crew on the ship.

“We were having dinner aboard when we heard a loud noise, like that of the keel being dragged over something,” passenger Luciano Castro told Italian state radio early Saturday reports ajc. The lights went out “and there were scenes of panic, glasses falling to the floor,” Castro said.

Castro said it was reported that some passengers jumped into the sea in an attempt to swim to nearby Giglio island. Evacuation efforts were apparently complicated by the position of the listing ship, according to a Costa Cruises blog post.

Giuseppe Orsina, a spokesman for the local civil protection agency, told CNN: “We are verifying the different lists of passengers and staff that have been given to us from Costa and at the moment from 43 to 51 people are missing.


In an update on the Costa Cruises blog, the cruise line confirmed that the ship, now half-submerged, had been evacuated and that an investigation was underway:

“It is a tragedy that deeply affects our company. Our first thoughts go to the victims and we would like to express our condolences and our closeness to their families and friends. In this moment all our efforts are focused on the completion of the last emergency operations, besides providing assistance to the guests and the crew who were onboard in order to have them going back home as soon as possible. The emergency procedures started promptly to evacuate the ship. The slope, gradually taken over by the ship, made the evacuation extremely difficult. We would like to express our profound gratitude to the Coast Guard and all the forces co-ordinated by the Coast Guard, including the authorities and citizens of the island “Isola del Giglio”, who have been involved in the rescue and assistance to guests and crew members. The company will fully co-operate with the relevant Authorities in order to determine the causes of what happened.”

Aerial video released later in the morning gives a better perspective at the scene of the accident. The cause is still unknown.


 


114,500 ton Costa Concordia was on a Mediterranean cruise from Rome with stops in Savona, Marseille, Barcelona, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari and Palermo. The ship was carrying 3,200 passengers and 1000 crew members. The passengers scheduled to embark today in Savona and in subsequent ports will be contacted directly by Costa Cruises.

Photo: Huffington Post

Photo of the Day: Singapore’s unusual theme park

by Meg Nesterov on

This fellow is from one of Singapore‘s more unusual attractions – the Haw Par Villa theme park, also called Tiger Balm Gardens. Originally built in the 1930s by the creators of Tiger Balm to showcase Chinese folklore and mythology, the park is known for its bizarre and gruesome Ten Courts of Hell with such creepy statues and dioramas as a human-faced crab and bloody dismembered torsos (apparently it all makes sense if you know your Chinese mythology). It’s been relatively deserted in recent years, making it all the more bizarre. You can see more photos of the park in Flickr user SingaPaulie‘s photostream. The MRT metro line was extended this fall and you can now ride the Circle Line train to the park.

Capture any odd attractions on your travels? Add your shots to the Gadling Flickr pool for a future Photo of the Day.