The Folsom Street Fair takes over several blocks in downtown San Francisco on the last Sunday of September every year. Eighteen years old in 2001, it's the largest Leather culture street festival anywhere. The Fair is the grand finale of Leather Week, celebrating Leather, gay, and fetish lifestyles with events in and around San Francisco. People travel from all over the world to attend parties, seminars and pagents like the California Leatherman Contest, and to mix and mingle with like-minded folks.

The Fair is one hell of a party. The streets around Folsom are barricaded, and everyone comes out for the afternoon! Queens and queers, dykes and daddys, slaves, masters, bears and boys, any role you can imagine is played out at the Fair. Skin and leather are everywhere, every fetish and mode represented. Boys on leashes, hooded slaves, drag queens in Sunday best, they're all out for the Fair! Accents are chrome and chain, tattoos, piercings, pretty things people choose for themselves, festive and wide open. Music fills the streets, fag house, rock n roll; People dance everywhere, in windows, on loading docks, up and down the church steps they dance, dancer in a cage hung high above the crowd, down below they dance in line for the porta potties.

For blocks, Folsom St. overflows with booths selling bondage gear and leather goods, t-shirts, manacles and floggers, books and toys of all kinds. There are beer and drink stands, Ben and Jerry's carts, barbque, Thai food, burritos and corn dogs. There are information and literature booths, chiropractic and photo booths. There are thousands of people in the streets, out together for the day, reveling in life.

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