The Leather Family At Risk: Folsom Street Community Responds
Mergers and Acquisitions: Hunkering Down For The Long Haul
By the time of the third fair, Valerio and Salinger had assumed full
leadership of the event, and attempted to follow through on its origins
as a tool for organizing the whole of SOMA; they formed SCAN (South
of Market Community Association), which by 1988 along with the fair
also was working on Friends of South of Market Health Center, South
of Market Police Community Relations, and, on September 1 that year,
they launched a quarterly neighborhood newspaper, “The Southern Oracle.”
Under the Valerio/Salinger leadership, the fair continued to grow, soon
becoming the largest leather event in the world. Interestingly, almost
simultaneously, another group of individuals was independently helping
the leather community launch other key events as further resilient,
in-your-face reactions to AIDS.
In 1985, the late Patrick Toner was awarded the title of International
Mr. Leather in Chicago. Michael Polansky remembers him as an incredibly
charismatic, magnetic person to whom no one could say “no.” Working
with Jerry Vallaire and others, Toner became involved with Rita Rockett,
who under the aegis of the Godfather Fund, was organizing meals for
the patients in Ward 5-B (later 5-A), SF General Hospital’s first AIDS
ward. (Rockett had come into contact with the gay community working
at the Balcony, a club on Market Street).
Toner and Vallaire realized that they needed to have a party both to
raise money for this and other AIDS-related work and to keep up the
spirits of a community coming under siege. SOMA was dotted with favorite
public sex sites, but one of particular fond infamy was Ringold Alley,
across the street from a popular bathhouse. Vallaire recalls, “All of
us, being regular patrons of Ringold Alley, had our own little running
jokes about our experiences there. Mine was that I was going to open
up an after-hours bar right in the middle of the block and call it “Up
Your Alley.” So Patrick said, “Why not ‘Up Your Alley’? Perfect.” From
this came the first Up Your Alley Fair. Nocturnal bliss was transformed
into a daytime celebration—a community coming out fully into the open
and taking over a public space to demonstrate not only its erotic pleasures
but also its united strength (and sense of humor) in helping each other
in face of a crisis. Held in the first week of August, the fair’s success
inspired the group to carry on, so that the next year, 1986, they incorporated
the event as Up Your Alley, Inc., but became the victims of their own
success. Ringold is a residential alley, and the neighbors while tolerating
dead-in-the-night activity did not take kindly to this sudden explosion
of leather and fetish men and women on their street. They successfully
petitioned the city and the SFPD to rescind the granting of a license
for a third year.
This did not daunt the spirits of Up Your Alley, Inc. They simply moved
over to another favorite trysting spot, Dore Alley, between Folsom
and Howard and 9th and 10th streets. In many respects,
this alley made for a better fair location. It fed directly onto the
heart of Folsom and it contained in its middle a large parking lot,
which could be used for vendor booths and food courts. In its first
year at this site, 1987, Up Your Alley took on most of its present character,
occupying all of the alley between Folsom and Howard and having an attendance
of roughly 10,000 that has remained stable to this day. Over time the
fair grounds have grown to include the stretch of Folsom between 9th
and 10th.
Titles, Trystes, Runs…and Raising Funds
This fair was just one part of a thriving leather/Imperial Court community
that congregated, recreated, tricked and fundraised up and down the
“Miracle Mile” and the streets and alleyways around it. To mention a
few names of bars and sex clubs from the 70s and 80s is like calling
off the honor guard of a heroic, almost mythic past—The Arena, The Stud,
the Ambush, the Powerhouse, the Black and Blue, the Ramrod, Febe’s,
The Folsom Prison, the Boot Camp, the Red Star Saloon, the Folsom Barracks,
the Club Baths, and the Eagle. Through the 70s and into the mid-80s,
these sites were packed seven nights a week. The streets throbbed and
hummed from the sexual excitement and the camaraderie that comes from
having a place one can truly call “home.” The roots of Folsom’s establishment
as the black and blue heart of San Francisco can be traced back to 1964,
when the Toolbox opened, the first leather bar South of Market. In 1966,
a leather community that had been highly structured for two decades
through motorcycle clubs and was regularly taking well-organized excursions
outside the city in club “runs,” established the first in-city “fair”
to celebrate their lifestyle—the CMC (California Motor Club) Carnival.
Held each year the first Sunday after Halloween in the Maritime Hall,
it soon became a site not only for booths and food vendors but for open
orgies. It also became a vehicle for community fundraising.
This high-charged marriage of erotic free-for-all and building of community
carried through to the 70s when the bar-based contests (such as Mr.
Powerhouse, Mr. Eagle, etc.) were begun. These fed in the late 70s that
fed into the Mr. SF Leather contest, which in turn fed into the International
Mr. Leather competition. The title holders were expected to not only
revel in the prestige of their win, but were expected to use that title
to further charitable and political work needed on behalf of their community.
These titles sat at the apex of a pyramid of smaller events constantly
being held, often weekly. Generating excitement and rivalry, these contests
channeled competitive urges into an effort to outdo—to go over the top,
in combining congenial fun and raunchy eroticism with building a sense
of community.
A central fixture and bete noire abettor of this scene was Mr. Marcus,
the internationally known leather figure. A part of the leather world
in San Francisco from its beginnings in SOMA, Mr. Marcus also has authored
one of the two longest-running columns in the city’s oldest continuously
published gay newspaper, the Bay Area Reporter (B.A.R.). Since
1971, his leather column has promoted events, dished happily (and at
times bitingly) about individuals and contests, and has remained a must-read.
Mr. Marcus was also elected the first Emperor of San Francisco in 1973,
part of a group of gay men who wanted to inject a more masculinist role
model into community leadership positions.
Dr.Gayle Rubin has noted in her famous article about the SOMA leather
world entitled “Valley of the Kings,” that this name came from Mr. Marcus,
who used it to distinguish the strong male image of the Miracle Mile
from the “Valley of the Queens” (the drag-infused Tenderloin) and the
“Valley of the Dolls” (the young hippie-infused Castro).
An equally important contribution of Mr. Marcus has been his tireless
promotion for decades of the use of bar-based contests to “stir up the
pot” before passing the hat. He often has played direct roles as M.C.
or in assisting in selection of panels of judges, or acting as a judge
himself. Michael Polansky remembers in the late 70s the anticipation
of turning out to the Boot Camp to watch Mr. Marcus go to town on the
contestants for the “Fun Buns” competition.
Drumming Up Laughter, Tears and Dollars
This tradition of mixing just the right social cocktail of humor
and gravity, of fun and fundraising, stood the leather community in
good stead again and again as the AIDS epidemic detonated and then spread
out with such lethal rapidity throughout the 80s and early 90s. The
Up Your Alley Fair was cut whole from this cloth, and the Folsom Street
Fair became increasingly woven into its fabric as the 80s progressed
and the leather community began to claim the event more and more as
its own. By 1986, the AIDS Emergency Fund, Project Open Hand and Coming
Home and Shanti hospices had all been established. They were vigorously
supported by constant fundraising in the leather community, by events
large and small. All of this is evidence of a community laboring to
take care of itself in the face of a president of the United States
who refused to even publicly use the word AIDS until 1986. Given this
strong resistance to official apathy, it is no surprise, and an indicator
of much, that it was a leather person, Mr. Drummer 1988, Tony DeBlase,
who designed the Gay Pride Flag.
Into the second half of the 80s, refusing to allow AIDS to cripple
the community’s desire to celebrate itself, Jerry Vallaire and the other
organizers were involved in establishing and carrying on key banner
events: founding the Military Ball (January 31, 1986) and assuming production
of the Mr. SF Leather contest (1987) and the Mr. Drummer and Mr. Northern
California Drummer contests (as of 1988). This group was further responsible
for innovating the idea of putting on the Mr. Drummer contest in the
week prior to the Folsom Street Fair, folding in other leather activities
to build up excitement and anticipation, and dubbing this fetish suite
“Leather Week.” It had its debut in 1988.
Terry Thompson, owner of the Eagle Tavern, was another key innovator
and organizer. In the late 80s, he attempted to launch a third street
fair in the SOMA area. Event ’87 and ’88 took place in August on the
street near the Eagle (Harrison and 11th). While this venture
did not take hold as Up Your Alley and Folsom had, another baby of Thompson
is with us today—The Bare Chest Calendar. Begun as a bar promotion in
1984 by the owner of the Arena (where Thompson was the manager), the
first calendar appeared in 1985 and quickly in 1986 it became a fundraising
vehicle for the AIDS Emergency Fund, which it still supports today.
Thompson continued direction of production of the calendar throughout
the late 80s, doing this from 1986 on at the Eagle, where he became
manager after leaving the Arena. Mr. Marcus contributed his MC’ing skills
at the contests that selected each month’s man, and continued the tradition
of questioning candidates in a way that was provocative, fun, outrageous
and revealing. The calendar was sold primarily at the Eagle until 1990,
when Jerry Roberts hit on the idea of using the men in the calendar
to sell the calendar at the corner of 18th and Castro streets.
Roberts has since taken over primary stewardship for the promotion of
the calendar, building and expanding on his idea by having the calendar
men travel to all kinds of community events and fairs. All of the enhanced
proceeds in turn have gone back to the AIDS Emergency Fund. In the late
90s, South of Market Merchants’ and Individuals’ Lifestyle Events (SMMILE),
in continuing cooperation with Jerry Roberts, took on the responsibility
of producing the Bare Chest Calendar.
All of this energy and accomplishment must be set against the reality
of AIDS relentlessly claiming lives, overwhelming the energy of survivors,
(both men and women) to care for the sick and dying, and leading to
volunteer burnout and exhaustion. By the mid to late 80s, the thriving
seven-day-a-week packed house bar scene in SOMA began to dry up. A sharp
and sobering indicator of this is the 1985 Bare Chest Calendar. Three
of the earlier winners had passed away from AIDS complications by the
time the photographer was ready to shoot for the year in November. The
Up Your Alley fairs, despite best intentions, began to consistently
lose more and more money with each successive year, until in 1989 there
was serious thought of giving up on the event. The Folsom Street Fair
also was undergoing in the late 80s the same attrition of fatigue.
