Folsom Forever

"Folsom Forever" chroncicles the ongoing evolution of the biggest outdoor kink and fetish event in the world, told through footage and interviews featuring Executive Director Demetri Moshoyannis.

Held at the end of September in San Francisco's South of Market Street neighborhood, the Folsom Street Fair started small in 1984, drawing inspiration from a similar event organized by Harvey Milk in the Castro. The festival celebrated the gay community's leather and BDSM scene, a place where "masculine gays could carve out space."

Archival footage documents the growth of the city by the bay, recalling that "in little more than a century, San Francisco grew from a frontier town into a mature metropolis," now featuring two political camps: "left and lefter." The SOMA area, however, was deemed "blighted" by the city's redevelopment committee in 1952, and was populated by low-income seniors, "skid row individuals," who were "insidious influences."

After many old buildings were demolished, in the early 1970s Life Magazine featured the neighborhood as a gay mecca, so leather bars and bathhouses flourished. The Folsom Street Fair provided an outlet for the more fringe facet of mostly male homosexual life, as a way to "celebrate diversity and take the shame out of it."

Then, the early '80s brought AIDS to the block. At first, the gay community blamed the leather scene for spreading the virus with their ongoing bacchanals, but the leather men countered that BDSM was the "�ber safe sex" because there was no penetration, and is a "sane and consensual way to play."

The Fair continued, and the organizers, with groups like the queer drag nuns in the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, turned the annual event into a fundraiser for various health and community charities. The political representatives interviewed say the annual, daylong event brings the city millions of dollars in revenue, from hairdressers and coffee shops to hotels and leather shops, of course.

The Fair, to be held on September 21 in 2014, caused national (well, Fox News) controversy in 2007 for a depiction of a "Leather Last Supper" on the poster. In recent years, the event draws more and more full public nudity. While outdoor birthday suits are technically illegal, State Senator Scott Wiener says, "butt cheeks are allowed," so there's an overabundance of ass-less chaps on the street and in the footage.

The documentary was filmed in 2012 and unfortunately has poor audio quality, some shaky camera shots and a lack of transitions, so it reads like a home movie. But the history and info are solid, and it shares that the Fair has evolved to include more women and kink variety, and innovative games like dildo ring toss plus flogging and spanking stations. Covering 13 city blocks, the Folsom Street Fair runs on about 1,000 volunteers, welcoming almost 400,000 attendees.

The umbrella organization Folsom Street Events also produces international festivals, including in Berlin, so now the rest of the world can also "top from the bottom."

For more info on the film, visit http://folsomforever.com.