THE SHOT — Not even SPF 400 could protect this gent from earning a burn at Folsom Street East in New York today.
the shot
Folsom Street East: No Lions Or Tigers, Just Bears
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Brandon H
Oh, so were doing that in public now. Good to know.
Soakman
Haha, I understand the sentiment Brandon, but it’s just sex. Lighten up.
People have sexually oriented festivals all the time (not just the gay community) and most don’t even have the cajones to admit the nature of the celebration.
Mardi Gras anyone? Bachelor parties anyone? Bachelorette parties anyone?
Sex, dignity, and religion weren’t always mutually exclusive.
M.R
Brandon, you should try going to a Gay pride parade or an s/m party. They are actually a lot of fun and it’s a great way to make friends and meet guys.
scott ny'er
OK. Today was effin’ hot. So, I could just imagine hot ummm, aromatic some peeps were smelling today. And I know that turns some people on but well, I’m just sayin’. It must have been pretty rough in spots.
That said, if I knew about it ahead of time, I might have gone. Just to experience it. I mean my straight friend in san fran saw the out there, what’s my excuse.
Jurlesia
This is disgusting. If both gay and straight people have problems with PDA, this just tops it all. And not because it’s gay, because it portrays the gay community as a community of sexually-obsessed maniacs who are into deviant sexual behaviors like public exhibitionism, public sex, and sado-masochistic behavior… not to mention whatever else I’m sure takes place at these awful stereotype-perpetuating events… certainly brings a whole new facet to the term “pride.”
Phil
You know, I’m all for freedom of sexual expression and all but this just seems like debauchery. Hooray for you, you like leather in bed, and maybe some role playing too, but did the world at large need to know what you like in bed?
greybat
I’m just a Fan of debauchery. A very underrated Art-form!
Syl
I’m going to have to agree with Jurlesia and Phil here. I’m all for people being able to do whatever the fuck they want, but for now, at this point in the movement, it would be best for us if the average middle-aged white hetero thought we were as conventional and milquetoast as possible.
Fitz
There is nothing that screams “End DADT NOW” and “EQUAL MARRIAGE RIGHT NOW!” and “ADOPTION RIGHTS NOW” louder than putting your husband on a leash, in a chastity belt, and telling him to drink people’s piss. Well, at least it’s a great way to embrace Projective Identification. Hey– maybe instead of thinking of ourselves as second class citizens, we should just call ourselves a bunch of Subs?
Tim W
Imagine that the typical hysterical rants from people. I am so sick of the everyone has to look like middleclass white picket fence families for us to get our rights. I had another guy on another board raving how effeminate men hold of us back. The fact of the matter is the strength of the GLBT community lies in our diversity. I’m not a fan of drag but I will defend their right to do drag until the end. When we start throwing members of our own community under the bus then we don’t deserve equal rights. To paraphrase MLK we are not truly free until all are free. Time to stop throwing members of our community under the bus.
Qjersey
The leather community did a lot of fund raising for AIDS back in the day. Now if you go to a leather event you have to sift through the tweakers and barebackers. “that guy is hot, oh he’s been high for days and is his first words to me were ‘I want your load.'”
Not worth the effort.
DENT
fyi, festival was on a closed-off, largely untraveled street in an area of warehouses, with a suggested admission fee. If people wanted to avoid it, it was patently easy to do so.
Andrew
Well, this has set us back 50 years.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
I support and advocate those participants are 100% free to engage in any behaviour they wish, yet maybe the want to possibly consider the implications for the community at large by doing so in a public fourm. #9 Fitz put it 100% in perspective………..
I’d be willing to bet not a single one of the participants in that event even licked a stamp for any pro-Gay cause………
Chitown Kev
Oh my! (couldn’t resist the obvious)…
I hope everyone had a fantastic time and boooooooooooo to these prudish queens on this thread.
rainbowboywonder
who are the people posting here? Do people really believe that our Constitutional rights are dependent upon our ability to blend in with society? The two are unrelated – except that there are too many self-hating homos out there that they would sell out other gays?
and Phil, if you think that some people should keep their leathered-selves in private, I wish you would keep yourself and your idiotic opinions home to yourelf – so we are almost equal
Mike in Asheville, nee "in Brooklyn"
@ No. 2 Soakman: Yes Brandon needs t lighten up, but let me point out that its not sex, its sexiness — there is a big difference.
@ No. 5 Jurlesia: Time to grow up sweetheart. Google “teen girls + dockeys + rape” and you will have endless windows of the weirdest straight porn site fill your screen. THAT DOES NOT MAKE ALL STRAIGHT PEOPLE SEX FIENDS. Only idiots with small minds who remain ignorant their whole fucked up lives believes that one small slice (picture) of a small segment of a population represents the entire population. You are probably also scared of two lithe EMO boys or two tom-boy girls send the wrong message about the gay community too. There is a whole world out there, try to enjoy some of it. Besides, “pride” is a sin, didn’t you know?
@ No. 6 Phil: Not the whole world is watching; just those who decided to attend. If someone is soooo offended, well what the fuck are they doing there instead of attending church/temple/mosque?
@ No. 8 Syl: Well I guess I am happy you weren’t organizing gay pride/HIV-AIDS events that have brought so much ability for gays/lesbians to express themselves. The brave stood up and continue to stand up and as a result there are no longer sodomy laws in this country, more of the country’s population is protected by law against discrimination based on sexual orientation, 6 states have legalized same-sex marriage. ALL BECAUSE THOSE, WHO MIDDLE CLASS WHITE HETERO AMERICA THOUGHT WERE SPAWN’S OF SATAN, stood up and made a difference. So you are suggesting that anything other than milquetoast run back hiding in the closet?
@No. 9 Fitz: The ignorant homophobic class already screams against us, having marches wearing business suits and dresses will not change an idiot’s mind. It is expression from the extreme that makes a movement move.
@ No. 11 QJersey: So 1 toasted high guy suggests unsafe sex to you and now the entire leather, S/M, bondage, wilder-side community is vile? If everyone who partakes in the leather alternative scene is only about tweaking and barebacking, well, they’d all be dead. In reality, tweaking-barebackers make up only a small part of our community, it seems more because they are out more. Be careful not to become another Glen Beck seeing evil conspiracies at every corner painting the world in black over one singular incident.
AND @ No. 10 Tim W: Thank you! I was about to cry after reading the dribble laced comments, and then a voice of reason. It was a bunch of guys in drag who launched the breakaway fight for gay pride at the Stonewall Inn! It is because of their bravery that the gay/lesbian movement has made up so much ground. Yes much more to do, but let us celebrate what has been won. When I was in high school, the ignorants were pursuing the Briggs Initiative, a law to ban gays/lesbians from employment in public school, more state than not criminalized gay sex, and not a single company or city offered protection for employment discrimination let alone any partner benefits. And today, I’m married. THAT IS THE POWER OF THE MOVEMENT.
Munky Mouse
Someone said that with the temperature being what it was, some people must have stunk. Actually the men smelled quite nice – it was the spilled beer that reeked!
This is NOT SEX IN PUBLIC. There is a sexual aspect to the fetish scene, but what is on display at FSE is not penetrative, nude, hard-core sex. It is based upon a submissive/dominant relationship and, for me, a love of tight clothing (its like a big hug all over your body! whats wrong with that?!)
Just because the pictures look extreme and the men look tough, they were really nice, intelligent, and (most) were good looking.
It was on a closed-off block. No kids allowed. If you didn’t want to see it nobody was forcing you to. Its a free country and just like you have your delusional christian sermons, we can have our hedonistic fetish fairs.
James
@Andrew:
You are aware that the Folsom Street Fair started in San Francisco in 1984 right? This isn’t a new thing.
Soakman
@Mike and others
Just to clarify, when I used sex and sexually oriented in my first post, what I was getting at was ‘sexy’ and ‘provocative.’
‘Putting the goods on display’ may even be accurate.
I did NOT say anything about penetration or getting each other off in the street.
And I still stand by my position. These events hurt nobody, and I couldn’t care less what ‘straight’ America thinks we should do to appease their ‘straight’ deities’ ‘straight’ values.
The GLBT community IS different. We have a common history of shared sexual oppression, physical and emotional abuse, and are BORN into a foreign cultural upbringing. From birth until early college/late highschool experience, we have no teachers or educators to help us understand our roots, our history, our feelings, our urges, our values, or our politics.
We have to learn from each other. It’s no wonder there are so many of us who presume ‘straight American’ culture is our own, or who are confused by the actions, opinions, and values of pieces of our fellow members of the GLBT community.
Lack of education and enculturation divides us from ourselves. Pick each other apart like vultures and there will be nothing left. Let the community thrive on itself. Feed it. Teach it. Listen to it. And maybe some day our grandchildren will have a community where they will be educated about what it means to be sexually deviant, to have your very biological instincts oppose the norm.
*gets of soapbox, satisfied*
B
No. 1 · Brandon H wrote, “Oh, so were doing that in public now.”
“Now?” The Folsom Street Fair has been going on for more than 1/4 of a century as a quick Google search will show. It’s usually covered by the San Francisco Chronicle so that locals who don’t go to these sort of things will be in the “know” when they say “Well, it is San Francisco,” a catch phrase used while chatting with out of town visitors as you walk by some spectacle that gives your friends a sudden case of culture shock.
Pickles
The Gay Male SM Activists (GMSMA) held the first Folsom Street East in 1997. Named after the famous Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, the block party was an instant success, bringing our S/M-Leather-Fetish brothers and sisters together for a great celebration, while raising money to support worthy causes. Over the past 13 years, the success of Folsom Street East street festival has allowed us to donate more than $250,000 (one $10 requested admission donation at a time) to many organizations, including this year’s beneficiaries:
* The Center: The LGBT Community Center
* The NYC Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Project (AVP)
* The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom (NCSF)
http://www.folsomstreeteast.org/about
Storm
Heh. You really ARE all subs.
Increasingly I hear this call for the leather community and the drag queens and the other fringe communities to just disappear so that other gays can get married, move to the suburbs buy a house with a white picket fence and adopt 2.3 kids while pretending they’re just like straight people except….
Remember when “straight-acting” was considered a disparagement?
Clark :)
Yada, yada, yada….
This is what happened at the fair;
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27932854@N06/4731938210/
Cassandra
It is highly probably, like 99.99995% guaranteed, that the author(s) of posts 5,6,9,11, etc, are het homophobes.
It is common practice for homophobes to post pseudo-anonymously as “I’m gay and I’m revolted by X” type posts in order to malign the leather and drag communities.
Remember that to be a bigot requires first abandoning integrity and decency, and so bigots are capable of anything.
Clark :)
I’d bet otherwise.
Gays are 99.999% unhappy creatures.
They have surrendered all the excitement of their uniqueness and creativity to aspire to be “married and miserable”.
They are affraid of not “fitting in” so they lower their standards to be everything they have fought.
More and more gays are removing themselves from their roots to live in communities of straight “breeders”. They believe they are “accepted” by their community but in reality they are just the “token” gays “down the street”. They will continue to “fit in” as long as they continue to lie to their neighbors that they are somehow better than other gays.
So now the Folsom Street Fair in NYC is reduced to a voguing party…..>yeeee-awwwwn<
So is the gay parade, Fire Island, the Village, clubs and bars.
There used to be 2 words that meant everything to gays;
PRIDE and COMMUNITY, but without the word "gay" before them it's just FALSE PRIDE and STRAIGHT COMMUNITY.