Over two years ago the Bay area lost one of it’s most infamous Dominatrices, when Mistress Ilsa Strix relocated to Los Angeles. For years the fabled “Mistress on the Hill” carved an irreplaceable niche for herself in the San Francisco scene. Though frequent visits have brought her back to play and educate, Ilsa Strix has been busy in the “City of Angels”.

In her typical style, she has taken the city by storm. The last three years have seen her teach herself web authoring and start a multi-media website aimed at protecting and educating the Professional BDSM community. There has been an educational video series, along with an AVN nomination. Somewhere along the way she has found the time to incorporate herself, foster several more websites, start her own video line, and much, much, more.

We catch up with Ilsa Strix at her Old-Spanish style house in the Hollywood Hills;

Q: The last two years have been busy for you! When do you sleep?

Ilsa: Sleep? I have slaves to do that for me! (laughs)

Q: You carved quite a place for yourself in the history of San Francisco’s BDSM scene. What differences in atmosphere and attitude have you found between there and L.A.?

Ilsa: The way I describe it is: San Francisco is a great place to BE, Los Angeles is a great place to DO. San Francisco, with its beauty by the bay, reflects that in its more liberal, natural attitudes whereas Los Angeles, the city of the silver screen is much more about movement and image. I feel blessed to have learned the ropes and developed my style within the safe shores of the San Francisco BDSM scene which I believe is one of the moist open and accepting scenes in the world. The play is deep there, with much care, spirit and creativity.

Q: Over the last two years what direction has your practice of the “Art of Consensual BDSM” taken?

Ilsa: My play has gotten deeper, my sessions more dynamic. For instance I have started exploring hypnotic relaxation recently in order for the play to be more profound. Suspension rope bondage, which has always been a favorite of mine, has become a regular occurance. My interest in heavy medical has had me learning the parameters of scrotal inflation and tattooing. In terms of my personal play, I have less personal slaves but they are richer relationships, which fulfill me as never before. The rules I once had to instate have diminished as my relationships become a more natural extension of my personal power.

I seem to be spreading out in many directions all at once. Over the last few years it became very clear that I must start giving back to my community and not just enjoy myself in the dark of my dungeon. My life as a dominant has been amazing- my experience thorough, and thus it felt like a good time to start reaching out, recollecting and recording. While I still enjoy a love affair with dominating both men and women, I am also working to make www.ilsastrix.com one of the most complete domination sites on the web. My professional domination encyclopedia; http://www.prodomination.com/ that funds a legal defense and educational effort has over 100 dominatrixes involved with it. I have opened up a spacious new dungeon called G-Force with Partners Sabrina Belladonna, Storm Hamilton and Izabella Sol from which we do a lot of community based events such as teaching. I have started my own line of videos from Ms.Strix Prod. Inc. where I have been recording my scenes and classes. And I am also am writing/directing and starring in a line of sexy but educational videos from Bizarre.

Q: You share a space with several prominent Dominas, can you tell me a little about it?

Ilsa: I finally grew out of having my dungeon in my home! Thus when Sabrina Belladonna, one of the conscientious Southern California dominants, asked Izabella Sol and myself to become partners with her and Storm Hamilton, I readily agreed. Thus G-Force was born.

Between us we have over 40 years of collecting tools and equipment, thus the space is amazingly appointed. The large size of the space affords us the ability to teach classes, do webcams, and also rent out the space as a filming location.

Q: I notice that you still manage to make it to San Francisco upon occasion?

Ilsa: Happily I do. I still miss the Bay area, my friends and my faithful stable of submissives that I still have there. When I moved to Los Angeles I had to develop a new stable of submissives and it was a bit sad for me. You spend years developing trust and relationships just to move and have that suspended. Thankfully many of my submissives still check out the calendar on my personal website and I get to torment them when I come up. I am generally up in the Bay area every three or four months (my next trip should be in August) and others have actually joined the great migration to Southern California and I get to see them regularly.

Q: There was a lot of press last year about “Prodomination.com” Can you tell me a little about your motivation for the project?

Ilsa: The prodomination project grew out of my work with Coyote and other sex worker organizations. I was speaking at a conference at the University of Northridge and realized that I didn’t feel like a sex worker- for what I did was about power and trust, and didn’t involve any traditional (or even Clinton-ian) definitions of sex. The psychological aspect of sexual tension was a not a necessary factor in what I was doing, in fact it only figured in a percentage of scenes, many sessions were about release on a mental (getting out of your head), physical (through intense stimulation or exertion), or spiritual (getting into a trance-like state through use of breath and stimuli). At the same point sometimes Mistresses would get busted for two reasons: A. many times in small towns where they had a moral agenda and knew that arresting the Mistress would financially force her to leave that particular berg regardless of if the charges were valid and B. they were not aware of the letter of the law in their area and thus were naďve about crossing those boundaries. Thus the prodomination project was born, a subscription web site where the content was provided by a myriad of different mistresses and in return for this exclusive content (interviews, webcats, webcam, photo galleries, stories & articles) the site provided information about laws and safety as well as having a legal defense fund to help if they were following the rules and got arrested, had custody problems, or citizenship problems.

The site is now at a year old and immense. We have thousands of exclusive photos, videos, interviews, stories, articles, videos and both a happy subscriber base and a happy Mistress base.

Q: Your first year has already seen you handle a case, has it not?

Ilsa: Yes, our first case involved a mistress in Michigan, Colleen, who

Q: Websites by their very nature are constantly evolving. Where do you see this project going in the future?

Ilsa: I see it becoming THE encyclopeadia of professional domination, go online, look up as many mistresses as you want, read their indepth intervies, see their exclusive photos, watch them on webcam and in video- it is only going to get more incredible. As for the legal defense/educational aspects- we are working on several projects right now to help educate dominants to be better informed as to the necessary legal boundaries in their area.

Q: Along those lines aren’t you doing a series of workshops?

Ilsa: Yes, the G-Force workshops- taught by Sabrina Belladonna and myself each month. These hands on workshops cover the gamut of safe, conscious play from the theory of consensual play to sophisticated hands on demonstrations of suspension rope bondage.

Los Angeles does not have as many regular workshops as San Francisco, thus we felt that a regular and progressive series of classes would behoove the entire Southern California scene. What ends up happening in these classes is that our community grows and learns together, it is really incredible. We are taping the classes so that they can be viewed by community outside of the LA area.

Q: Speaking of videos, didn’t you go up for an AVN nomination last year?

Ilsa: Yes, “Queen of Pain” directed by former Spectator staffer, David Arron Clarke was nominated for best bondage video. The video is pretty unique in that it includes extremely heavy play (with Bay Area Performance artist Jade Blue Eclipse) interplayed with interview.

Q: You’re becoming the anchor-woman of the L.A. Fetish scene for Larry Flynt Publications , what does that entail?

Ilsa: Basically I travel to different BDSM functions and ask the most interesting people lots of fascinating questions for the Channel Sex News. It’s a great deal of fun, recently I went to Fetish magazine’s TABOO party and the Grand Opening party for the fetish store Whiplash.

Q: You were one of the pioneer Dommes on the web, I remember your personal website as one of the very first I saw. Are there any major changes to look forward to?

Ilsa: I think that Mistress sites, will follow suit in the new technology that the web has to offer. More video streaming, cleaner graphics, better loading times and third generation design incorporating java, dynamic HTML and Flash.

When we recently redid our sites we tried to incorperate as much modern points as possible without alienating the viewer, I think that as people upgrade their brwosers and get higher speed acess, all things will be possible. Web design has come a way since I put up my first website, the web is overflowing with creative efforts from all corners. In terms of my personal sites, www.ilsastrix.com has several thousand pictures waiting their turn to be put into the meber’s section (with new photos being shot practically every week). I am adding a video area where people can view my videos and a game area to play some fetish oriented games. The site is going to grow quite sizable within a year’s time.

The same is true for www.prodomination.com, which we shoot new content every week. The sites are just going to get richer and more dynamic, developing better and more friendly ways to interact with the viewer.

I also just built www.rebekkaarmstrong.com for my dear friend Rebekka. She is one of the most amazing women I have met and I am fortunate enough to have her as close personal friend and family. Rebekka is a stunning Playmate who has AIDS and travels around the world educating others about the nature of this disease. E! True Hollywood Stories just did a piece on her which is well worth seeing. Her site also contains a member’s section where a portion of each subscription goes to the nonprofit organization “Women at Risk”.

Q: So would you say that your future is intertwined with the web?

Ilsa: I would say that

Q: You’ve had quite a fascinating life so far, larger than life. Since you are in Hollywood, any chance for a book or movie deal about it?

Ilsa: (Smiles) If there is, I am not going to say anything yet. I started working on a bio recently with an author who has had books published in 30 languages, however we stopped the project. There was still too much living to do to be writing it all down yet!

Q: Where do you see yourself in the future?

Ilsa: Honestly I don’t see any radical changes in my life. I live in a great household, have a good stable of dedicated and loving submissives, have the playspace of my dreams and a variety of projects to engage me creatively- I couldn’t be happier.

In October I see myself running the AIDS marathon in Chicago which I started training for in March (photos of my training are up on my site for public consumption). By next year I see myself sleeping in a bit more and traveling for pleasure occasionally.

And at some point after that, after I have sowed my oats just a bit more (grins), I will write my memoirs, and in them will be tales of San Francisco, of power and growth, of the BDSM underground and even the Spectator magazine as it was the first magazine to ever interview me.