Folsom Street Fair

About Folsom Street Fair

The annual Folsom Street Fair is held on the last Sunday in September and caps San Francisco's Leather Pride Week. The Folsom Street Fair, sometimes simply referred to as Folsom, is located on Folsom Street between 7th and 12th Streets, in San Francisco's South of Market district. It was started in 1984 and is California's third largest spectator event and the world's largest leather event and showcase for S&M products and culture. It has grown as a non-profit run and non-profit benefitting organization with all donations at the gates going to charity groups as well as numerous fundraising schemes within the festival including games, beverage booths and even spanking for donations to capitalize on the adult-themed exhibitionism.

Folsom Street had been the center of San Francisco's leather community since the 1960s. This community had been active in resisting the City's ambitious redevelopment program for the South of Market area throughout the 1970s. But as the AIDS epidemic unfolded in the 1980s, the community's relative autonomy from City Hall was dramatically weakened. The crisis became an opportunity for the City (in the name of public health) to close bathhouses and regulate bars.

In 1984, as these spaces for gay community were rapidly closing, a coalition of housing activists and community organizers decided to start a street fair. The fair would enhance the visibility of the community, provide a means for much-needed fundraising, and create opportunities for members of the leather community to connect to services and vital information (e.g., regarding safer sex) that bathhouses and bars might otherwise have been situated to distribute.