San Francisco Armory / Kink Castle

About

San Francisco Armory / Kink Castle refers to a series of memes, including photoshops and image macros, about how the historic San Francisco Armory was purchased by the adult website Kink.com in late 2006 and used to film adult videos for years. Many of the memes joke about how if you recognize the building, known colloquially as the "Kink Castle," you are not innocent. As of 2018 the building no longer belongs to Kink.com and is instead owned by a real estate company.

Origin

In late 2006, the San Francisco Armory, built between 1912 and 1914, was sold to Kink.com for an estimated $14.5 million.^[1] The armory subsequently became the filming location of the company's videos and even flew the kink flag.

The exact first reference to this in a meme is unknown, but one of the earliest memes about the kink castle is an image macro posted to 9GAG^[2] on July 16th, 2016, with text reading, "EVERY PRINCESS DREAMS TO LIVE IN A CASTLE," gaining over 80 upvotes in five years (shown below).

Spread

On December 17th, 2016, Imgur^[5] user CrapsDaVinci posted a collection of images and text explaining the history of the "kink castle," including images of the castle from the inside showing bondage equipment (examples shown below). The post gained over 82,000 views in five years.

In January 2017, Kink.com announced it would stop using the San Francisco Armory for filming and sell the location.^[3] The following year, the armory was sold to a real estate firm in Nashville.^[4]

Memes about the armory continued, often joking about people who recognize it without context. For example, on November 30th, 2018, Imgur^[6] user Jakeyrogers posted a meme using an image of the castle, gaining over 1,600 views in three years (shown below).

Various Examples

Template

Search Interest

External References