Club EASSEL

Club EASSEL ran for about four years as Milwaukee's self-described "BDSM/Lifestyle Community Center" — a sex-positive, body-positive, kink-inclusive members space built out of a suite inside a multi-tenant 1950s flex/industrial building at 615 S 89th Street, on the western edge of Milwaukee proper at the West Allis border. The club shared the building with a mechanical contractor, a junk-removal franchise and a construction firm — daytime industrial tenants who closed up by the time EASSEL's doors opened. The brand name is a stylised respelling of "easel" — the artist's stand — and that framing recurred in the club's own copy: "fun and exciting ways to explore your sexuality in a safe and sex-positive environment" and "explore your art in a body positive space." Eassel LLC was registered in Wisconsin on 11 December 2020 with Kathryn S. Huntington listed as registered agent; the club opened to the public not long after. EASSEL ran an unusual format for the US lifestyle scene — kink/BDSM-forward rather than swing-forward, members-only and application-based but unusually transparent for the niche (LLC on public record, BBB profile under "Adult Entertainment" with an A+ rating, Facebook and Instagram both maintained). It sat outside the standard swinger directories — not on SDC, Kasidie, SwingLifestyle or SwingersHelp — and lived instead on FetLife, Instagram, a Wisconsin Facebook lifestyle group, and a handful of community-centre listings (including a Madison sex-positive therapist's referral page). Programming ran Tuesday 7:30–10:30pm and Friday/Saturday 8pm–2am, with a regular Karaoke Night anchoring the weekly cadence and BDSM munches and play parties filling the rest. The Church of Ecstasy lifestyle aggregator rated it the highest-scoring Milwaukee venue at 4.2/5. The only public-facing peer in the city was The Key Social Club — a 21+ swinger-leaning social — and the two operated as complements rather than competitors. In the second half of 2024 the EASSEL name sunset and the venue rebranded as Inversion MKE. The change is documented in the City of Milwaukee Board of Zoning Appeals agenda for 12 September 2024, which lists "Inversion MKE, LLC" applying for a special use permit at 615 S 89th Street, and was confirmed in an r/milwaukee thread by a regular who clarified that "EASSEL did not close, just renamed to Inversion a few months ago. The management changed. It's now one of the best run establishments I know of. Everyone is super nice and there is a great culture of safety and consent." The clubeassel.com domain went offline shortly after, displaying a developer placeholder dated 2025. The Instagram, Facebook and FetLife accounts remain visible but inactive under the old name. The Club EASSEL brand is closed; the venue itself continues, under new ownership and a new identity, at the same address.