Sex & Love

Best use for puppy love

Lend a Heart, Inc.

Like most pet owners, you’ve probably experienced that uncontrollable sensation when your furry sidekick seems so devastatingly lovable that you go into cute overload and have to share it with someone. Instead of bombarding your polite but less than enthusiastic friends with the unabridged chronicles of Fluffball’s adorable shenanigans, channel that extra cuteness to a good cause. Register your dog, cat or rabbit as a certified therapy animal with Sacramento-based Lend a Heart. The animal-assisted therapy program will send you and your love ambassador to hospitals, assisted living centers, schools and wherever else needs some critter lovin’.

www.lendaheart.org.
T.E.

Best way to kick off a weekend for two

Yoga in the Park

If you’re finding it difficult to shrug off a rough week in order to enjoy time with your honey, then maybe it’s time to stretch and bend your way to some weekend bliss. Every Saturday morning at McKinley Park, just west of the rose garden, yoga instructor Gina Garcia leads an all-level vinyasa class that, with its mix of calming stretches and muscle-burning poses, is at once relaxing and invigorating. Just bring a mat, towel and water—and maybe your sweetie, too. Practicing yoga in the grass, shaded by trees and accompanied by the occasional duck that wanders over from the pond? Yes, please.

Saturdays at 9 a.m. Free. 601 Alhambra Boulevard, www.facebook.com/
yogaacrossamerica.
R.L.

Best place to get an orgasm

Unique Balance Hormone & Rejuvenation Center

Fortunately, the Sacramento area’s plastic-surgery obsession is paying off for women who are having trouble in the “O” zone. Unique Balance Hormone Center in Rocklin offers a great treatment to cure such issues—G-spot collagen. Call in to get some first-rate injectables in your hoo-hoo and you’ll be feeling the “oh-oh” in no time. For $1,200 you can have intensified sensations for six to eight months, repeat if necessary. Yeah, it may be a little pricey, but orgasms are priceless. Also, if you’ve had some wear and tear down there, Unique Balance also offers various vaginal rejuvenation procedures to get it looking like new again: labiaplasty, vaginoplasty and perineoplasty—you get the picture.

4351 Pacific Street in Rocklin, (916) 632-8792, www.uniquebalance.net.
S.P.

Best scenic drive

Jefferson Boulevard

For some, there’s nothing like the comforting feeling of a long, scenic drive, and West Sacramento’s countryside offers just that. After exiting Jefferson Boulevard from Interstate 80 west, turn left and follow the road past the tract homes and strip malls of West Sacramento. You’ll know you’re on the right track once the road snakes slightly up, introducing you to the lush, green fields and trees in the outskirts of Sacramento. On this drive, expect to follow the river, see aged buildings and green for miles. All that’s left to do is organize a playlist for the drive and ask someone special to accompany you.
S.R.

Best Valentine’s chocolates beyond Russell Stover

Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates

If you want something sweet for your sweetheart, it’s time to back away from the supermarket aisle and venture instead to Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates. The chocolates aren’t anything like the kind you received along with a Power Rangers valentine in third grade—they’re beautifully crafted, preservative-free bites of made-from-scratch chocolate, peanut butter, caramel and cream. You can fill a box with exactly the treats you want. Some of the best options are the fleur de sel caramel, raspberry and toasted coconut. They come wrapped elegantly and simply with a bow and can serve as a symbol of your tasteful relationship.

1801 L Street, Suite 60; (916) 706-1738; www.gingerelizabeth.com.
B.S.

Best cheap thrill

Kiss N Tell

Never mind the very large man in front of the equally large security monitor behind the counter. He wants you to peruse the scented oils, rubber phalluses and hardcore DVD library. Just don’t steal anything. Because that would be bad. And probably very unpleasant. Visibly perched along a high corner of bustling Sunrise Boulevard in Fair Oaks, Kiss N Tell seems like the kind of place where Zed, Maynard and their gimp would come for kinky inspiration. The level of customer service depends on who’s manning the register, but the merchandise is as geared to the erotically well-traveled as it is giggly first-timers. Raved Jeff H. on the website Insider Pages: “… [L]ast time the lady working the counter introduced us to a female libido pill called spark, that night was unforgettable, after 15 mins of her taking the pill she became the most insatiable, irresistible, aggressive, sex machine.” Kudos to anyone who buys and actually plays naked Twister.

4201 Sunrise Boulevard in Fair Oaks, (916) 966-5477, www.kissntellstore.com.
R.H.

Best way to save gas on a dinner and movie date

Tower Cafe and Tower Theatre

Sometimes it seems as though Tower Cafe and Tower Theatre, both Sacramento institutions, were specifically built next to each other with first dates in mind. Couples can start out at the cafe, which has enough variation in the menu to please nearly everybody, and then head over to the theater for a movie without having to endure a possibly awkward and definitely environmentally-unfriendly car ride. The old-fashioned theater is a great romantic spot, but it’s after the movie where the real magic happens, because you can go back the cafe for some cozy Mexican hot chocolate. All of a sudden, an archetypal dinner-and-a-movie date has turned into something much more.

Tower Cafe, 1518 Broadway; (916) 441-0222; www.towercafe.com. Tower Theatre, 2508 Land Park Drive; (916) 442-4700; www.thetowertheatre.com.
B.S.

Best strip club to question one’s life choices

City Limits Showgirls

For maximum lustful self-loathing, we’d suggest entering the paradoxically dungeon-dark interior of this gentleman’s club on a bright and holy Sunday afternoon. At such a time, you may find—as we did one such Sabbath—an opportunity to pay a $15 cover with the winning caveat that it comes with “all the free pop you want.” With a bottomless glass of Dr. Pepper in hand, we found a slight Asian man in dark sunglasses (future so bright?) aggressively chucking crumpled-up dollar bills at the dutifully writhing dancer onstage. This front-row customer wasn’t making it rain so much as making it hail. Once the head-rattling beats subsided, our blue-collar mistress of the day picked up each wrinkled piece of currency and made her exit. So did we, leaving our perspiring glass of pop on the table. It was half-full.

5809 Auburn Boulevard, (916) 344-8118, www.myspace.com/franky69666.
R.H.

Best kept Secret

Secrets

It is only really noticeable on Auburn Boulevard’s busy thoroughfare at night, when the hot-pink sign, radioactive green accent bars and blood-orange overhangs call out with luminescent prurience. We spotted the store by happy accident, jerking the wheel right into an inadequately teensy parking lot crowded by two unhitched trailers. Appropriately, it’s once you get inside this adult boutique on the outskirts of Sacramento that Secrets is truly revealed. Without planning to, we found everything we needed for an upcoming friend’s surprise birthday party: a penis-shaped cake pan, penis party masks (picture the Lone Ranger with Cyrano de Bergerac’s schnoz), tiara, ribald party games and the coup de grâce—a toddler-sized dildo with squirting capability and its own recipe for, uh, you know. Our plan was to repurpose it for uncomfortably graphic alcohol delivery. “Let me know if you want me to take it out,” the friendly shopkeeper offered. That’s what she said.

5700 Auburn Boulevard, (916) 332-5809.
R.H.

Best proof that you can buy love

Sacramento SPCA pet adoption

Maybe love shouldn’t cost a thing, but when you adopt a pet from the Sacramento chapter of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, those fees buy you companionship, playtime, snuggling—and a whole lot more. Adoption fees ($100 for a dog, $85 for a cat) include the animal’s first round of shots, spaying or neutering service, a certificate for a free veterinary office visit from a participating clinic, food and toys, a microchip and the first year’s fees for the mandatory city of Sacramento license. In addition, you’ll receive one-on-one animal placement counseling to help you find the best fit. We can’t think of a better, cheaper first date that’s sure to end in ever-lasting love.

6201 Florin-Perkins Road, (916) 383-7387, www.sspca.org.
R.L.

What’s the best pickup line you ever used? Did it work?

SN&R’s Facebook friends respond:

“Wanna come over tonight and help me spackle this wall? And yes.” —Bryan Clugston III

“Baby, I am a wrestler, let me take you down. And no, it didn’t.” —James Anderson

“I have a big sack of dope and a Camero. And hell yes, it worked.” —Michael Fleming

“‘I like your bag.’ Now married with two kids. That’s how gangsters do it.” —Alec Binyon

“You must have a mirror in your pocket, ’cause I can see myself in your pants! And no.” —April Jiru