International Leather Scene: First for Folsom

International Leather Scene:
“First for Folsom”

Feature in PDF

San Francisco is a city known for its street fairs. Throughout the summer, neighborhoods organize for the day that traffic is closed off and residents, tourists, merchants, craftsmen, politicos and entertainers hit the streets in a gaudy mix. Different street fairs attract different crowds (although there are those fair junkies who are known to hit every one)—Polk Street is heavily into arts and crafts, Union Street is for Yuppies and straight singles, Valencia draws Third Worlders and resident lesbians, Haight is a Deja vu festival for the Sixties set, and the Castro Street Fair is known all over the gay world as a one-day wonder of transvestites and Polish hot dogs, politicians and punk rockers—and a crash course in multiple cruising for the uninitiated.

This year saw the first-ever Folsom Street Fair, held September 23 over several blocks of leather’s Main Street USA. Crowds were bigger than most observers expected, and curiously mixed. There was certainly more leather in evidence than at this year’s Castro Street Fair—and maybe more straights as well. The Fair was, after all, a neighborhood effort, not just a leather festival. As one spokeswoman noted, Folsom Street and the South of Market area is a neighborhood of minorities, the elderly and gay men—so, on the same block, visitors could shop at the booth of a novelty emporium selling “naughty” party items, talk seriously about SM to members of the Society of Janus, and view artwork in crayon by children from a local grade school. “Only in San Francisco,” as the saying goes…

There were fewer politicians, craftsmen, organization booths and stops for food-and-beer than at the city’s more established street fairs—which left more elbowroom for the crowd, most of whom came mainly to look at each other anyway. The weather was terrific, spirits were high, and leather was everywhere, gleaming in the sunlight.