Bompas and Parr gets set to pair poppers with drinks at London Cocktail Week
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The heady aromas will be available to purchase alongside innovative paired cocktails at The Standard during London Cocktail Week, which runs between 13th-22nd October.
Bompas & Parr will be creating the world’s first super premium poppers, paired with a curated drinks offering as part of London Cocktail Week at the bar-meets-late night party spot, Sweeties, at The Standard, London. With pleasure at the forefront of the ‘Excalibur XO’ activation, these artisanal poppers will be launched in an unbridled celebration of queer innovation, public joyfulness, sex positivity and exceptional design, with strict regulatory policies in place to ensure the safety of all participants.
Bompas & Parr’s Excalibur XO concept, curated in collaboration with Adam Zmith, Author of Deep Sniff, will present a variety of opportunities for programming across London Cocktail Week including:
- Queer micro-exhibition – celebrating poppers at the convergence of pleasure, erotica, art and history
- Poppers Sommelier at Sweeties – presenting artisanal products with inspired paired cocktails
- Aromatic panel discussion – exploring the history of poppers and its place within queer culture, complete with an optional sniff-along addition
Contextualising Excalibur XO
The brand and product name – Excalibur – references the title of the booklet ‘Raging Sword’ by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs published in 1868, an account of his speech to the Congress of German Jurists considered by many to be the first ever gay rights protest speech.
Poppers are strange yet iconic products. In the UK they are used by many, with one in twelve having tried them (Home Office, 2016), yet entirely unfamiliar to the masses. They are one of the few products that are legal to sell entirely mislabelled – as ‘leather cleaner’ and ‘room odouriser’ – a far cry from their widespread and tacitly acknowledged use as a gateway to pleasure.
Bompas & Parr’s product and exhibition sits at the occlusion of a number of important social and experiential drivers:
- Pleasure Principle – Post Covid-19 pandemic, people are seeking ultra-sensory decadence. With focuses shifting from productivity to enjoyment, let the pleasure revolution begin.
- Queering of Culture – 800% increase in use of the term ‘queer’ between 1985 and 2019. The work heroes the innovative aspects of queer culture.
- New Sex Positivity – The early 2022s have been hailed as a golden era of sex positivity with people accessing the linguistic, spatial and societal tools to explore sexuality without taboo and shame. Long may this continue. The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes report that ‘anal sex rose from approximately one in 10 in 1990–1991 to approximately one in four men and one in five women in 2010–2012.’
