Folsom fashion, Litquake’s parade of words, Michoacán flavors in Redwood City, Black woman-owned cafe in Mission Bay, Lassen’s open trails, Betty Reid Soskin at 104, SF plates on the Top 100 list, AI art in San Jose, a love billboard on 101, and Oakland’s Tiny Plot podcast.

Inclusive fashion at Folsom

Folsom Street Fair returns Sunday with vendor stalls as vivid as the stages — from sequined kaftans and femme harnesses to hand-cut fringe and heritage leather reworked into new shapes. Five and Diamond, Love Lorn Lingerie, Bearly Covered, Krakenwhip, and CantiqLA each carry their own lineage, from pandemic sewing experiments to decades of queer craft.

Together they build a living archive in fabric and metal, where every strap and stitch carries both pleasure and defiance.   — 48Hills

Litquake season

Litquake returns, starting with the Small Press Book Fair on Sunday at Yerba Buena Gardens, where independent publishers, journals, and bookstores set up shop on the lawn. From there, the festival spreads across the city and beyond through October, with events ranging from a panel on writing about wildfire to an evening with US Poet Laureate Ada Limón.

Later in the month, Alta Journal teams up with Litquake to celebrate John Freeman’s California Rewritten, and neighborhood readings fill bars, bookstores, and back rooms. — Alta Journal

Voices in code

At the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, Stephanie Dinkins has turned the gallery into a living conversation. Her installation Data Trust gathers oral histories from Bay Area Black communities, feeding them into an AI system that transforms the stories into moving, evolving projections across 14-foot walls.

Visitors can add their own memories through red rotary phones, weaving personal voices into the shifting digital fabric. Supported by the Hewlett 50 Arts Commissions, the project opened to a packed crowd and will remain on view through March 2026. — Bay Area News Group

A plot of their own

In Oakland’s Union Point Park, a group of unhoused residents decided to try something different — building a community where they could write the rules themselves. The new KQED podcast A Tiny Plot follows their experiment, tracing nights in tents, clashes with the city, and the hope of shaping a model for survival.

Reporter Shaina Shealy spent a year recording the daily grind of people who refuse to be defined only by crisis. — KQED

Nation’s oldest park ranger turns 104

Betty Reid Soskin, the nation’s oldest park ranger, marked her 104th birthday with hundreds of students at the East Bay middle school that carries her name. She says her life didn’t really begin until 50 — long before she put on a ranger’s uniform at 84.

Before that she ran a Berkeley record shop and wrote songs for the civil rights movement while raising kids in Walnut Creek. Later she worked for state assembly members, pushing for what became the city of Richmond’s Rosie the Riveter Park — where she eventually took the job of telling its stories herself as a ranger. — Richmondside

Quiet season on the peak

In the far northeast corner of California, Lassen Peak rises above a landscape of steaming vents and alpine lakes. This time of year, its 10,457-foot trail is clear of snow, the days are warm, and the crowds have thinned. The climb is short but steep, with views stretching from Lake Helen to Mount Shasta on the horizon.

For Bay Area hikers, it’s about the same drive as Yosemite or Tahoe — without the long lines or packed trailheads. The park’s geothermal basins, often called a “Little Yellowstone,” add another layer of wonder to a fall visit, making the trip feel both otherworldly and close to home. — SFGate

Michoacán in Redwood City

Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum calls Redwood City home to the best Mexican food in the US, thanks to its deep ties to Aguililla, Michoacán. Families brought recipes, bakeries, and taquerias — including Carnitas El Rincón and Panaderia Michoacán — keeping traditions alive for decades.

Rising housing costs have changed the neighborhood, but for those who stayed the food remains a living connection to home and heritage. — KGO

SF on a plate

San Francisco tastes like the city itself — old favorites, new spots, and a mix of chaos and calm. At Piglet & Co, honey walnut shrimp and pork toast carry sticky sweetness, while Hilda and Jesse’s pancakes pile whipped buttermilk and blueberry syrup into a soft, messy tower.

Gola’s Tunisian deviled eggs with roasted shrimp add spice and nutty depth, and Prubechu’s ko’ko’ wings hit with a sharp, citrusy punch. All of them show up on this Top 100 list, a snapshot of a city forever rewriting its menu. — 7x7

Nirvana in Mission Bay

NBA Champ turned storyteller Festus Ezeli gives a strong endorsement to Nirvana Soul Coffee, a local Black woman-owned coffee shop, which recently opened its fifth location in SF’s Mission Bay.

The San Jose-based company recently partnered with NFL star Chidobe “Chido” Awuzie and will soon be opening locations at SFO and San Jose’s SAP Arena. — Festus Feasts

Love on a billboard

Drivers beware: Lisa Catalano is looking for love — and she’s advertising it on Highway 101. The Bay Area bachelorette has put up digital billboards from Santa Clara to the city, directing curious viewers to her website, marrylisa.com, where applicants can fill out a form and see her likes, lifestyle, and non-negotiables.

Catalano, whose fiancé passed away in late 2023, says she’s ready to love again. The billboards sparked TikTok chatter, but she insists it’s not a stunt: “This is a real endeavor. My goal is to meet the love of my life.” — KRON4

Top image: Bearly Covered/Facebook

Previously: Dancers on Buildings, Cowboys in Oakland, and Fun at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk

A new app launches today which aims to create both a viable social network and dating service for members of the BDSM and leather communities. KNKI, as the app is called, seeks to carve out a space free from the censorship that often accompanies posting adult content on sites like Instagram and Facebook. However, not content to merely be some sort of adult-themed Kinkstagram, the app also hopes to connect like-minded individuals in the BDSM community for both on and offline play.

The company describes the app as a "dating app" that simultaneously assists with "keeping up with your entire kinky social network." And just to make sure there's no confusion, the company further adds that they're "a social network for BDSM as well as dating app."

Based out of New York, the makers of KNKI have already found at least one interested party in the Bay Area — (surprise, surprise) Kink.com.

“When KNKI approached us with the platform, we immediately got it,” Kink.com's head of social media Jessica Reid explained in a press release. “As a sexual community, we have to walk on eggshells on most social networks, even when doing basic education and activism. KNKI gives us an opportunity to have those discussions without worrying about whether we’ll be banned.”

KNKI founder Carl Sandler detailed in the same release his motivation to build the app.

"This is an exciting time for the community," wrote Sandler. "More and more people are able to talk about sexuality and identity openly, and I wanted to create a mobile app that matched the new power.”

The app is free to download, and, like many social media companies, KNKI hopes to enlist city-specific "ambassadors" to spread word of the brand. Perhaps unlike other companies hoping to play in the social media sandbox, however, KNKI lists being "an active member of the BDSM community" as one of the ambassador prerequisites.

Notably, as part of the "KNKI code," the company prominently declares its ambassadors "will never engage in, or turn a blind eye to, dangerous or non-consensual behavior in our community." While this seems like a no-brainer, it is perhaps notable in light of recent allegations of sexual assault made against repeated Kink.com performer James Deen (Kink.com cuts ties with the adult star after the allegations began to surface).

Time will tell if KNKI is here to stay, but if a company that melds BDSM play with app dating can get a foothold anywhere, SF will likely be the place.

All previous BDSM coverage on SFist.

The Up Your Alley Fair, informally known as the Dore Alley Fair, celebrates its 30-year anniversary with this Sunday’s bare-chested, manly iteration. To mark the occasion, the SF Leathermen’s Discussion Group brought in noted LGBT cultural historian Dr. Gayle Rubin for a History of the Up Your Alley Fair lecture Wednesday night at the LGBT Center. SFist was onhand to get vintage flyer pictures and the full historical roundup, and Dr. Rubin’s complete, two-hour lecture can be found at the bottom of this article.

The Up Your Alley Fair wasn’t originally on Dore Alley, and it wasn’t originally “Folsom Street Fair’s dirty little brother”. In fact, the two fairs were originally completely unrelated to one another. The first Folsom Street Fairs were celebrations of SoMA’s neighborhood diversity whereas Up Your Alley was a celebration specifically of the gay leather community.

The Pre-Up Your Alley Era

South of Market was traditionally a gay leather hotbed, with its first leather bar The Toolbox established in 1962 (it’s now a Whole Foods). At its early 80s peak, SoMA had 16 leather bars with names like The Ramrod and The Brig, 10 bathhouses and sex clubs and 8 leather retail establishments. Of these original Folsom “Miracle Mile” leather establishments, only Stompers Boots, Mr. S and Blow Buddies (NSFW, obviously) remain today. Most fell victim to the “urban renewal” push of the early 1980s and City Hall harassment over fears of the spread of AIDS.

Up Your Alley was founded in by International Mr. Leather 1985 Patrick Toner and Jerry Vallaire specifically as a fundraiser for charities benefiting the increasingly persecuted gay and AIDS communities.

1985: First Up Your Alley Fair

Image: Torbakhopper

The first Up Your Alley Fair was held on August 25, 1985. It was technically called Up Your Alley, but was more commonly referred to as the “Ringold Alley Fair” or the “Leather Block Party”. Billed as a “block party and t-dance”, the fair took place on Ringold Alley, known as a notorious late-night cruising spot. “There were a lot of blowjobs on the alcoves of the alley,” Dr. Rubin said, noting that vans operated as fully equipped S&M dungeons. “The street became an outdoor late night sex carnival.” Up Your Alley brought these activities into the daylight for one day.

An event planned specifically in response to the AIDS crisis, Up Your Alley’s first beneficiaries were the SF AIDS Fund, the Gay Games and Community United Against Violence. It was essentially a daytime outdoor cruising party and beer bust with kissing booths, pie-throwing contests and “dunk-a-hunk” booths being operated to benefit those charity causes.

1986: Conflict in the Community

Here we see a poster from the 1986 Up Your Alley Fair, also on Ringold. The second Up Your Alley was slightly more gender inclusive. “There were women,” Dr. Rubin said. “I was one of them.”

At the time, Up Your Alley had a strict policy of no independent vending or craft booths. All booths were run by the Fair or by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. “One could throw a pie or dunk a hunk, but you couldn’t buy a cockring,” Dr. Rubin pointed out. Local artist Scott Taylor did a performance art piece in protest of Prop. 64, a Lyndon LaRouche-backed ballot measure that would have effectively quarantined the HIV-positive. Taylor mummified himself and his friends chained him to a fence and put a “Quarantine” sign on him. Furious that someone was attempting an unsanctioned Fair attraction, Toner demanded the performers leave and even threatened to have them removed by police.

1987: Up Your Alley moves to Dore Alley

For reasons that are uncertain, Up You Alley had to leave Ringold for the 1987 event. “I’m told it was a protest by the residents,” Dr. Rubin said. The fair took on the Dore Alley location where it still remains today.

1990: Folsom and Up Your Alley Converge

Image: Joe Kukura

By 1990, Toner and other event organizers were being lost to the rampant AIDS epidemic (Toner died in 1993). With a serious loss in leadership, both fairs were merged into the same non-profit management structure called SMMILE (South of Market Merchants and Individuals Lifestyle Events). This is when Up Your Alley came of age as a “warm-up event” for Folsom, one which drew fewer tourists and remained a niche event for the gay leather community.

In 1991, independent leather vendors were allowed for the first time. “It was then, I think, that Up Your Alley finally assumed the character it maintains to this day, which is the Folsom fair’s easygoing local sibling,” Dr. Rubin said, calling it “a temporary leather takeover of its old [SoMA] heartland.”

1995-Present: SoMA Gentrification Backlash

Image: Ed Biernan

The fair had a near death experience in the mid-1990s, but expanded its paid staff and promotions. The new non-volunteer arrangement allowed Up Your Alley to enjoy a growth trajectory even as the SoMA leather scene declined. “The leather communities needed these fairs so much so that they kept them going and continually revitalized them, and kept them their own in ways the founders would have understood even if they never would have anticipated,” Dr. Rubin said. “On those days, the streets of South of Market belong to the leather folk.”

In 2003, SMMILE reincorporated as the Folsom Street Events organization that it still is today. In 2008, I did an NFSW photoset for SFist that got picked up by Fleshbot. This was a big deal at the time! Brock Keeling and I were high-fiving each other all week.

In its dirty 30-year lifespan, the Up Your Alley Fair has always been a smaller niche event, more local and named after obscure little alleys instead of a major street like Folsom. “If you know about it, you know about it,” said Folsom Street Events executive director Demitri Moshoyannis. “If not, we don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The 30th Up Your Alley Fair is this Sunday, July 26 from 11 a.m.-6:30 p.m. on Dore Alley between Howard and Folsom. Dr. Gayle Rubin’s lecture “Up Your Alley Fair: History and Transitions” is presented in its entirety below courtesy the SF Leathermen’s Discussion Group.

Yesterday we brought you our beginner's guide and our insider's guide to Folsom Street Fair, which is happening this weekend if you somehow hadn't heard. And today we get some history of the event, which actually began as a non-leathery, neighborhood affair in 1984 that was a community protest against the redevelopment of SoMa.

To back up a bit, the leather community already had an annual affair of sorts in the 70s called the CMC (short for California Motor Club) Carnival, a "motorcycle club" orgy that happened at the Seaman's Hall on Fremont Street in the late 70s, but then died out by the 80s.

As BrokeAss Stuart's Joe Kukura explains, following a history lecture by Dr. Gayle Rubin during this Leather Week, the fair we now call Folsom was first dubbed Megahood, and part of the reason it became so associated with the leather and kink scenes is because the SoMa neighborhood was once home to some 30 gay leather bars, and many of the men who frequented them. One of the most notorious was The Tool Box, located on the present site of Whole Foods on 4th, which was featured in the seminal Life Magazine article "Homosexuality In America," which came out in 1965. Of the bars that still exist, the oldest is The Stud, which opened in 1966 in its original spot at 1535 Folsom (it moved in 1987), and Powerhouse, Hole In the Wall, and The Eagle all remain leather-ish, and open. (The Stud was more home to gay hippies and psychedelia in the 70s, and now plays host to an eclectic mix of parties and scenes, including one for furries.) Read more history on the neighborhood and the leather scene here.

Anyway, the fair grew in size and popularity, going under several names before permanently being known as the Folsom Street Fair beginning in 1991. (1988 was the year, reportedly, that the leather community "took the Fair" as the community itself was beginning to dwindle in the throes of the AIDS crisis.) Since then it's grown to become the second largest outdoor street festival in California (after S.F. Pride), with about 400,000 attendees every September.

And who can forget the great Last Supper poster controversy of 2007...

For more history you should read the whole piece, and check out Folsom Forever, the documentary by Mike Skriff (trailer above) that premiered at Frameline this year. As one person in the doc says, "Street festivals often are the ways in which the memory of a previous population stakes a claim to the memory of its passing."

[Brokeass Stuart]
[Queerty]

Typically held on the last weekend in September, milquetoast sex and fetish fete Folsom Street Fair will move its date for the first time in 20 years. Next year's butt blowout will take place on Sunday, September 23. Why? Well, according to queer publication The Bay Area Reporter, it's because of Oracle OpenWorld. "Organizers opted to move the festival, which draws hundreds of thousands of people each year, to avoid a scheduling conflict with Oracle OpenWorld, which will run September 30 through October 4."

Larry Eillson (of Oracle and America's Cup fame) and Oracle OpenWorld run the city now, more or less, so it makes sense that Folsom Street Fair turned dirty pig bottom for the dom tech giant top. Demetri Moshoyannis, executive director of Folsom Street Events, explained to the BAR: "We were told only weeks after this year's fair that nearly the entire inventory of hotel rooms for the city had been sold out for the last weekend of September 2012. So, we were faced with a decision: either move the 2012 fair date and risk upsetting some people who had booked way in advance or not move the fair date, knowing that tens of thousands of visitors would be unable to book rooms at all."

For a closer (NSFW) look at Folsom Street Fair, take a look at photos from 2011 and 2010.

SoMa's annual Folsom Street Fair was a wet one. Also, it rained. (Ha!) But seriously, folks, loads or sex fetish fans descended upon Folsom this weekend for their sex fetish fair. Even mayoral candidate Joanna Rees showed up to show off her legs. (Really, Joanna, you look amazing here.) So did Ross Mirkarimi, but sporting far too much clothing. Anyway, here are some photos from Sunday's slap-and-tickle festival. (It goes without saying, but some if not most of these photos are NSFW. You've been warned.)

Folsom Street Fair brought out the sun and sleaze in grand form this year. Fleshy bits and pieces were out in full force at yesterday's annual ode leather and sexual fetish in SoMa. Here are some scenes from yesterday's bash. (It should go without say, but these images are NSFW. Please be cautious, curious ones.)

Did you attend yesterday's festival? Did you partake in any devious rituals? Did you, ahem, see your dental hygienist getting flogged by a bear? Let us know your favorite moment(s) in the comments.

You may not be into leather or the BDSM scene, but if you live in San Francisco you've probably breezed through Folsom Street Fair once or twice. Call it what you will, but it is the largest event of its kind in the world, and the third largest single-day outdoor event in California -- behind SF Gay Pride and maybe Long Beach Pride? (We think these numbers are hard to nail down, but suffice it to say the gays like to party outdoors.)

Courtesy of NSFW gay blog Le Fag, we have this roundup of events both social and cultural happening in conjunction with Leather Week and Folsom Street Fair weekend. Cheers. And remember, this SF... no judgment.

Yesterday's Up Your Alley Fair is what the Folsom Street Fair used to be before all the tourists pushing baby strollers started showing up. More than 8,000 leather daddies -- and as many as perhaps a dozen biological women -- braved the cold fog wearing little more than a gimp mask and a smile to benefit PAWS, the AIDS Emergency Fund, and others. We tried to limit the amount of naked penis visible in these shots, but in that kind of environment there's only so much a photographer can do. The fully-lubed, unexpurgated photoset can be can be found at DJTennessee's flickr page, as well as a few over at Nature abhors a vacuum.

Again, if it wasn't already clear, the following images are NSFW. They features such jarring imagery as naked breasts, Viagra-infused erections, naked Twister, and Frank Chu possibly exploring his sexuality. You've been warned. Enjoy.

Oh, San Francisco. You amuse us so.

This SUV here would like you to know that it's not furnished with any animal products, okay? But before you start going into convulsions, it's an SUV hybrid. So...well, it still grosses us out a bit. Not the SUV part, but the part about environmentalists of the Bay Area adopting an even more aggressive moral majority-ish tone, one that worries us. Watch it, people.

Image credit: Flickr's Brian Brooks