Kinksters, BDSM practitioners and San Franciscans who just love any excuse to let their freak flag fly descended on South of Market Sunday for the annual Up Your Alley street fair.
Popularly known as “Dore Alley”—after the street in the heart of the Leather and LGBTQ+ Cultural District—it’s considered a kind of l’il sibling to the much-larger Folsom Street Fair held on the last Sunday in September. As with most of what’s known as the “Gay High Holy Days”—Easter Sunday and Pride being other two—the weather was warm and fog-less enough that even people in full-body latex never had to change clothes.
While the reaction against LGBTQ+ visibility grows nationwide, San Francisco’s commitment to frisky fun remains undimmed. From Full Queer Wrestling to naked Twister, with plenty of puppy play and bondage demos, the full panoply of alternative sexuality was on unapologetic display.
The fair is hardly exclusive to the queer community, either. Straight-identified fetishists have been on the scene since it debuted in the mid-1990s.
And while SoMa is widely considered to be among the San Francisco neighborhoods in decline, the specter of tens of thousands of people from various sexual communities enjoying themselves and getting along gladdens the heart.
After three consecutive years of Covid and Mpox worries, an atmosphere of freewheeling openness was palpable. Just ask the woman in a Froot Loops-print onesie, mask and cuffs, soliciting volunteers to eat some cereal and drink some plant-based milk. Why? Why not?
