Sunday, September 28th, high noon. San Francisco’s SOMA District. Thousands of people dressed in their kinkiest finery march through the streets. Fearsome tourists and trendy brunch goers try to make sense of the sea of black leather clad enthusiasts, slithering their way South of Market for the annual Folsom Street Fair. Whips crack on the sidewalk in anticipation of the world’s largest celebration of BDSM, leather and fetishes. Now in its 25th year, the fair liberates the kink from out of the closet, waging war on traditional opinions about acceptable sexual behavior.

The fair also marks the end of Leather Week in San Francisco. Although Sunday is reserved for the fair, Folsom is actually a weekend-long event. Large scale clubs tie-in to the Folsom name, while satellite BDSM dungeons, themed fetish nights and sex parties occur citywide.


The day’s attendance reaches almost 400,000, the brave participants and inquisitive spectators cram the streets, filling the bars and clubs along the entirety of the 13-block street party. Men and women in every state of undress are bound, blindfolded, whipped and spanked. All, much to the amusement of the curious onlookers. As I watch the crowd jockey for an invitation to the upper floor of any of the numerous Victorians lining the block, I fondly recall an experience from a previous year. A tall, sexy guy is in an open window up above the street performing an elaborately choreographed J/O show. His excitement and enthusiasm obviously amplified as the growing crowd below cheers him on. His lascivious stance, coupled with his prime location, commands more attention than the dozen of other exhibitionists in his vicinity. The crowd, fixated upon his every move, erupts into a celebratory roar when he finally climaxes, shooting onto the sidewalk below. This year however, windows robust with action seem mostly to be dominated by spanking aficionados.


Analytically, I walk through the crowd, sizing up the current state of what is now, a San Francisco institution. While most fairgoers don traditional leather and bondage gear, a new school of amped-up revelers are styled in their own, less regulatory style of kink. They are unconcerned with hankie codes and other historic rituals of cruising. They mix leather and latex with steampunk and designer. A sculpted man in chaps and leather jock tugs at the braces attached to the Dries Van Noten pants of his partner. Another shirtless guy in 20-hole steel-capped boots feverishly searches for his Vivienne Westwood shirt, lost in a dancing frenzy as Tech House blasts from one of the three music stages. In my favorite moment of the day, I am introduced to a slightly intoxicated hot stranger in a harness who confesses to, on numerous occasions, masturbating with his Nice Collective cashmere sweater wrapped around his cock. 

As a small group moves closer to one another and I receive a warm invitation to join their circle jerk, I realize that despite the growing number of sightseers, the mainstream attendees and my lukewarm interest in the leather scene, Folsom is a really fun celebration of sexual freedom. So, with my newly discovered knowledge of cashmere kink, I head off to the after-party, stopping momentarily back home to shove a swatch of the coveted wool into my back left pocket. Or is it my right pocket?

all images ©Joe Haller

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Noticeably missing this year was longtime institution Stiffy Lube, a theme camp with the tagline “get in, get off, get out.” Up until this year, they had been the official cocksucking establishment in the desert.

Luckily, Comfort & Joy picked up the slack with their Morrocan-style Sultan tent which featured daily erotic massage classes and nightly Shortbus-styled parties. They even had a pink glitter gym - a shaded area of weight-training equipment. The equipment sat dusty and unused on most of our visits but was always monitered by a handsome masculine man in a matching pink tutu.

Stimulating visual mayhem and absurd experiences had me constantly traveling around the Playa. My goal to document the event was often countered by a desire to adhere to the ‘No Spectators’ principal. In an effort to avoid infringing on the experience of others, I did not have my camera with me at all times. These are a few moments I managed to capture while always adhering to the official creed, ‘Safety Third’.

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Joe Haller is the co-founder, co-designer of Nice Collective.

Thanks to Burning Man, Ian Hannula, Mike Martin, Cory McDaniel, Jonathan Solo, Sean Blossom, Adam Freeland, Jason Jinx, Dj Laura, The Lamplighters, The Mechanical Spider/Moltensteelman, Hand of Man/Christian Ristow, The Golden Mean-Snail Car/Jon Sarriugarte/Kyrsten Mate/Christopher, Spread Eagle/Bryan Tedrick.

Thanks to camps Comfort & Joy, Self Serve, Burning Mary’s, Ammerikech, Death Guild, Cyphertown, Roots Society and the DPW.

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One blistering afternoon, early in the week, we happened upon a slave auction in progress. The sinewy 23 year old circus performer relished his moment on stage. His eyes remained fixed to the ground; his lip quivered as he fielded questions from the barbarous crowd. Through his own feeble words, we learned nudity was preferred, and beatings were encouraged. A bidding war immediately erupted within this cashless society. Various offers of gasoline, pills, food and whisky were briefly entertained until a whip-yielding weathered hunk of a man held up a glowing green bottle of homemade absinthe. The auctioneer briefly tested the potency of the brew before releasing the ward to his new owner.

As our week continued we alternated between lending a hand, helping provide experience for others and relishing in hedonistic indulgences. We met new friends, made deeper connections with old ones, cooked for neighbors, got pampered by strangers, shot tequila on the edge of sunrise and cheered alongside 50,000 others each day when the sun would finally set. We danced under the desert sky in Cyphertown, played with machines and fire, visited a camp populated by human bunnies, battled out our petty differences inside Thunderdome, then laughed with cold beer in hand as we watched others battle out their own in an intense roller derby match.

Another afternoon, in the midst of long whiteout, we found shelter inside the dusty dome of a theme camp appropriately named Burning Mary’s. The camp was the creation of Homochic, a group of creative art fags from San Francisco.

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Jump to Part 3

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Guys equipped with flamethrowers and others quietly tinkering around on the car-crushing hand of a post-apocalyptic death machine. This unassuming masculine energy is immediately evident upon arrival into Black Rock City. Of course, this isn’t the only reason we make our annual pilgrimage to Burning Man, it’s just one of the many unavoidable visual aesthetics.

Located in a dried prehistoric lake bed within the Black Rock mountain range of northern Nevada, our temporary city, over 50,000 strong, appears for a mere seven days before disappearing into the sand.

Daytime temps that regularly exceed 100 degrees can quickly drop to below freezing at nightfall. High winds bring the city to a grinding halt by creating blinding white-outs, while beautiful and menacing dust devils meander across the playa, decimating hapless camps that find themselves wishing they had only set up another 5 feet to the left. It is in this environment that we search for a week filled with “moments” and “adventures”.

A tight-knit community of “burners” build Black Rock City. They spend months here in the desert creating what many many people consider to be their home. It exists only because people want it to exist. A long way from its Cacophony Society roots, the event remains vitally important to a great number of people who invest countless time and thousands of dollars building temporary installations, theme camps, and hundreds of art cars which provide a world of surrealism and community.

The intense concentration of radical self-expression made my usual search for the subversive seem insignificant, and questions of sexuality redundant. Aside from a cluster of specifically gay-identified camps along the 7:30 street, Burning Man feels decidedly pansexual.

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