COVID-safe co-working spaces have arrived.
Adult webcam company CamSoda has launched pop-up studios for “cam girls” so they can have a workspace where they won’t have to worry about bothering housemates or family with their potentially loud and erotic work.
A test run for the concept was recently opened in Medellin, Colombia, where lockdown orders are still in place. CamSoda took advantage of the hard-hit real estate market and converted one of the city’s many empty warehouses into studios featuring individual sanitized pods. Models submit to a temperature check before entry, and pods feature a laptop, bed or couch, and webcam. They are cleaned after each use.
“Quarantining for the last few months has been unbelievably hard on all of us. And for a lot of our models, it’s been especially difficult to find a place to cam,” said Daryn Parker, vice president of CamSoda, in a press release.
Camming has been one of the select few professions to be able to continue and thrive during the coronavirus pandemic by nature of being prime for remote work, making it among the only forms of adult entertainment able to safely produce new material since March. But for cam girls who don’t live alone, quarantining has posed a unique challenge to work-life balance.
“There has been a large spike in traffic to adult cam sites, along with a large influx of new models looking for ways to make money while remaining socially distant,” Parker said. “These models, both veterans and newcomers, have children, spouses, parents and roommates that are now home 24/7, and it has become nearly impossible for them to stream privately without interruption.”
Before the pandemic, the company hosted sex workers in its CamSoda House. Due to the social setup of the space, with performers often mingling between shifts, CamSoda decided to try the new pop-up pod model.
Following its success in Colombia, CamSoda is preparing to launch cam co-working pods in the US, starting with states hard-hit by COVID-19, including Florida, California, Texas and Arizona.