San Francisco Chronicle - September 22, 2005
Wyatt Buchanan, wbuchanan@sfchronicle.com.

It still exists physically, in the alleyways and in the buildings where bars and bath houses that nurtured a nascent leather scene into a dominant gay subculture that still calls the neighborhood home. But the buildings mostly have reincarnated into straight bars, apartment buildings, big-box stores, hostels and restaurants.

No signs or historical markers identify places like the original Stud bar or the former Club Baths San Francisco, a famous bath house that now is an Episcopal homeless shelter.

While the Castro was the political center of gay San Francisco, Folsom Street was the sex center, according to anthropologist Gayle Rubin, who has researched and written about the leather community in the 1970s. It had more gay bath houses and sex clubs than any other San Francisco neighborhood. It was one of the "most extensively and densely occupied leather neighborhoods in the world," Rubin wrote in "In Changing Times," a collection of essays about gays and lesbians and AIDS.

This Sunday, hundreds of thousands of people are expected for the 22nd Folsom Street Fair, which celebrates the leather and fetish culture. Leading up to the event, Eric Rofes, a Humboldt State University professor and longtime gay activist, has been conducting walking tours of the area to highlight some of the most famous -- or infamous -- sites. Hundreds of people have signed up to go, some coming from Europe specifically for the tour, Rofes said.

"A lot of men view the Folsom era as the golden age in gay life and the leather scene," said Rofes, who is writing a book about gay culture nationwide during the decade preceding the AIDS epidemic. He has interviewed 100 gay men from diverse backgrounds and locales and plans to focus in the book on their stories of daily life.

He cautioned that the broad brushstrokes don't tell the whole story, as many view the era as reckless and irresponsible, setting the stage for a rapid spread of AIDS.

But blaming the leather community for spreading the disease is unfair and inaccurate, Rubin argues.

"Leather sex and leather men had become easy targets for AIDS blame. They were already disdained, and their sexual practices were often feared or disparaged," Rubin wrote in her essay "The Miracle Mile: South of Market and Gay Male Leather, 1962-1997."

On a tour earlier this week, about 50 men followed Rofes from site to site in what also once was known as the "Valley of the Kings," referring to the hyper masculinity promulgated by the leather scene. At each of the 14 stops between 7th and 10th streets between Folsom and Bryant, Rofes read oral histories he has recorded, and people on the tour told their stories.

"It was every fantasy you ever wanted, and then a fantasy you didn't think of was in the next room," Domenic Nunziato said of the Cauldron, a bathhouse in a nondescript building at the back of a parking lot on Natoma Street between 10th and 11th streets. Nunziato's memories are printed in a booklet Rofes made for the tour.

Bob Brown, who moved to San Francisco in 1978, recalled an encounter at the No Name Bar on Folsom Street, where a leather bar named Powerhouse now operates.

It was one of the first nights Brown went out dressed in leather with a vest and no shirt underneath. Soon after, a vivacious red-haired woman came into the No Name, and walked up the tall, broad-shouldered Brown, opened his jacket and tugged at one of his exposed nipples.

"She said, 'Nice tits, and I oughta know,' " Brown said. "She looked up at me and I said, 'Oh my god! You're Bette Midler!' " The actress and entertainer replied, "I know darling, I know," and bought the bar a round of drinks, he said.

"It wasn't my first night out, but I would say it was my defining moment," Brown said.

While South of Market defined a gay male image of the 1970s, the area suffered from redevelopment coming south from Market Street and the catastrophe of AIDS and did not recover like other parts of the city.

The public face of the leather scene and the institutions like bars and stores have diminished, and a lot of activity has moved online, Rubin said.

"That's one of the reasons why the street fair has become a hugely important event for the leather population," Rubin said. "It has become like Mardi Gras in New Orleans -- it draws people as an event itself and has become a focal point because of that."

The interest in the history of the area has surprised even Rofes, though. His three planned tours are filled nearly to capacity -- one on Saturday will include two sign language interpreters -- and he plans to offer monthly tours starting in October.

"There aren't a lot of movies or other things that have captured (the era)," Rofes said. "It has a certain place in history and in gay history, and I think we might be tapping into that." Fair and tour information

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People interested in the tour may e-mail Eric Rofes at gmhs3@aol.com for dates and times.

For details on the Folsom Street Fair and related events planned Saturday and Sunday, visit www.folsomstreetfair.com/

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