Folsom Street Fair Unveils 2015 Poster

Folsom Street Fair unveiled its always hotly-awaited poster today. Also revealed today is the possibly less blog-safe poster for the Dore Alley Fair. Meanwhile Porno Pete is slavering over a much more imminent bit of sexytime mantasticness.

TRAILER: Folsom Forever

Clip recap:

In 1984, a scrappy little neighborhood in San Francisco – home to many low-income tenants and the heart of the gay male leather scene – faced destruction from the bulldozers of redevelopment and the AIDS crisis. The Folsom Street Fair was started to call attention to gentrification and raise money for AIDS charities. Folsom Forever tells the story of how this small street fair grew into the biggest outdoor kink and fetish event in the world, and managed to do a lot of good along the way. Coming to DVD and VOD June 9, 2015.

Possibly not work-friendly.

Folsom Street Fair 2014 Raises $322K For HIV/AIDS, LGBT Rights, And Homeless

This year's Folsom Street Fair raised $322,666 for a multitude of local charities including Project Open Hand, the Transgender Law Center, and the AIDS Memorial Grove. Members of the benefiting organizations comprised the majority of the event's volunteer workers.

HRC Puts Porno Pete On Notice

Folsom Street Fair Trolls Westboro

More photos here. (Tipped by JMG reader Stephen)

RELATED: Westboro is in the Bay Area to picket outside of the Google, Facebook, and Twitter headquarters. Yesterday they announced that they will protest at the funeral of "fag pimp" Robin Williams.

Stereogamous & Shaun Wright - Sweat

These guys have just been booked to play Folsom.

Folsom Street Fair: The 2014 Poster

Not nearly as racy as previous years, much to the disappointment of Porno Pete, no doubt.

Porno Pete LaBarbera Is Ever So Angry About The Folsom Street Fair

"Below is the 'official' promotional poster for the Folsom Street Fair, an annual, sadomasochism-celebrating street festival in San Francisco. The 'fair' is notorious for its open-air perversions, mocking of religion, sadistic whippings, 'master-slave' couples, and full nudity — and the latter will be allowed again this year due to an exemption granted to FSF to a new anti-public-nudity law passed by city supervisors. Words can barely convey the evil captured by this image — a rebellious wickedness that comes from glorifying sin in defiance of the wholesome boundaries for sex established by God. Folsom is also the creepy cousin of 'gay pride' and 'diversity' — there would be no Folsom Street Fair were there not first a 'gay' revolution, with its ground zero in the homosexual Mecca of San Francisco." - Peter LaBarbera, in his annual fit of impotent rage.  The not-work-friendly poster is here.

Real Bad Party Raises $200K For Charities

Real Bad, the annual volunteer-run closing party for Folsom Street Fair, raised a record $200,000 this year for its beneficiaries. Via press release, here's where the money will go:

AIDS Emergency Fund: A provider of financial resources to prevent homelessness and add stability to the lives of those disabled by HIV/AIDS.

Alliance Health Project: An organization that brings the skills and expertise of UCSF, one of the nation's leading health sciences universities, to an LGBTQ community‐based clinic.

Asian & Pacific Islander Wellness Center: A provider of education, support, empowerment and advocacy for Asian and Pacific Islander communities — particularly those living with or at risk for HIV/AIDS.

Bay Area Young Positives: An organization that helps young people, ages 14 to 26, living with HIV/AIDS live longer, happier, healthier, more productive and quality-filled lives through peer-based services.

GLBT Historical Society: An organization that collects, preserves, and interprets the history of GLBT people and the communities that support them.

Next year Real Bad will celebrate its 25th anniversary. (Tipped by JMG reader Craig)

Bill Donohue: Why Do Attendees Of Folsom Street Fair Only Mock Catholics?

"Last Sunday, homosexuals paraded around naked in the streets of San Francisco at the annual Folsom Street Fair. There were no arrests. They did more than walk the streets nude—they beat each other with whips. The leather/fetish homosexuals led each other around like dogs with metal collars; they set up booths where visitors could get flogged; they sold hard-core pornography; they promoted BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism and masochism); they mutilated their bodies with metal spikes. And after promoting lethal sex acts—the kind that causes AIDS—they raised money for AIDS.

"As always, the homosexuals mocked the Catholic clergy and religious. They dressed as cardinals, bishops, and nuns. There was even a group that disparaged the Jesuits, the 'Society of Janus'; their specialty is BDSM. The anti-Catholic aspects of this grand exhibition of moral destitution are not hard to understand: the participants are in a constant state of rebellion against truth. It must also be said that they never mock any of the Protestant mainline denominations—what’s there to rebel against?" - Catholic League blowhard Bill Donohue.

Huge Crowds For Folsom 2012

Did anybody get attendance figures for this year? More photos here.

The History Of A Kinky Retailer

As Folsom Street Fair approaches, Chelsea's kinkwear outlet Nasty Pig has published a history of their company. Even if you're not in the scene, you might be interested in how leather fashion has evolved over the last couple of decades. Also interesting is that Nasty Pig has been sued for spoofing Absolut and Major League Baseball. Naughty photos at the link, obviously.

Folsom Street Fair 2012

This clip is a couple of months old, but I only just noticed it last night while enjoying one of them there "this is why homos must be put to death" knuckle-dragging sites. It cracks me up, truly, how wild-eyed wingnuts get about a once-a-year, six-hour event. Meanwhile, they have nothing to say about the nation's thousands of titty bars where, I guarantee you, more blowjobs are given every hour of every day than have ever occurred in all the combined years of the Folsom Street Fair. Clip is not work-friendly. Duh.

New Date For Folsom Street Fair

Peter LaBarbera's favorite freak festival is changing its date for the first time in decades. Blame Larry Ellison.

Next year's fair will take place Sunday, September 23. Organizers opted to move the festival, which draws hundreds of thousands of people each year, to avoid a scheduling conflict with Oracle OpenWorld, which will run September 30 through October 4. Demetri Moshoyannis, executive director of Folsom Street Events, which produces the fair, said the group first realized the potential need for a change when it learned that approximately 30,000 hotel room nights had already been booked around their desired dates. "We were told only weeks after this year's fair that nearly the entire inventory of hotel rooms for the city had been sold out for the last weekend of September 2012. So, we were faced with a decision: either move the 2012 fair date and risk upsetting some people who had booked way in advance or not move the fair date, knowing that tens of thousands of visitors would be unable to book rooms at all," he said in a statement.

TOMORROW: Castro Nude-In

In a pre-Folsom Street Fair event that is sure to draw the scorn of America's wingnuts, a group of male nudists plans to hold a "nude-in" at the corner of Castro and Market streets tomorrow.

George Davis, a 65-year-old nudist best known for his unsuccessful run against Gavin Newsom in the 2007 mayor’s race, said the nude-in is just about letting people know it’s legal to go naked in San Francisco. (He’s right; it’s only illegal if one is aroused.) “You wouldn’t believe how many people don’t know it’s OK to be nude, it’s not illegal,” he said. “It’s just conveying a message that nude is not lewd, that you have a right to be nude. That’s about it.”

I've never been one of the "naked people," even at nude beaches. So I really don't get this need to be naked on a city street. Shrug.

Star Wars Last Supper

Remember a few years ago when the religious right completely lost their shit because of a similar Folsom Street Fair poster? Matt Barber was still a Concerned Woman in those days, but was UNconcerned with the hundreds of other Last Supper parodies out there. Because Folsom's had filthy homos in it! Barber's campaign against Folsom's poster eventually caused their beer sponsor to pull their logo from the event. (Not their money, though.) But even though Emperor Palpatine himself stands in for Jeebus here, we're betting this escapes complaint.

SAN FRANCISCO: Real Bad Party Donates $180K To LGBT Community Groups

This year's Real Bad party, the closing event of Folsom Street Fair, raised a record-breaking $180,000 for local LGBT and HIV/AIDS groups. Via press release:

Five selected LGBT health and community service organizations are sharing the funds raised, which include 100 percent of the money collected from general admission ticket sales. The beneficiary organizations are Maitri, the only residential care facility in the Bay Area focusing on the underserved community of those dying of or severely debilitated by AIDS; The National AIDS Memorial Grove, a healing sanctuary that offers, in perpetuity, a public landscape for grieving, gathering and renewal, keeping the human tragedy of AIDS in the forefront of the national consciousness by honoring all lives touched by AIDS; Project Open Hand, a provider of food and nourishment dedicated to improving the lives of people with HIV/AIDS, seniors and the home-bound or critically ill; San Francisco Suicide Prevention, a provider of emotional support, assistance and intervention as necessary to persons in crisis and those impacted by them, without regard to race, age, religion, gender or sexual orientation; and Visual Aid, a provider of crucial services to Bay Area professional artists living with HIV/AIDS, cancer, hepatitis and other life-threatening illnesses, helping to preserve, present and promote their creative work.

Congratulations to the Real Bad team for another fantastic year and to their Production Chairman, Craig Cochran (whom you know as JMG reader Castro Craig.)

Folsom Street Fair's 2010 Poster

Folsom Street Fair has released this year's poster. From their press release:

This year, the official Folsom Street Fair poster was inspired by both the film The Usual Suspects and the 2009 police raids on gay bars like the Atlanta Eagle and The Rainbow Lounge in Ft. Worth, Texas. In light of these recent events, the organization felt it was important that the Folsom Street Fair – and San Francisco – highlight issues of crime and punishment in the community. Folsom Street Events sought to juxtapose the crimes of Wall Street (e.g. Goldman Sachs) against behaviors in the BDSM community which may be punishable in some states. According to Demetri Moshoyannis, Executive Director, “This year’s Folsom Street Fair poster is intended to draw attention to the ongoing discrimination and persecution facing consenting adults who practice BDSM. We are extremely pleased with the outcome of this poster because it maintains the tradition of our trademark cutting-edge commentary on our community within the broader society. We are very much looking forward to producing a fantastic series of internationally renowned events this year.”

Real Bad Does Real Good

Grass Roots Gay Rights West, the non-profit group that produces Folsom Street Fair's Real Bad party, has presented $150,000 to the beneficiaries of this year's event. That's openly gay SF Supervisor (and mayoral candidate) Bevan Dufty on the right, wearing a suit. Behind Dufty is my dear friend Leif Wauters, last year's party honcho.

Four selected LGBT health and community service organizations are sharing the funds raised, which include 100 percent of the money collected from general admission ticket sales. The beneficiary organizations are Dimensions Clinic, which offers medical and mental health services to queer, transgender, and questioning youth, ages 12 to 25; Maitri, one of San Francisco’s most respected and valued resources in providing care to people severely debilitated by AIDS; openhouse, a housing, services, and advocacy organization with a goal to ensure safe housing and support services that are sensitive to the needs of LGBT seniors; and Visual Aid, a nonprofit organization founded to help preserve, present, and promote the work of Bay Area professional artists living with HIV/AIDS, Breast Cancer, and other life-threatening illnesses.

To date the Real Bad parties have donated over $1 million to LGBT-related and other deserving groups. As I've said here before, Real Bad is among the top three most fun and best-run gay events in the nation, along with Miami's Winter Party and NYC's Pier Dance. All three are volunteer staffed. This is not a coincidence.

Freepers On Folsom

Since Porno Pete LaBarbara just loves to repost JMG comments as proof of how gays are big horrible meanies, let's take a quick stroll through the God-fearing, church going, hands-to-Jeebus crowd at Free Republic as they react to a San Francisco Chronicle photo essay about yesterday's Folsom Street Fair.

- "I’d rather die in Scranton than live in San Fagcisco."
- "If these freaks don’t succumb to some std first , they will at least die out of the gene pool."
- "Talk about parading a sin. Could you imagine an adulterer’s parade. A bestiality parade. A Pedophile parade. A manslaughter’s parade."
- "folsom street.....puts the “filthy disease” in “ridden queers”..."
- "San Fags4!tscum used to be a nice city before it became homoville."
- "It’s such a shame—San Francisco itself is a beautiful city but the pervert crowd and tinpot liberals are a blight of wretched puke who occupy it."
- "Thank God I left this cesspool of sick freaks 2 years ago. It was hell on earth. I consider these pictures prime advertising for the coming 8.0 earthquake. Good Riddance, West Sodom!"

Praise Jeebus! Glorify His Name! Kill them dirty diseased queers for us, Oh Mighty Smiter!