LOS ANGELES—Adult industry veteran Harlan Yaffe, who co-founded Pride Studios and PrideBucks, passed away Monday in Miami, his brother confirmed on Facebook today. Yaffe had been battling cancer. He was 56.
Harlan’s younger brother Hal posted: “The family of Harlan Blaine Yaffe is saddened to share with the world Harlan passed away peacefully on Monday, February 4th. 56 years young. Harlan had been stoic and not discussing his health in public. He had very recently been diagnosed with lung cancer and was supposed to get the test results of a biopsy on 2/7. Unfortunately his illness had already spread through his body and he is now at peace and with our parents. There will be more details about a celebration of life for his friends and family. Until then, please feel free to share your favorite Harlan memories here. Harlan was a gift to this world and treasure to humanity. RIP Big Brother.”
Harlan co-founded Pride Studios in 2002, growing the company to the point where it became a key acquisition for Gamma Entertainment in 2013, when Gamma subsidiary Buddy Profits bought all of its assets. Pride’s portfolio of websites included ExtraBigDicks.com, MenOver30.com, CircleJerkBoys.com, 1GayPass.com and BoyzParty.com—which are all now integrated under the blue-chip gay affiliate program, Buddy Profits.
“I know he was sick but this was still sudden,” said Yaffe’s close friend, Rainey Stricklin, the digital strategist for JuicyAds who first met Harlan at an Internext Expo in the early 2000s.
Most recently Yaffe had been contributing to NakedSword’s gay porn blog TheSword.com, according to Stricklin.
“We were very close,” Stricklin said. “We met at an Internext in Hollywood, Florida, 15 years ago. He was there as an affiliate and we connected and he and [Joseph Sterner and David Brinton] started PrideBucks; and then they hired me on as a consultant and I worked for them for a number of years. We became like family—the four of us—and we just stayed close since then.”
Yaffe, who was from Toledo, Ohio, and graduated from Kent State, had a background in graphic design, Stricklin said.
“He was very proud of his alma mater,” she said.
“He was just one of those characters that words just came out of his mouth and made people laugh and made people happy. He just had a way with everybody. There wasn’t anybody that didn’t like him. He was just a bright light in any room he entered.”
Stricklin said the PrideBucks network grew because of “the dedication of Harlan, Joe and David.”
“They built an amazing company and cared about their performers and their affiliates. They were the Three Musketeers. They made something great that they were proud of.”
She said Yaffe also was proud of his Jewish heritage.
“He was very close with his brother and niece and nephew,” she added. “He was just one of those guys everybody liked. He was gay. He was flamboyant. And he was bombastic in that way that everybody loved him.”
And Yaffe loved to work.
“He was kind of a workaholic,” Stricklin continued. “He loved being online, loved the internet, loved designing things and working with social media and writing. He also wrote a lot about his Jewish heritage in a way that a lot of people said resonated with them. He was influential, especially in the gay industry. He brought a lot of people together.”
