1970s Leather Culture

Put on your chaps for a walking tour of San Francisco's leather district

Illustration by Tom of Finland

Cue up your favorite disco record (or Spotify playlist) and slip into your best assless chaps, because we’re about to take a trip through time and explore the leather scene from which much of our modern kink culture evolved. That’s right, we’re traveling back in time to San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood in the 1970’s.

Our ticket to this pivotal era is a 26 page pamphlet called “A Walking Tour of South of Market in the 1970s.” Get it in PDF form here. The Walking Tour is also the subject of today’s Ask A Sub podcast episode, so if you like your oral history a little more aural, get that here or search “ask a sub” wherever you get your podcasts.

In the 70’s San Francisco’s gay scene had become thematically divided into two neighborhoods with their own distinct cultures — The Castro and South of Market. You may know The Castro as one of the first gay neighborhoods in the United States, or as the site of Castro Camera, Harvey Milk’s shop which became his campaign headquarters as he ran for office (Milk ultimately became California’s first openly gay man to hold elected office). For more about the Castro District, I highly recommend the Rainbow Honor Walk’s website to get a sense of the community’s values, and bird’s eye view essays on the neighborhood’s history like this one.

South of Market, which contains the renowned Folsom Street, is the shadowy, seedier brother of The Castro, and served as the center of SF’s leather scene (the history of which is maintained by the San Francisco Leather and LGBTQ+ Leather District). According to the Wikipedia entry for the South of Market neighborhood,

From 1962 until 1982, the gay leather community grew and thrived throughout South of Market, most visibly along Folsom Street, since it was a warehouse area that was largely deserted at night. Site of various sex clubs and bars, such as The Cauldron and The Slot, it was the sexual center of San Francisco during this period. This community had been active in resisting the city's ambitious redevelopment program for the area throughout the 1970s. But as the AIDS epidemic unfolded in the 1980s, the ability of this community to stand up to downtown and City Hall was dramatically weakened. The crisis became an opportunity for the city (in the name of public health) to close bathhouses and regulate bars - businesses that had been the cornerstone of the community's efforts to maintain a gay space in the South of Market neighborhood.

In 1984, as these spaces for the gay community were rapidly closing, a coalition of housing activists and community organizers started the Folsom Street Fair, in order to enhance the visibility of the community at a time when people in City Hall and elsewhere were apt to think it had gone away. The fair also provided a means for much-needed fundraising, and created opportunities for members of the leather community to connect to services and vital information (e.g., regarding safer sex) which bathhouses and bars might otherwise have been ideally situated to distribute

Today, we’re heading directly into the zenith of that leather culture. For those that study the history of the gay community in America, the 70’s are often remembered as a sort of Weimar Republic era before the onslaught of the HIV/AIDS epidemic (the first recorded case in the United States dates to 1981). The 70’s were all about pleasure, freedom, and play as LGBT+ people cohered publicly in greater numbers than ever before. The community was ready to see and be seen.

I have become a bit of a connoisseur of primary sources of this era, as I have spent the last two years and change writing a novella that takes place in this very time. And by “writing” I often mean “accidentally spending several hours scrolling through online databases.” Writing historical fiction is a blessing and a curse for a mind with ADHD traits and a mild Google addiction, because one minute you’re weaving a conversation wherein the protagonist reaches his pivotal epiphany about love and life, and the next you’re calling your dad to ask if he remembers how much a pay phone call cost in 1979 (“Probably a dime”), or if cars made at that time had air conditioning (“No, but they had heat and it smelled awful.”)

As far as primary sources go, “A Walking Tour of South of Market in the 1970s,” is definitely my favorite I’ve discovered thus far. And it has the added benefit of being about the gay leather scene, of which my dad unfortunately was not part (as far as I know). The pamphlet vividly conjures the sights, smells, and sounds of fourteen bars, clubs, and bathhouses. The first-person interviews are arranged by location, and as the title promises the interviews give you a POV tour through the “erotic paintings,” “theme rooms,” and “barrels of peanuts” that gave the scene its particular essence. Some accounts are particularly sensory, including one that breaks down the top notes of the “heady, masculine aroma” of a club called Boot Camp.

It was a very dark house. The windows were all blacked over. There was dim red lighting. There was a very strong smell of poppers, of amyl nitrate, of semen, because there was a lot of come probably all over the floor. There was an odd smell of peanuts. There was a smell of beer, because a lot of beer probably got knocked over. Oh, there were barrels in some of the rooms where you could set your beer down while you were having sex. So there was the smell of beer and peanuts, of semen, of poppers, and that wonderful smell of old lube, of old lubricant. It kind of is like stale Crisco smell. A lot of that, particularly in the sling rooms, because fisting would occur in there as well. But it was a very heady, masculine aroma.

Other accounts focus on the relationships made in the bars and clubs, or simply the mechanics of how they worked (where you could and couldn’t drink, coat check systems for belongings and leatherwear, etc). But all seem to celebrate the relative freedom and pleasure of this period, due probably in no small part to the perspective of the man conducting these interviews.

The pamphlet was assembled in 2005 by Eric Rofes PhD of Humboldt State University. Eric Rofes is a key figure in California’s LGBTQ+ history. In addition to his faculty position at Humboldt State, his career also included serving as the head of the Los Angeles LGBT center during from 1985 to 1988 and directing San Francisco's Shanti Project for people living with AIDS from 1989 to 1993.

In 1991, when the National Commission on AIDS held a hearing in San Francisco, he testified wearing leather chaps, vest and gloves to make the point that there were many varieties of sexual expression. Quoted in Dr Rofes’ obituary (he passed away of a heart attack in 2006), Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force said, “For more than 30 years, Eric was our movement's visionary. He pushed us to be better, to never lose sight of what our movement for liberation is all about, and to love each other, fight for each other and celebrate our community."

In the obituary, he is also remembered by his friend Richard Burns, who has served as the executive director of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center of New York City since 1986. Says Burns, “[Eric] remained someone who celebrated our sexual freedom, our sexual autonomy and the strong, loving community that could be built around our sexuality.”

The walking tour is the result of Dr. Rofes’ 10 years of research into gay mens’ cultures in the United States from 1973-84. His full study, of which this walking tour is only part, includes oral histories with 100 diverse gay men who lived through this period of time.

I urge you to read the pamphlet in its entirety, but to whet your palate, below are a few more sections that grabbed me. As mentioned, this week’s Ask A Sub podcast episode is also about the pamphlet, and you can hear me reading a few of these selections aloud here.

The Black and Blue, (1978–1979) 198 8th. at Howard

Rick Barton reported during an interview on December 17, 1999:

The Black and Blue was over on Eighth near Howard. I think it was on the corner of Eighth and Howard. And it was a heavy, heavy leather bar at the time. I hadn’t moved here yet and this friend of mine who had moved here—I was visiting him—and he took me down there. And I’d never been to a leather bar in my life. It was very intimidating. I had to buy a pair of jeans and I borrowed a leather vest, and I had a pair of black leather shoes that I could wear to get in and, you know, feel comfortable in the place. Around 1:30 in the morning they used to take a guy and hang him over the bar by chains and at about five minutes before two they would undo his jock strap and jerk him off at 2:00, and of course the bar closed at that time. And then they had a back room that you could go and play around in. So it was an interesting place to go to . . . and it was, for me, a little intimidating.

The Cauldron, 953 Natoma Street, between 10th and 11th, at the back of the parking lot

Domenic Nunziato recalled on July 13, 2000:

It was every fantasy you ever wanted, and then a fantasy you didn’t think of was in the next room.

Bob Thomas said on March 12, 1997:

I was a member of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus in 1981, and the Cauldron was built with, by two guys in the Chorus, with the funds from their real estate deals or something… anyway, it was a Chorus tradition to go out Monday after rehearsals, to go have pizza and then to go to the Cauldron. And they’d play loud classical music on Monday. The Cauldron was open on a Monday only for the Chorus members. Yeah, and they’d play Wagner full blast. And that was a real trippy difference than, you know, the usual disco-driven beat that’s, so it was a new experience for not a whole lot of guys would go. Sometimes as much as two dozen. But less, usually. So the Cauldron was a big warehouse, with walls built around, and various rooms. There was a big bathtub in one area, and there was a very dark room in another area. And I don’t think there were glory holes, but I do know there were at least two, maybe four slings.

And my favorite part was way up in the front, at the bartender’s station, there’s this big butcher block table, and benches, and a big barber chair, I think it was. If it wasn’t a barber chair it might’ve been a gurney from a hos- pital. And—yeah, I remember being very interested in trying every scene, and so I said to Jim at one point, I knew he was into spanking, so I thought I would receive that from him, in a, just to try it, you know. And I got off on it, but after he was done, and he did really whip me, and he said, “You don’t know any limits. You don’t know when to say ‘stop.’ You don’t have a safe word,” and all that jazz, and so—it’s true, but I manage to live.

No Name Bar, (1973–1976) 1347 Folsom

Jim Donald remembered the No Name when he was interviewed on July 6, 1999:

No Name must’ve been over up on, between 8th and 9th and—It was all, like you go in there it was all a lot, most guys dressed in leather. And it changed my image of what the leather scene was . . . Because here I was just, I would wear jeans, and a t-shirts. I started with, we started with t-shirts, but the guys in leather, and I was standing there, and I was drink- ing our beer and so forth and I stepped back, and I stepped on this guy’s boots. And I went, oh, my God. Because I turned around and there was this guy in full leather, and the armbands and everything, and I looked at him, I thought, oh, God, he’s gonna kill me. So I looked up and I said, “Oh, I’m sorry.” And he said [note: unexpectedly clicking his tongue], “Oh, that’s okay.” And I, it’s like me not being, you know, a masculine and all (like that) but it just like just threw (. . .). “What?” This—this is the leather bar, and you’re supposed to really answer real butch to me, or something like that, and I thought—so I really relaxed a lot more with that.

But the No Name Bar was like, you could not get into the bathroom. There were so—the people were on the floor, at the latrine. My first ex- perience with water sports happened there. And I just, it just came upon, you know, this incident happened. I really had to go to the bathroom, so I stepped in, and I had to step over bodies, and I was trying to find a place at the urinal. And all of a sudden over in this corner was this really hunky man. And he says, “Do you have to pee?” And I said yes. And he said, “Here’s a place.”

. . . And what I was thinking, I just let him do it. And it felt good, and I, but I thought, my God, I had this image of like what those kind, of what—I, from Midwest I guess, it was like learning. I had this image, like, well, the guys who are really into water sports or—I don’t know what kind of image but it was supposed to, they weren’t [sup]posed to be good-looking like this guy. Just a hunk. You’re like why would he be doing this when he could have anything else, what he wanted to do? Why did he want to do this?

You may know musician Sylvester from his hit single “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” Please treat yourself to a viewing of the music video here.

The Stud, (c. 1969–1987) 1535 Folsom

Michael Kennedy, interviewed on June 5, 2000, reported:

The Stud was just a magical place, right until the night it closed. It just had the right balance and mix in its environment. It had a circular bar. And then along all the three sides were a variety of improvs for seating. You could sit on little railings, or the beer boxes, or something. And then there was the seating around the bar, a long, oval bar. And at the fourth end, where the restrooms were and a little dance floor, then you could like get on what we called the freeway, which was just a circle of traffic that went round and round the bar, and you could get on and off anywhere. . . . There were pinball machines, it had a sleazy restroom. I have a great black and white photograph of the men’s room at the Stud. I would say for me the Stud was in its height around 1975 though into the early 1980s . . . There were men and women, there were the typical blue jeans, moustache, longish hair look of its day.

Clem Fotter, on July 22, 1999, recalled,

The Stud was a place of intelligent, interesting, very sexual men. There was a feeling of optimism and joy, and just a little insanity about the place, that characterized a lot of my life. It was a very happy place to be.

Men who went to the Stud were sort of the hippies, there were the long- hairs, there was certainly a drug culture there but it was a psychedelic drug culture that I knew about. Not a speed, you think, drug, or any of the other hard drugs. There were professional men, but they were interested in the arts, they were interested in—they all seemed to have a back porch full of plants. Living things were very much a part of their lives. The arts were part of their lives. And I, working in government, was kind of the strange one, but always felt very, very welcome there.

And sexually they were erotic people. They were people who like me had been, you think, you couldn’t have sex. Sex was bad, sex was nasty. And the people I met there found it a very reaffirming, very positive kind of experience. It was a way of meeting people and sharing yourself, literally, I mean sharing your bodily fluids, sharing your body with somebody else in a very positive way that was so unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

Our kinky forefathers… they’re just like us! They had preconceived notions, they had fears and trepidations, and those were changed by firsthand contact with other leather people. They met people whose ideas around safe words and limits didn’t jibe with their own, and they let those people know how they felt. And in these clubs, in the heat and the music and the leather, they found themselves. And aren’t we all lucky they did?

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