Towards the end of September in San Francisco every year, things swell into a big gay holiday frenzy not unlike it does in December for the rest of the world. People are planning and preparing for the festivities of one day, The Folsom Street Fair, and a few days and nights of related celebrations preceding. The Folsom Street Fair as an event has always been hard to categorize exactly. It started 19 years ago as an unusual celebration of the leather subculture and alternative gay and lesbian sex and fetish behaviors inherent to the south of market neighborhood, then teaming with leather bars, sex clubs, bath houses, alley cruising, all-night discos and a hedonistic territorial sense. Folsom street was where it all happened, and one day of the year in the light of day the community exhibited and flaunted its mysterious and specialized darker sexual identity. Over the years the fair has grown into one of California’s largest annual public events, drawing crowds as large as 300,000 and defining itself as the worlds largest international leather event. Living on Folsom Street for 9 years now, I’ve become quite used to the annual sea of pierced, tattooed, bound, strapped, painted, exposed, titled, sashed and stratified flesh on parade below my window. So have the more adventurous heterosexuals, embracing and co-opting elements of alternative sexual expression and fetishism, or at least watching it stroll past them for an afternoon. In a way the event has become less titillating, shocking and outrageous for me personally, diluted in it’s sense of community as I’ve never felt like wearing leather made me a part of a larger entity like it does for many, but the fair makes for one of the more mesmerizing sensory-overload ganders from my window all year.
While cruising around on the internet, making purchases on e-bay, trading music files, tossing off, etc., it really blew me away just how many people from points all over the world, were coming to san Francisco for The Folsom Street Fair, often making the pilgrimage every year. It really does matter to thousands of people, like a big international leather summit, something they draw amusement, pride and strength from, identification, a sense of belonging, a unity. Plus it raises lots of money for community related charities. To me it’s just become another reason for grown gay men to walk around scantily clad while pinching their own nipples, or pissing on each other or enslaving each other or even to emulate animals like dogs or beasts of burden—I’ll never forget the costumed and bridled boys pretending to be horses just like the girls used to do in fourth grade after reading Black Beauty—only they were never pulling a cart with a riding crop-brandishing dominatrix in tow. At any rate—the event is soon upon us and in the flurry of activities surrounding that weekend there are a few key events I wanted to point out or remind you readers to make room for in your leather, P&P, ceremony, function endurance schedules.
The one event I am the most excited about takes place on Saturday September 28 from 5:30 until 10 PM at The New Black, a gallery/ installation space located at 2120 Bryant between 19th and 20th streets. Curated by Ken Woodard and entitled The Uranus Show: A Photo Retrospective, this exhibit will feature images captured in and around the notorious 4 year period from 1989 to 1992 when a club called Uranus produced by Michael Blue and Lewis Walden created and defined a place for the disenfranchised freaks, the rapidly growing and militantly visible political activists, the non-clone zoners, an ever broadening realm of drag and genderfuck artists, and a young crowd anxious to grab a hold of some of the hedonistic ghost of gay life past being rapidly extinguished by the advent of the AIDS epidemic and re-invent, educate and celebrate a new sexual identity that wouldn’t kill us. Uranus accomplished so many things on so many levels. It shaped and produced superstars, it allowed so many individuals to shine by encouraging and honoring what they had to offer creatively or support their willingness to take expression to new extremes. I’ve never witnessed a better array of chosen go-go dancers assembled anywhere on earth, theme nights were clever, visual décor was ever changing, performances and special events there are now legendary, and the forever eclectic, driven, innovative and unpredictable dj team of Lewis Walden and Michael Blue kept things dark, hard, funny, funky and exalted and definitely influential. It was the most brilliant nightclub experience I ever lived in.
Some of the most talented respected photographers in San Francisco were there capturing this extraordinary event faithfully. Daniel Nicoletta, Marc Geller, Jessica Tanzer and Lewis Walden are the dream team contributors for this collection of images and leave no doubt in my mind that the spirit of Uranus will be collectively nailed with vivid detail and unbridled enthusiasm. To see them in action at Uranus was to see a trail of flashes in the dark forever moving. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost 10 years since Uranus closed. I’m certain this show will effectively take us back with ease, like magic. Also present and providing music for this one night only event are the two men who made it all possible, Lewis and Michael. What they created was indescribably essential, a phenomenon of historical importance and community that I’ve never seen equaled in clubland since and continues to define standards and ideals a decade after the fact. The camera’s eye captures the truth, and greatness and wonder shall resonate from the walls of The New Black. Don’t miss this one night only event.
It’s odd that I write about one photography exhibit, let alone two, but the night before the Uranus show there’s another gallery show opening of particular note at the Peres Project, located at 1800 Bryant Street Suite 210 from 6 to 9 pm. It’s a solo photo show of 30 images by the notorious homo punk provocateur, filmmaker, writer, pornographer and photographer, Bruce LaBruce, a living legend of wrongness and artistic terror, and a hysterically funny and caustic genius essayist. Check out his regular contributions online to The Eye at http://www.eye.net/ for copious amounts of his informed inflammatory ruminations on society, politics and modern culture. Bruce has always been a completely fascinating character whom I’ve been acquainted with since the production of his first Zine, the revolutionary homo punk publication J.D.’s. His most recent film project Skin Gang, was screened at international film festivals and released in adult video stores simultaneously, two slightly differing versions of a skinhead saga that culminates with a gang of skinheads (who are no strangers to sex with each other and a quick jack off on a copy of Mein Kampf) invading the home of a bourgeois bi-racial couple whom they rob, imprison and torture, has been a very popular feature requested often by guests at my home. But Skin Gang (available by mail order from All Worlds) is old news at this point and Bruce is set to start his next film project in Berlin, again creating two versions for a dual assault of film fests and adult video stores. This time there will be a terrorist theme, and the title is Raspberry Reich and the story will be loosely based on the Baeder-Meinhof Gang, a West German terrorist group active in the early 70’s. Again, Bruce Labruce’s bent vision and penchant for fucking with currently taboo or even dangerous subject matter completely thrills and astonishes. Mr. LaBruce will be present at this opening Friday September 27 from 6 to 9pm and will be in San Francisco for about a week. I wonder if he’ll find the time to pull any belligerent bad-boy stunts like he used to on visits to SF. I always loved that about Bruce, his willingness to do the wrong thing, to hurl anti-social behaviors in every direction, to be inexcusably bad. Maybe he just wants to sell art this time. Maybe you want to buy some. This event rates another don’t miss it.
Finally another event pops up the night after the Folsom Street Fair, and it’s an important political fundraiser so scrub that Crisco smell off your person, salve your welts and put on something respectable, its time to support District 8 Supervisor Candidate Tom Radulovich by attending “The New Deal” at Café DuNord September 30, doors at 8 show at 9. A $10 suggested donation but come on folks –you can do better than that! Tom Radulovich is a person who has always struck me as a born organizer, genuinely concerned with real issues, incredibly intelligent, friendly and approachable and the finest choice for supervisor candidacy we’ve had at the starting gate in a long long time. How delightful for us in San Francisco that his campaign has drawn the support of one of the greatest entertainers on the planet whose star began to rise and burn bright right here in this very same venue about a decade ago with her passionate rendition of “Total Eclipse of The Heart.” That’s right, internationally acclaimed performer, fresh in from a wildly successful 6 week run in London as half of the acclaimed cabaret duo Kiki and Herb, the one and only Justin Bond returns to the Café DuNord for one night only as a new character he’s been introducing around New York, The Cool Babysitter. Bond explains, “She’s the kind of girl your parents would have over to baby sit you but they’re kind of afraid to leave you alone with ‘cause she’s got crazy ideas that might rub off on you.” Justin Bond is the finest most accomplished artist and export this city ever produced. His return is reason enough for dancing in the street. Another appropriate reason would of course be Radulovich’s victory. Other performers rounding out the bill and sparkling things up for this evening of entertainment is the lovely and talented Veronica Klaus and newcomer Spencer Day. Hosting the event will be Supervisor Mark Leno and the inimitable Juanita MORE! and appearances by Trannyshack goddess Heklina and the delightful Ggreg Taylor. Save just a little of your energy for one post-Folsom Street Fair event you surely wont want to miss, as well as a chance to support a campaign you can truly believe in.