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noiZe Magazine Music Reviews

Folsom Street Fair

Written by Steve Weinstein

Like swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano or Angelina Jolie adopting another orphan, the ever-reliable fringe group Americans for Truth About Homosexuality comes through every year with another protest centered around the Folsom Street Fair.

This annual street fair in the city’s South of Market neighborhood, celebrates all forms of human sexuality. In the past, it was centered around the gay leather world. But, like its host neighborhood, the event has become much more diverse, upscale and even family friendly.

Of course, the all-important question is: How were the parties? The answer: Great.

I think it’s safe to say that, considering the changing nature of the street fair from a gay to a much more mixed affair, gay-wise the parties have become the tail wagging the dog.
First up was Friday evening, Sept. 27, at the Eagle for an unexpected surprise: an art auction. Yes, that’s a bit like a wine tasting at a Mormon shindig, but the art was all donated by local artists to support Visual AIDS. More importantly it was cheap! I couldn’t resist; a beautiful pencil drawing of a male nude has a place of honor in my bedroom.

The next night was Magnitude. This party has developed a reputation as one of the best produced on the Circuit, and this year’s edition did not disappoint. The setting, a beautiful ballroom in the center of San Francisco, was done up with an amazing sound system and fantastic lighting that incorporated lasers, strobes, klieg lights and beams.

Local favorite DJ Paul Goodyear is well known from his stints on gay cruises. Goodyear has spun signature events like Pines Party and Sydney Mardi Gras. He cites Sylvester and the Saint as major musical influences, and you could tell from his Magnitude set, which was sexy and hard but also lyrical and melodious.

The “dungeon” space was a dungeon like Buckingham Palace is a townhouse. It was downright swanky! Whenever people got tired, they could relax downstairs, have a drink and … and bounce back to the dance floor. The shows, provided by the hot-hot-hot men of Titan Media, brought the dance floor temperature up a few notches and probably sent a few revelers downstairs for some R&R. It made for a well-rounded evening.

The next day, Sunday, was dedicated to Folsom.

As stated, the event has attracted all kinds of attention, some wanted, some not so. But this is San Francisco, and everyone has a good time—perhaps as much because of, rather in spite of, the protesters. In fact, if anything, the fair has become downright family friendly. The rabidly anti-gay Americans for Truth’s Peter Labarbera can rant about parents daring to bring their kids, but it’s nothing they can’t see during Family Hour on TV.

A local writer, Scott James, even took to the pages of the city’s major newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, to bemoan the fair’s and neighborhood’s mainstreaming. “Not too long ago, the fair was a celebration of the wild lifestyles that defined South of Market,” writes the author of the eponymous novel “SoMa.” “Now it’s just one day, more of an homage to a side of the city that’s been tamed in a stunningly short amount of time.”

The situation is analogous to other once-gritty industrial areas that have succumbed to gentrification, most notably New York City’s Meatpacking District. Once, these were mean cobbled streets where the blood of slaughtered animals was lapped up by cat-sized rats, and transgendered hookers shared the night streets with leather men going to notorious clubs like the Mine Shaft and Anvil. Now, it’s all Europeans, techie bohos and hedge fund masters, all in black, cell phones embedded into their ears.

Similarly, in SoMa (you already know the writing’s on the wall when a trendy acronym becomes accepted usage), James writes, “Most of the grittiness is gone, eliminated at an astonishing pace by development and gentrification. This year’s Folsom Street Fair will take place in the shadow of luxurious new housing complexes, with the background noise of even more construction.” Thank heavens the Eagle is still there, along with some other hard- (or hardish-)core bars.

The Chronicle headed its news story of the Sept. 28 fair, ““S.F. kinky naked romp a spanking success.” Cute. And accurate.

As a first-time visitor to the fair, I was surprised by how ... unsurprised I was. Maybe I’ve been to one-too-many Black Parties, but there was almost nothing here I would have been ashamed for my mom to witness. (I admit I sent photos to my brother in Ohio, and he was shocked—shocked!—and titillated.)

Even though many of the city’s leather bars (what remain, that is), are in SoMa, the scene has shifted from leather to leather-manquee. Most of the gay participants are of the type who put on the harnesses for the dance events that have steadily overtaken the fair itself and put them away in their “leather drawer” at the end of the night.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s fun to see hot, well-worked-out bodies dressed in fantasy leather. And there were plenty of them at Magnitude, Aftershock and Real Bad.

Polk Street may still be synonymous with hard-core leathermen, but, like Drummer, the magazine that celebrated them, the scene is inexorably changing and mainstreaming. Because the bottom line is that the Folsom Street Fair this year was at least 40 percent straight—and that includes the eager participants as well as the many “lookie-loos,” the ones with camera in hand hoping to catch a good photo op.

This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. Everything changes, and isn’t this what we wanted, to be accepted in all our wild manifestations? I was happy to see straight couples spanking, kissing, dressing as a dog, a clown, a whore, a man in a woman’s outfit being led by a woman’s in a man’s outfit.

That night, it was Real Bad’s turn. This party, put on by locals for AIDS charities, is one of those dance events that reinforces the belief that a dance floor really can be tribal. The party has the feel of a community; maybe it’s the fact that tickets are only sold through sponsors and are notoriously hard to get.

As part of the “people first” ethos, the Real Bad Committee reportedly selects the night’s DJ from a blind submission, like the Pier Dance in New York City. For that reason, Real Bad prides itself on breaking new or underused DJs, much to their credit. It has paid off in recent years.

This year, it was Tim Jones’ turn. The Londoner really knows his gay dance traditions. His set interwove hard-driving contemporary tribal with remixed Saint classics. There was a nice range of body types, ethnicities and ages on the dance floor. All in all, this compares favorably to New York’s legendary Black Party for the quality of the crowd, the music, the venue and ambience. That holds true for all of Folsom Street——a real must-do for any gay boy (or their friends).

Reader Comments

Thank you, Steve, for the kind words about the weekend. I’m so glad you had a fun leather weekend in our city and that Real Bad lived up to your expectations and brought back the right memories.

All the best,
Leif
Event Chair, REAL BAD XX

By Leif Wauters on 11-14-2008

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