Folsom Street Fair 2007
San Francisco, September 30, 2007
Part 1



Every year in San Francisco there's a free outdoor "fetish" event called the Folsom Street Fair at which hundreds of thousands of mostly gay men stroll around the city streets in leather or rubber fetish outfits.

This year, a major controversy surrounding the fair was ignited by its official poster, which was a parody of the Da Vinci's The Last Supper featuring sex toys and fetish gear, instead of the standard biblical scene. Christian groups and some conservatives found the poster offensive.

The controversy then spread when critics discovered that Miller Beer, a mainstream corporation, was the fair's main sponsor. Conservative groups began to call for a boycott of Miller products if the beverage company did not withdraw its sponsorship.

The fracas expanded when images of young children attending the 2005 Folsom Street Fair -- illustrations for an online magazine article -- began circulating in the blogosphere.

The controversy first started in Catholic publications, but Michelle Malkin had the most extensive coverage of it, including updates about the photos of the children at the fair and the calls for a boycott. KTVU News had an excellent video report about the dispute surrounding the fair (video may take a while to load on some browsers).


As you can see here, it makes good business sense for Miller Beer to sponsor the fair: there were continuous lines at the Miller booths, and they were selling beer as fast as they could pour it. It seemed like half the people there were carrying cups of beer sporting the Miller logo. A hot day, a street fair with hundreds of thousands of thirsty men -- who wouldn't want the beer concession?

As the controversy grew, some Christian leaders described the Folsom Street Fair as an "open-air gay orgy." Wait a minute: is that really true? I thought the argument was about the appropriateness of the poster, not a condemnation of the entire event itself.

Well, I hadn't been to the Folsom Street Fair in many years, and decided this was as good an excuse as any to go. So I went. And beforehand, I said to myself: I'll report exactly what I see. I'll try to be an impartial, fair observer. If it isn't an orgy, and the critics are wrong, I'll report that, and say it was all a tempest in a teapot. And if ... well, you can see where this is going.

The truth is -- I shouldn't have been surprised -- there was open-air sexual activity. And plenty of erect penises, and flaccid penises, and more. And I photographed some of what I saw.

Which put me in a dilemma. I was determined to "report it like it was," which would mean confirming (to a certain extent) the critics' worst fears and assumptions about the fair. But to do so, and to "prove" that what I'm saying is true, I'd have to post X-rated material online, even though I do not run and have no intention of running a Web site containing "pornographic" material on it.

Several people have already asked me why I am publishing this report. Because of the sensitive nature of this issue, I probably should say a few things about my personal philosophy, and my rationale for doing this.

First of all, I am not anti-gay. Since I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, a great number (perhaps a majority) of my colleagues, friends and associates are gay, though that fact is not of any significance to me. In past years, I've even marched in the Gay Pride parade as part of a charity organization. I don't consider myself "conservative" (though others have tried to categorize me as such). People can do whatever they want to do sexually, as far as I'm concerned.

I am also not a Christian, and I am pretty much completely non-religious. Yet by doing this report, I know full well that I'll be handing ideological ammunition to the anti-homosexual forces, and a propaganda coup to the Christians who were laughed at for claiming the event featured open-air sex.

But after much pondering, I felt it would dishonest to self-censor, to hide the truth, just because I may not like the ramifications.

I need to hold myself to a higher ethical standard than the standard maintained by many in the mainstream media, who downplay or suppress stories which don't support their ideological viewpoint. Basically, it comes down to this: I decided ahead of time to do a report about the Miller Beer/Last Supper ad controversy, and I just wouldn't feel that I was being honest if I "killed the story" because it didn't turn out the way I expected.

I have striven to merely report what I saw, in as unbiased a fashion as possible.

As for me personally, I'm not offended by the Last Supper sex-toy parody. Since I'm not religious, supposedly "blasphemous" images are not shocking to me in the slightest. Nor are they particularly interesting. But I know that a controversy surrounds the poster for the Folsom Street Fair because a great number of other people are offended -- and as a result the story is newsworthy.

As you will see in many of the photos below, there were thousands of people with cameras at the fair, snapping pictures every which way all day long. So it's not like I have an exclusive. And yet -- where are all those photos? It's easy enough to find G-rated and even some R-rated Folsom images online, yet very few people seem willing to report on what really goes on by posting their explicit images -- even though they surely must have them. (All the sexual scenes I photographed were also captured by other photographers.) Who knows why. (Though if you search hard enough, you can find explicit photos from the "Up Your Alley" fair, which is basically a smaller warmup version of the Folsom Street Fair earlier in the summer.) I guess it's up to me to break the taboo surrounding coverage of Folsom.

Also note that I was at the fair for less than an hour altogether -- not much more than 45 minutes. And in that short amount of time, I took all the photos you see here. Yet the fair was an all-day event, and lasted from 11am to 6pm -- seven hours. So, one can extrapolate that a great deal more must have gone on that I did not record. What you see here is just a small random sample of what happened that day.

Did it rise to the level of being an "orgy"? Well, look at the photos below and decide for yourself.


FINAL WARNING -- and how to unblur the photos

The explicit portions of some of the photos below have been blurred. However, the unblurred, uncensored versions of each of these photos can be viewed simply by clicking on them. If you want to return to the blurred versions, click on them again.

I have provided this set-up for those that want to see this report, and who are prepared to view some nudity, but who want to avoid seeing the most extreme imagery. Do not click on the blurred photos unless you want to see sexually explicit material.

I have divided my Folsom Street Fair report into two halves. Part 1 of this report (the page you're now viewing) features all the newsworthy and explicit photos from the fair. If you simply have no interest in seeing such images, and don't care about the controversy, but still would like to get an idea of what the fair was like, you can skip directly to Part 2 of the report, which contains only G-rated pictures that are mostly humorous or entertaining.

The images you see in this report are included because they are essential documentary components of a news story; they are not intended as titillation or pornography.

If you do not wish to see sexual images, this is your last opportunity to stop: do not continue scrolling down the page.

Everyone else: let's get to the pictures already!

Remember to click on the blurred photos if and only if you wish to see the full uncensored versions.






When you see mainstream coverage of the Folsom Street Fair, this what you are usually shown. Someone, almost always from the back, being mildly whipped or spanked in public. Until the appearance of this report you're now reading, those seeking to answer the question of whether or not the behavior at the fair was "inappopropriate" had to rely on mainstream media accounts of what went on. But the media, for various reasons, does not report the full extent of what really goes on there. Whether this is because journalistic guidelines prevent them from depicting the true nature of the fair, or because the media purposely downplays the more outrageous behavior as part of an ideological bias, it's hard to say. The coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle, for example, neither showed nor described anything explicit, and swept all the inconvenient parts under the rug. This also may be due to the fact that the Chronicle itself had a booth at the fair (visible here in the background of this photo). Perhaps they didn't want to do anything to drive away subscribers.


So: Is there public sexual activity at the Folsom Street Fair? Well, as this picture plainly shows (especially if you click on it), the answer is yes. Here, a naked man was being gently masturbated by a man in a kilt holding a cup of Miller Beer. I quickly discovered that such scenes were commonplace. Not only were naked penises everywhere in evidence, but erect naked penises -- and as you will see below, as often as not they were being stimulated one way or the other.

In fact, the threshhold of what constituted "sex" became hard to define, since there were so many gradations of nudity, sexual activity, and semi-sexual activity. What counts as sex? As someone famously once said, it depends on what the definition of "is" is. A publicly displayed penis? A publicly displayed erect penis? A hand on a penis? A hand on a penis moving back and forth softly? Vigorously? Two hands on a penis? Mouths sucking on penises? People moaning in pleasure? Things inserted into anuses? Non-genital contact that the recipient nonetheless perceives as erotic stimulation? I saw all these things and more at the Folsom Street Fair; I leave it up to each viewer to decide whether or not it counts as "sex."


Just a few minutes after I arrived at the fair, I stumbled across this scene in a doorway on Folsom Street: a naked man was performing oral sex on another man, as a small group of spectators looked on approvingly.

(For this picture, and all the following pictures of this scene, click on each photo if and only if you wish to see the unblurred, explicit image.)


In my photo essays, I generally do not present multiple similar versions of the same scenario: one picture is usually sufficient to tell the story. But because I know people might find it hard to believe that such a spectacle really took place, I'll present here the entire series of pictures I snapped of these men -- to prove to any doubters that one really was sucking on the other one's penis in public.


Every now and then he would lift his hand and pump the penis as he sucked it.


Yes, it was a real penis -- as you can plainly see here (if you click on the image), not a simulated phallus.


I watched for a few minutes, as people filed in and out of the building, and the growing crowd jostled for better camera angles.

I only had limited time to spend at the fair, and didn't want to devote too much of it to just one incident, so I moved on and left before seeing whether or not the oral sex came to a "conclusion."


Back in the retail area, the Divine Interventions sex toy company was having a big sale on Jesus dildos, or "Jackhammer Jesus" as they call it.


The Baby Jesus Butt Plug, at a mere $30, is their least expensive Christian anal sex toy. Notice how Divine Interventions purposely makes blasphemous dildos mocking all major religions except Islam. It's easy to taunt people that you don't actually fear. I'll start to respect them on the day they make a Mohammed the Penetrator dildo or Anal Probe Allah.


Buddha, Mary and Jesus -- and in the foreground is either the Grim Reaper or Judas, who gets this description: "Our Boy sold Jesus for thirty silver pieces, and we're selling him for even less! Imagine if he could fuck the Son of God what he could do to you!"


Nearby, a naked man with a large erection was happily masturbating in the sun, drawing not just an enthusiastic audience but shouts of encouragement from passersby.
(Remember to click on each photo if you wish to see the uncensored images.)


The Folsom Street Fair is primarily a festival of sexual fetishes -- bondage, sado-machochism, animal fantasies, and so on -- yet the pre-eminent sexual fetish at the Folsom event is the one least discussed: exhibitionism. This man, for example, is an exhibitionist, as were a great many others at the fair. Exhibitionists derive sexual pleasure from having people watch them engage in sex. You, the observer, are a participant in their sex act, whether you want to be or not. That's the point, the source of the "thrill." If you attend the Folsom Street Fair, to a certain extent you are knowingly agreeing to be "visually raped" and to participate in the exhibitionist sex of others, just by being there to view it. Almost always, when someone at the fair began to masturbate, a crowd would form to watch: and by so doing would voluntarily become second-hand participants in the solo sex act -- just as you the viewer are doing right now.


Meanwhile, at many booths up and down the street for several blocks in each direction, fair attendees were dropping their pants to be whipped, and spanked, and flogged, and lashed, and paddled....

But such imagery is commonplace in other coverage of the fair, so I won't include much of it here. We already know that's what Folsom Street is supposed to be all about.


In addition to the spontaneous scenes of masturbation were scenes of freelance, extemporaneous whipping. This woman had been walking along, and then without explanation just took off her shirt and leaned her head against a wall; at which point a man (her partner I presume, though he may have been a stranger in the crowd) began flogging her.


Notice the two ladies who had become unwitting neighbors to the spectacle, trying to act casual and not stare. In the final frame, the woman getting whipped winced and let out a cry of pain (or at least faux pain, to draw attention to herself).


This was quite a scene, though the photograph may require closer inspection to discern what's going on. The naked man was being vigorously spanked by the man in leather (who's partially obscured by the pole). The man on the far left had tied a string around the naked man's erect penis, and with his right hand was yanking on it repeatedly; while with his left hand he was pinching his victim's nipples. The naked man (presumably a masochist) had buried his face in the chest of the man with blond hair, and was whimpering and sobbing and spasming. This was the only incident where I might have witnessed someone ejaculating, but his back was to me and the crowd soon swept me away -- so I can't say for sure.


Despite all the controversy surrounding this year's Folsom Street Fair, I didn't see any protesters or critics -- with the unique exception of this plane which circled overhead, trailing a banner advertisement paid for by a Christian group.


The banner was for Hope for Homosexuals.com, an organization which strives, through religious ministry, to stop homosexuals from engaging in gay sex. This group's goal is to, theoretically, turn gays straight; or at least make them become celibate, and not act on their urges. There is a furious debate about the efficacy of such programs, and whether or not they are ethical; each side backs up its positions with hundreds of inspirational and/or tragic anecdotes. Reliable impartial statistics on this topic are simply impossible to come by. Gay groups claim these programs amount to little more than religious indoctrination, and lead to low self-esteem, depression and suicide among "ex-gays"; Christian groups of course claim the opposite, that they are giving new life to people living in sin and misery. I know little about the topic other than what I've read, but I suspect (if forced to give an opinion) that both sides are overstating the case, that few people ever change their orientation anyway, that these programs probably have very little effect on self-esteem and the suicide rate, and are for the most part ineffectual and futile.


Even some of the bartenders at the Miller Beer booths were dressed in fetish gear.


At one point I encountered a large crowd of spectators, intensely interested in something going on at one of the booths. I couldn't tell what they were straining to see, at first, so I struggled my way to a spot near the front.


A man had coated a huge double-headed dildo with vegetable shortening. Something was about to happen.
(If -- and that's a big if -- you wish to see uncensored images of this performance, click on each of the following images. If not -- leave them unclicked, to see only the blurred-out images.)


He crammed the dildo into his anus.


He pushed it in deeper, deeper, until it wouldn't go any more -- and then he kept pushing.


Then he began masturbating with one hand while sliding the dildo in and out with the other.

The crush of the crowd became too much for me to maintain my vantage point, so I left before the performance reached a conclusion, if any.

(The sexual activity you'll see in this report was not unique to this year's Folsom Street Fair. In 2006, a minor controversy arose in the gay community which resulted in one of the most popular booths at the fair being disinvited from this year's event, after it was claimed that there was too much open-air sex and too many exposed erections around the booth.)


Open-air sex was not the only technically illegal activity going on: I spotted this guy lighting up what looked like a hash pipe. (Though, compared to what goes on at a lot of Bay Area events drug-wise, this was pretty mild; beer [Miller Beer in particular] was the definite intoxicant of choice for almost everybody at the Folsom Street Fair.)


Passing strangers would, on occasion, casually masturbate each other. Not to the point of orgasm (at least from what I saw), but just for a short time -- sort of like a more intimate version of the handshake.


People who have never been to the fair often ask: Where were the police? If men are engaging in public sex and nudity, why is no one arrested for this behavior? Do the police not even know about it? Well, the picture you see here pretty much answers that question. The police are on hand. They keep an eye on the proceedings. They know what's going on. But they rarely if ever do anything more than "observe." I can only suppose that the officers must have some kind of directive to not arrest or cite people during the Folsom Street Fair for acts that would otherwise be illegal. Sort of like a modern-day Saturnalia in which the normal rules of society are suspended for a brief period.


Although the fair is primarily by and for gay men, a few women do show up as participants too (not just as observers). The only woman I saw displaying the same level of explicit nudity as the men was this fetish diva, whose genitals protruded through her leather undergarment. (Click on the photo if you wish to see the uncensored image.)


Among the very small number of nude women was this local porn starlet.


And whenever any woman did take off her clothes, she would be immediately surrounded by a crush of photographers. I guess not everyone at the fair was gay.


At the DungeonBeds booth, potential customers would try out the product, often to the delight of paparazzi.
(Don't forget to click on the image if you wish to see the uncensored version.)


This guy was surrounded by spectators, as he had just emerged victorious from an erection competition, still trying to keep his penis upright after his rivals had all gone soft.


He had to resort to stimulating himself to keep going.


A man dressed in a leather fetish dog mask was forced by his "master" to eat dog food from a dish on the pavement.


Having proven that he was an obedient doggie, he was rewarded by getting the snout on his mask unsnapped...


...so he could move in to perform a pretend blow job on his master. At least it started out as pretend. It was still going on as I moved on down the street, so I don't know if it escalated to the real thing.


The Society of Janus had set up a sort of open-air makeshift torture dungeon, with multiple torments going on simultaneously.


Volunteers lined up for the privilege of suffering in public.


The sado-masochism booths are photogenic, and images of them are often the most "extreme" scenes at the fair to be found in the mainstream press. But compared to what was going on all around them, these ritualistic floggings are among the least scandalous activities at Folsom.


Not all of the "discipline" was authentically painful; on occasion the beatings were more symbolic.


But not here: Some guy was getting his ass beaten at one of the street stalls.


Looks like his cup is ready for a refill!


After seeing so many people just standing there with rigid erections, I could only assume that they had taken Viagra (or its longer-lasting variant, Cialis). Either that, or they were so aroused by exposing themselves in public that they had no problem maintaining continuous erections all day.


Going for a stroll down the street.


The portable toilets were sponsored by Blow Buddies, a San Francisco blow-job-themed sex club whose logo is a penis dripping semen.


After half an hour of wandering around, I arrived back at the doorway where I had photographed the oral sex scene shown at the beginning of this report. To my surprise, the guy was still standing there, his penis limp at the moment, offering himself to passersby. Looks like he might have another interested party!


Anywhere you looked, at any random moment, a penis might pop out, uncovered by its owner for temporary (or permanent) display. While some people walked around naked, with their genitals exposed continuously, others only bared their penises intermittently. But not everybody was capable of maintaining an erection (or perhaps they had forgotten to take their Viagra or Cialis ahead of time). Most penises on display were flaccid, or kept semi-erect by cock-rings or various mechanisms. (Since, legally, the line between obscenity and mere nudity is based on the presence or absence of erections, I'll leave these flaccid penises unblurred.)


There were big ones...


...little ones...


...floppy ones...


...itchy ones...


...pale ones...


...dark ones...


...tormented ones...


...lazy ones...


...pierced ones...


...and droopy ones.


Some people simply couldn't keep it up no matter how many mechanical devices they utilized for the purpose.


People just stood around, showing off their penises. And grabbing them.


There was rather a lot of penis touching going on.


Unsurprisingly, the hepatitis booth was among the most popular at the entire event.


Despite what outsiders may think, the Folsom Street Fair is not really a political event. Perhaps some participants cavort in public for the specific purpose of making some kind of statement, but most seemed to be there simply because they had fetishes which they wanted to indulge. So, while nearly every other fair, parade or public event in the Bay Area inevitably has a political dimension, the only politics I saw at Folsom was this guy carrying a Barack Obama sign...


...and a lone, out-of-place anti-war protester.


But of course, no public event in northern California is allowed to proceed without the presence of at least one person wearing a kaffiyeh, no matter how inappropriate or irrelevant to the theme of the day.


I'm fairly confident that Miller Beer (whose sign is visible in the background) would be none too happy about the potential embarrassment of this particular photo -- especially after you click on the image to see the uncensored version. (This is the same guy seen at the top of this report who allowed himself to be masturbated by random people in the crowd.)


This flamboyant poser alternated between showing off his naked front side to the passing crowd...


..and offering up his rear end for our entertainment.


Some pictures don't even need a caption.


A parting message.


Part 2 of this report is entirely G-rated and lighthearted, and contains no explicit or controversial imagery. If you'd like to visit the humorous side of the Folsom Street Fair...

Click here to continue on and see Part 2 of this report.



(Hat tips to Charles for technical help and Ringo for finding a link.)



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