GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING: Man Films Ongoing Public Masturbation Videos During Daytime Hours in Cleveland’s Galleria at Erieview Mall
[ NOTE: If you watch the video linked below -- WARNING: there's full frontal male nudity and sexual content not suitable for work or most viewers -- you'll clearly recognize the Galleria at Erieview's front doors; the video is definitely filmed inside the Galleria during daytime business hours on the inside of these doors, adjacent to where the Dollar Bank is situated inside the mall. ]
[ NOTE: If you do watch the video at the link below -- WARNING: extreme graphic content -- you'll recognize at the very end a camera pan upwards showing the glass roof of the Galleria at Erieview, as seen in this photo that also shows Erieview Tower in downtown Cleveland in the background. ]
This is honestly one of the most shocking things I have ever run across, and I can’t believe it’s happening in my hometown of Cleveland…and in the mall where I used to work in a bookstore while in high school.
The Galleria at Erieview is a now almost-abandoned (yet still gorgeous) downtown shopping mall in Cleveland, Ohio with soaring glass cathedral ceilings that were repurposed as an urban greenhouse after most of the retail tenants vacated their storefronts in the Obama economy. Back in the 1990s, I worked in the Brentano’s Bookstore in this mall and also started my first freelancing business doing window display decorations for other stores (probably due to my lifelong love of the Kim Catrall/Andrew McCarthy laffer “Mannequin”). The Galleria used to be a place where many downtown office workers had lunch, or enjoyed the beauty of this unique and gleaming modern crystal palace. It was a classy mall then, with great security, and an endless bustle of people.
So it’s disturbing that an unidentified man going by the Internet alias of “KSUHurdler” has been filming public masturbation videos inside The Galleria at Erieview during daytime operating hours when children could easily be exposed to what he’s doing. He sets up a small camera, strips naked, then masturbates in the Galleria’s entryway, bathrooms, and behind-the-stores corridors then posts these videos to the amateur porn site XTube.com.
WARNING: Do not click on this link unless you are prepared to see a graphic video of a muscular black man masturbating to climax at the East 9th Street entrance to The Galleria at Erieview. “KSUHurdler” setup his iPhone or digicam to film himself full frontal pleasuring himself with his clothes off as passers-by walk in front of the Galleria outside on East 9th Street; at one point, two people in Cleveland Browns football jackets walk through the mall’s doors behind him, which causes him to pull up his pants just as he’s ejaculating. If you need to see this video for yourself, here it is, but I have warned you it is extremely graphic in nature.
I ran across this video online today when I was Googling Cleveland to catch up on what’s been happening in my hometown, particularly with the big budget downtown construction projects of the 80s and 90s that were supposed to save the city from ruin (but didn’t). These were urban “stimulus projects” that all went bust long before Barack Obama’s squandered Trillion Dollars in federal stimulus in 2009. I’ve been following the Galleria at Erieview’s devolution from shopping mall into “urban greenhouse” for the last view years, but never thought the relative lack of foot traffic it’s experiencing could turn the place into an ad hoc porn studio.
I think this is important to write about because videos like this are part of a new subculture in the gay community where a website called XTube.com has become “the YouTube for porn”. Amateurs film themselves having sex or masturbating, often in public, and post their pornographic videos on XTube…where “fans” can even commission new videos or reward their favorite videos by donating funds to encourage more filming. XTube is not hosted in the United States and does not appear to have any sort of protections in place that would prevent minors from being exposed to this sort of pornography (either viewing it online, since there’s no age firewall, or seeing it filmed live like at The Galleria at Erieview in Cleveland).
One of the rising sexual fetishes out there is public exhibitionism, where guys are trying to one-up each other by filming themselves having sex in most “risky” places possible: such as a downtown shopping mall’s entrance court during business hours.
From as best as anyone can guess, “KSUHurdler” filmed this video on a”Browns Sunday” morning; right where he’s stationed near the entrance there’s a bank branch that would have been open Monday through Saturday, so it’s doubtful he would have been able to strip naked and masturbate while customers were going to the bank. The people walking into the mall with Browns jackets on are a clue it was a Sunday when the Cleveland Browns were playing nearby at the lakefront stadium.
I’ve called both the management company that operates the Galleria at Erieview and the Cleveland Police to alert them to what “KSUHurdler” has been up to; hopefully someone in law enforcement can track down the identity of this man and charge him with public indecency and/or endangerment of minors for doing this.
As a public service, if there are any nearly-abandoned shopping malls or other public places where fetish thrill-seekers could be filming videos like this in your community, can you take the time to call the management companies of those buildings and alert them to what “KSUHurdler” did in Cleveland?
Here in Chicago there are scores of nearly-deserted shopping malls just on Michigan Avenue alone (formerly “The Magnificent Mile” for shopping, but now these giant buildings feel more like mausoleums and vertical ghost towns). Someone like “KSUHurdler” could very easily do something like this in any one of them. With few retail tenants these days, I bet these malls have a skeleton security staff, which means these amateur pornographers could be getting away with a lot more in 2011 than they ever could before.
And with all the technology we have today and the rise of sites like XTube, people have easy access to platforms to broadcast this filth.
I really debated writing this piece and telling you about what’s been going on at the Galleria at Erieview. I hate linking to a site that has such graphic content on display, but I think you need to know that this exhibitionist fetish subculture exists because if someone is getting away with making pornography in broad daylight at the front entrance to a giant glass enclosed shopping mall in downtown Cleveland, Ohio then these fetishists are more aggressive and active than you probably ever realized.
If you have children, you need to be increasingly more concerned with running into someone like this, unfortunately. It’s a scary, scary thought.
I still can’t believe something like this is being allowed to happen at the Galleria. I remember when this used to be the safest, most upscale, classiest, and most family-friendly building in all of Cleveland.
Great Merciful Zeus, times sure have changed.
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UPDATE: 530pm 12/14/11
For those of you who are asking, The Galleria at Erieview is managed by the Minshall Stewart Company, based in Bethesda, Maryland. You can email this management company HERE.
Their contact information and address are here:
7101 Wisconsin Avenue Suite 1210
Bethesda, Maryland 20814
Telephone: (301) 907-9881
Fax: (301) 907-9886
Please email, fax, or call Minshall Stewart to encourage them to press criminal charges against the man filming these videos at the Galleria at Erieview.
There is a very simple way to determine his identity, but I bet Minshall Stewart won’t go to the trouble of doing it unless YOU get involved and apply some pressure for the company to jump through the required hoops.
The man filming and posting these videos at XTube.com goes by the handle “KSUHurdler” there. Minshall Stewart needs to get a court order to compel XTube.com to hand over the identity of KSUHurdler since he’s committing crimes on Minshall Stewart’s property. XTube.com has this person’s real identity, IP address, etc. on file but will not surrender it without a court order. It’s expensive to get a judge to compel a website or hosting company to turn over someone’s real identity but a giant company like Minshall Stewart can afford it (the price tag’s somewhere between $1,000-$3,000 to make this happen).
Once Minshall Stewart has the man’s identity, the company can file a criminal complaint against him with the Cleveland Police Department. The CPD will NOT get the court order forcing his identity on their own; Minshill Stewart has to do this. CPD will claim it is not a priority and they are short-staffed and have no funding to invest in this. Trust me, you are on your own whenever you need to find the true identity of someone doing anything illegal on the Internet; the police will not do this investigative work for you, but they will go after someone if you hand them everything they need to do it.
Identifying and then prosecuting this man for what he did at The Galleria at Erieview would have a chilling effect on these stunts in the exhibitionist subculture. That might be a deterrent that will prevent someone in your own community from doing something like this in the future.
Sometimes you have to just say that enough is enough. I feel that way about anything bad like this that goes on in Cleveland. I will never live in the city again, but it will always be my hometown. This man, “KSUHurdler”, is hurting my hometown by turning the Galleria into his own porn studio. I can spare a few minutes on the phone or writing emails to hound the Minshall Stewart Company to invest the resources required to identify this man and set the police after him.
It’s not in most people’s nature to ever get involved in things. Talking on the phone is scary. Filling out an email of complaint takes time. Writing to anyone, for many people, is a chore.
But we wouldn’t be where we are right now as a society if more people decided it was “their watch” and started seeing their phones and email accounts as ways they could take a stand and loudly shout that “this garbage is not going to keep happening if I have anything to say about it”.
Think about it, and hopefully you’ll join me in encouraging Minshell Stewart to take action in this ongoing matter in Cleveland, Ohio.
*********************************************
UPDATE #2: Here’s a good question from a reader I want to answer for all of you:
Dear HillBuzz,
Speechless… Just speechless.
But my question is, how do you know he’s gay?
If he is, he should be doubly ashamed of himself for acting like every Bible Belt Christian’s Worst Nightmare Stereotype of how gay men behave.
Unbelievable.
I know the man who has been masturbating in The Galleria at Erieview is gay for five reasons:
1. His account at XTube.com (that he uses to post these exhibitionist videos) is clearly a gay account; he chose to use gay categories and tag words when creating his profile there that identify him as gay to other gay men.
2. The videos he has “favorited” on his XTube account are all gay videos; it’s extremely unlikely a straight man would do that.
3. If you watch the video, this man is in obsessively gym-toned shape. Some of you might argue with me on this one (and note that your straight cousin is an exception or your straight neighbor’s not gay but does this too), but it’s incredibly rare to find a straight male who is that buff. In the gyms here in Chicago for instance, a lot of straight guys workout on a very regular basis; some of them become obsessed with exercise too…but it’s the gay men who really keep themselves in the shape that “KSUHurdler” keeps himself in. The straight men who spend a lot of time in the gym are usually guys who do it for stress-relief or to maintain their weight. Some straight guys become the crazy marathon runner or cyclist guys; you can tell them immediately because they tend to look gaunt and exhausted all the time and are guys that have very strange and obsessive personalities that make them seem like they could explode at any minute. Gay guys, however, bulk up and keep themselves as trim as possible because they want the attention from other guys that this conditioning brings. It’s a peacock thing. The guy in this video is preening and exhibiting himself in a video he knows is going to be viewed by other guys exclusively. A straight guy just wouldn’t do this. Yes, there are indeed straight male bodybuilders who enjoy showing off their bodies, but these guys don’t masturbate in public and film themselves for videos that they post with gay-coded words on a fetish site like XTube. Most bodybuilders that are straight are guys that use the bodybuilding to desperately try to repair self-esteem and self-confidence issues they had before they became gym rats (I would hazard that 80% of these guys were fat kids, had bad relationships with their dads, or otherwise needed to get into the weight training to get over something emotionally scarring in their lives).
4. If you watch the video, the guy has gay-face. You can see it in his eyes, even factoring out the fact that he’s engaged in something that’s distracting him, he’s still got gay-face that makes him look a little like RuPaul Charles if RuPaul was an extremely buff, zero body fat, fetishist publicly masturbating at the Galleria at Erieview in downtown Cleveland.
5. The guy uses “Poppers” at the start of the video. “Poppers” are a drug used in the gay community that is sold over-the-counter at sex shops and even novelty stores in gay neighborhoods; this drug comes in small vials that many gay guys carry in their pockets to sniff every now and then to get sexually charged. Poppers are comprised mainly of amyl nitrate (“video head cleaner”). They are low-grade smelling salts, essentially (remember in old movies when someone would faint and another person would magically appear with something that would be passed under the fainter’s nose, instantly waking that person up? That’s amyl nitrate). Gay bathhouses in Chicago like Steamworks or Man’s Country (where both Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel used to frequently “play”) have vending machines that dispense Poppers, lube, condoms, and all sorts of other sexual gear the way regular vending machines spit out Doritos or Lays chips. Let’s put it this way: it’s as likely for a straight guy to be using Poppers as it is for a straight guy to be rocking out to Madonna or Lady Gaga on his iPod while walking down the street wearing a little Yassir Arafat-style scarf with his hair styled into a cupie-doll-esque “faux hawk”. There’s nothing stopping straight guys from blaring Madonna or Gaga or getting their hair cut like that or whatever, and there’s nothing stopping straight guys from buying and using Poppers, but it’s just not something straight guys do.
One of the reasons I write about “the Dark Side of Boystown’s Rainbow” and share things like this is because a not insignificant number of emails always come in from straight people who insist these looks behind the curtain at what really goes on inside “the gay community” are enlightening and revelatory in many ways.
Barack Obama was a regular visitor to the Man’s Country bathhouse here in Chicago before he became a US Senator, which means the current President of the United States more likely than not used Poppers and behaved in public the way the man in this video is behaving (though, by all accounts, he is not as well-endowed). You’ll never read any of that in the agenda-driven media, but if you ever want to really understand Obama and the things that he’s doing in the Oval Office, you need to remember the sorts of things he got up to in the bathhouses.
There are a lot of men in elected office — right now — who do all sorts of bizarre sexual things on a regular basis. In the last two years alone, we heard all about the antics of Congressmen Massa, Wu, and Weiner. No doubt as the 2012 election draws closer, we’ll hear about even more. Sex and politics are always linked because so many of these elected officials breathe such rareified air and so believe they are untouchable that they engage in all sorts of risky activity of their own.
You’re never going to stop what happens in the bathhouses (or the shower room in the Congressional gym), but you can put an end to this sort of stuff happening in public shopping malls in cities like Cleveland if you demand the management companies pursue criminal charges against men like “KSUHurdler”.
© 2011, Kevin DuJan. All rights reserved.
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Speechless… Just speechless.
But my question is, how do you know he’s gay?
If he is, he should be doubly ashamed of himself for acting like every Bible Belt Christian’s Worst Nightmare Stereotype of how gay men behave.
Unbelievable.
I figured it was amyl nitrate or some derivative that he was using – 'way back in the mid-70's, amyl made an appearance in the straight community – a roommate @ NAS Millington suggested it to me – I thought I was going to die, from the headache it IMMEDIATELY produced. My roommate insisted it was WONDERFUL – for me, not so much
Not to get too technical or clinical here, but, yes, he's generously endowed, but he never seems to ………………………………….. achieve full arousal {or is my base of experience that limited?
}
Also, Kevin, in a couple of recent postings, you've used the word 'fetish' – I've read Kraft-Ebing, on the various paraphilias, {foot fetishists/exhibitionism/urolagnia/coprophilia, etc., etc.} – is 'fetish' a code for something distinctly OF the gay community now?
I agree with Deep Cover, KSU should be shunned by the gay community at large, for his "justifying" the stereotype that a lot of people suspect ……………………………………
Hope you're keeping warm {I had to turn on the A/C today}
Semper Fi'
DM
DM,
In Boystown, you see the phrase “BDSM & Fetish” used a lot for different events at bars or conventions and things. The BDSM is the bondage stuff, where people like to be tied up and there are all sorts of things that go on unique to that little subculture. “Fetish” is a broader term.
“Fetish” involves a lot of cosplay sub-genres. Cosplay means “costume play”, where people dress up as things. The big cosplay fetish is superheroes. There are at least two superhero-themed parties in Boystown every year. On a national scale it is a big deal. Japanese people are extremely into cosplay for some reason.
Fetish also includes people who like to dress up as animals, especially those who like to dress like high school football team mascots: those are called Plushies. Watch the Gym Class Heroes video “We Have to Take Our Clothes Off” to see people dressed as Plushies running around.
Fetish also means sports gear; gay guys love dressing up as wrestlers, football players, rugby players, etc. There are military fetish parties where guys wear military, police, and other uniforms.
There are “Foodies” who have food fetishes and need to eat food during sex, or like eating food off other people.
There’s a fetish where people like to pretend they are being shrunk or enlarged to giant size: that’s Microphilia and Macrophilia.
There are the urine drinking fetishes and the people who like to do that are called “Lemonades” or Piggies. “Pigs” are people who like to be debased and roll around on the ground in bodily fluids as if they have never heard of HIV.
“Fetish” seems to have replaced the word “Kink” that they used to use. It was always BDSM & Kink in the past, but I think in the last seven or ten years they switched to “Fetish” branding. I think “Fetish” is them trying to build a more commercial brand.
By “them” I mean the people who are behind these big BDSM and Fetish conventions. This stuff is big business. Every year on Memorial Day weekend there is a big leather fetish convention here in Chicago, with a rubber convention a few months later. There’s a spandex convention too I think. At these conventions, people dress up in their “gear” and walk around the big rented ballrooms they have booked for these things and there are vendors selling all the gear.
You have heard of ComiCon and the comic book conventions…well the sex industry has a whole convention circuit too with people who spend all their available money buying this “gear” and using it with other people they meet on Craigslist or wherever.
Thank you for the explanation – I'd seen episodes of 'CSI' where the Plushies {I THINK they called them Furrbies?} were having a convention in Vegas & someone got murdered …………………….. I see what you mean about 'Fetish' replacing 'Kink' – could it be that it came about because 'Kink' developed some rather scary connotations?
We recently had been hanging out with another couple, until the husband asked me about swinging {he sets his wife up with whomever, since she announced she didn't want intimacy with HIM, around 4 years ago} – I told him that I was still too much the Catholic schoolgirl, and didn't know of any place, other than a well-known nudist club. I told the FodGuy about the conversation, but no one else, but the couple have since decided 'we' weren't the type they wanted to even acknowledge – which is no great loss for ME, 'cause if the hubby was expecting me to service him, while the FodGuy serviced his wife, it was NEVER going to happen ……………………………………
Oh, & the FodGuy answered the question of KSU's …………………………. flaccidity?
Thank you for your honesty about the gay community – you allow those of us who don't comprehend a look into the vagaries of the gay life, the good, the bad & the ugly …………………………….
Semper Fi'
DM
They were called Furries- a general term for people who identify as having an "animal persona" (not being one myself, but as an avid furry webcomic reader, this is what I gather). Not all of them wear full furry suits in real life, but a lot of them have developed their "alter-ego" very extensively online. I believe Plushies are people attracted to stuffed animals (OR a term for the stuffed animals themselves). There's a lot of complexities in the furry community!
Well, I'm blown away by that. Thanks so much, Kevin. Btw, BDSM fetish is (big whooping surprise) THE thing here in San Francisco and it's disgusting. They close down Castro Street once a year to hawk this stuff out in the open – and SF's Board of Governors does nothing. To the contrary, the top Democratic fundraiser a few years ago hosted a BDSM birthday party for himself that set new depths in sleaze – and nothing happened to the guy afterwards. That was my wake-up call for just how far into mainstream politics this sort of thing has permeated.
This actually reminded me of an incident from my youth. We had a similar, mostly abandoned mall (though I think a bit smaller) in my hometown that had a cheap movie theatre in the back. When I was about 15 or so, my friend's mom dropped us off to watch a movie and we walked out the back doors so she could smoke a cigarette before the show. Just as she was finishing her cigarette, a man walked up from somewhere in the back parking lot and we noticed that he was masturbating just like this guy in the video. Naturally, we headed right back into the mall and were absolutely SHOCKED when he followed us into the mall and along the corridors masturbating the whole time. We found somebody at the movie theatre and told them what was happening so that he couldn't follow us into the show, but I have been creeped out by shopping malls ever since. People do really weird things there!
This is an outrage!!! Freaken Insane People>>>am speechless>SeRiO/4ReaL>>Thanks 4posting this breaking news>>>
I haven't watched the video, but if this charming fellow ran track at Kansas State University — hence the name KSUHurdler — he should be fairly easy to pick out in a yearbook. Alums?
Kevin – thank you so much for posting this. Thanks even more for telling us to get off out butts and DO something about it instead of just whining. Once again, you are the swift kick so many of us need – myself most of all. I'm a better person for you being in my world.
Good lord, can you please edit/condense your copy? On and on and on and on . . . . .
And while I don't approve of the actions of the perp, making such a big deal out of the fact that he identifies as gay only serves to reinforce negative stereotypes. A perv is a perv, regardless of sexual orientation. Ask yourself, would you have the same reaction if he identified as straight?
Some guy masturbating on video in an abandoned mall? So what?!?! I'd rather not have police time taken away from preventing/investigating the rampant drug dealing, shooting, thieving and assaults in the city. Perhaps you remember a different Cleveland from the city that exists today, but I'd rather not have police time taken away from actual serious crime to investigate this. Of course, the police will probably investigate & arrest him just so they can go before the press and pretend they've done something/anything about crime. Leave this guy alone and go catch a real criminal!
I notice the videos have disappeared…does anyone know if he has been caught? I'm surprised that this hasn't made it into mainstream news.
Wow Kevin, you really lost me on this one. I'm gay and go to the gym almost religiously (after my first year in Chicago) for other reasons. I took up bodybuilding when I was in my early 20's. It made me feel good and boosted my self-esteem as well. Being fatherless, my interaction with (I'm sure) straight men at that time taught me some manners and how to be a gentleman, the comradery….those MEN took me on, so to speak, and taught me some valuable life skills along with the workout. (I came to this realization after patronizing a gym in Chicago – they are, for the most part, self-centered, self-absorbed, hyper-aggressive, me-first pigs – both straight and gay).
(cont.)
Now, coming from owning a single family home for 12 years and moving into an apartment and getting rid of my car – I really had nothing constructive to do (no yard, no "pride of ownership" tasks that can be overwhelming but rewarding at the same time). I noticed quickly the other gays that have been in Chicago for years/decades are obviously in the same predicament – with nothing constructive to do (but the cruising for sex at the lakefront or doing the same sitting in Starbucks all day just isn't my thing, there's a whole city to enjoy here).
(cont.)
Top this "predicament" with a severe underemployment situation for myself and no way to get out in the near future. Hitting the gym regularly again gives me a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day that I can't attain from my job nor the interaction, or lack thereof, with gay men in Chicago of which 95% of them, I have absolutely NOTHING in common with. I do this for MYSELF. Read up on endorphin rush as well. That gym has held me from severe depression since moving to this city. Unfortunately, I can't get out anytime soon but am diligently working on it. Chicago, a few years ago, also beat out Detroit as "the fattest city in America". The fat and sloppiness here was also a motivator.
Reconsider your rant regarding "gymrats". The subject matter of the article is, indeed, in need of exposure – no pun intended. It's disgusting. And quite gay Chicago too.
I commend your bringing the authorities' attention to this criminal act, but it is unfortunate that you seem to focus as much or more on whether or not the guy is gay. Who cares? (And not for nothing man, but 'gay face' ??? — maybe you should expand on your insights… 'terrorist face'!… you could maybe help out the TSA.)
The only attention this guy ever got were from his adult admirers and you are the only one responsible for any negative attention this will garner. KSUHurdler chooses abandoned malls, deserted streets, and empty bathrooms. He chooses to explore his sexuality with his friends on xtube, an adult site. Perhaps your attention should now shift to admonishing other deviant behavior so that all of us in the gay community can be chastised for just about everything we do by the straight community.. now we can take two steps back, ya'll!
Your #3, 4, and 5 reasons that this guy is gay are your opinion and also offensive to me. Gay-face? Really?
I'm definitely not defending him and saying he's straight. My guess is he'd probably say he was bi. Most buffed black men swing both ways, but again, that's my opinion and holds no proof without asking.
I think we can both agree that his behavior is wrong and disturbing.
what does being gay have to do with this situation?! WOW!