Mark Kliem

Mark Kliem was born in Detroit and graduated from Central Michigan University in December 1977. Moved to San Francisco in October 1981 and plans to stay. In 1991 he was Creator and Executive Producer of San Francisco's most popular Public Access TV show, Lavender Lounge. Kliem produced 60 episodes between 1991 and 1995. In its first and most memorable incarnation, Lavender Lounge was described as the "Queer American Bandstand", modeling itself after the mid-century hit TV dance party show created by Dick Clark. With Kliem as the host and MC, the gay public showed up at the studio to dance to DJ music interspersed with musical guests and comedy bits. In 1993 the show made a dramatic change to documentary style to become do in depth coverage of people, places, issues and events in San Francisco's gay community. There were 40 episodes of Lavender Lounge as a half hour dance party theme and 20 episodes of half hour and full hour documentary themes. In 1994 a deal was struck to air episodes on an a satellite system for six months that was seen from Alaska to Puerto Rico. It was screened at the Fresno Gay Film Festival, Los Angeles Gay Film Festival, and shown to gay activists in Russia. After the TV show ended, Mark Kliem worked full time in the gay adult business producing and directing movies for Brush Creek Media and PR Simon Productions. In 1997 he became Webmaster of gay adult streaming video site Naked Sword and founded website Gay Porn Blog. Mark Kliem left Naked Sword in 2003 to run Lavender Lounge Studios full time, creating and managing adult websites and creating original content. He won a Cybersocket Award in 2005 for Best Blog. He served as judge of the GayVN Awards for 9 years and was nominated for an XBiz award for Best GLBT Company. Around 2011 he started releasing original content and reissued vintage gay porn onto DVD.