The Hotties of Harm Reduction calendar is returning. The original team behind the calendars have decided that the time is right, we need more beauty in the world. We were deep into planning for the photoshoot for October 2020, then the pandemic happened and the world closed down.

We now plan to do a full hotties photoshoot at the location will be in Puerto Rico to coincide with the National Harm Reduction Conference. which we hope will be in 2022. Timing the shoot with the conference allows us to maximise the number of people we can include… and, well… Puerto Rico!

So… the whole social distancing thing means that having a photographer come spend time with a load of folk in the same space is… an issue.

So our new plan is to make this more of a self pleasure thing. We’ll let folk know more about these plans in the next few weeks.

The Hotties of Harm Reduction (HOHR) was born, like so many good things in the harm reduction community, during an inebriated conversation at a house party. This one was in Albany, CA during the summer of 2003 among a group of friends/comrades/colleagues who worked or volunteered at some combination of the Berkeley Free Clinic (BFC), Needle Exchange Emergency Distribution (NEED) of Berkeley and (the original) Points of Distribution (POD) of Oakland and San Francisco.

During the party the conversation turned to the fact that there were so many HOT people in the harm reduction community! Full consensus was immediate- with various people confessing to a variety of crushes on people that they knew from the local/ national/ international harm reduction scenes. A recent news story of a nude charity calendar had been in the press and someone, lost to the mists of time and inebriants, suggested “Wouldn’t it be funny if there were a nude calendar for the harm reduction community?” to many giggles and much excitement.

The team behind Hotties is mostly the same as it used to be (although slightly older). Catherine Swanson and Arielle McKee are still the organising powerhouses they have always been. Kasper Koczab (the original photographer) has stepped away from the project (but has given his approval for us to continue). The talented Nigel Brunsdon is taking over photography and website duties.