Sam Spade's San Francisco

Update: For news, links and information about the 2008 Folsom Street Fair (as well as the Up Your Alley Fair) please follow this link to: Up Your Alley - Folsom Street Fair - Naked Bodies, Sex, Slaves, Sin & Satisfaction.

This weekend tens of thousands of leather men and women - gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual and transgender - will descend upon San Francisco from every corner of the world. The Folsom Street Fair is the World's Fair for leather folks on every continent.

Hotel rooms as well as just about every B&B in the City have been booked by leather folks from Germany, Holland, Japan, Great Britain and from nations on every continent.

Most of the people who come to San Francisco for the Folsom Street Fair have discretionary income and spend a lot of money here. They fly into SFO, take taxis everywhere they go, stay at the City's better hotels, eat in some of our finest restaurants and spend lots and lots of money while they are here.

Additionally, the sponsors of the Folsom Street Fair make direct contributions to many of our most important local charities. Last year more than $300,000 was donated to local non-profits.

Here are the designated beneficiaries for 2007:

• AIDS Emergency Fund
• Berkeley Free Clinic
• Black Rock Arts Foundation
• Dolores Street Community Services
• Frameline
• GLBT Historical Society
• Healing Waters
• Lyon-Martin Health Services
• Pets Are Wonderful Support (PAWS)
• Positive Resource Center
• San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus
• STOP AIDS Project
• Tenderloin Health
• The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
• Transgender Law Center
• Triangle Martial Arts Association

Additionally, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will return this year to host the gates. The Sisters are always wildly successful at hosting the gates. Very few fair-goers (except the odd cheapskate here and there) are nervy enough to pass by the Sisters without offering a nice donation. Five bucks has been the base amount for years.

The Folsom Street Fair is one of the most diverse, extraordinary, unusual and fascinating mass public events on the planet. This weekend there will be bountiful bevies of bare butts, bouncing boobs and bushy balls in the City - particularly if the weather is warm and sunny. Foggy weather causes embarrassing shriveling, so - if the weather so demands - the steamy action will be inside the many play parties planned for the weekend.

The biggest question this year, of course, is how many Republican senators and congressmen will be disguised behind their studded leather jockstraps and slave collars. A few of them have recently been nabbed chasing page boys or toe-tapping in bathrooms, but there are still enough closeted self-homophobes in the Republican Party who think so badly of their bad-boy ways, that they will be here in droves to be spanked, paddled and pumped. Move-on.org members armed with strap-ons will be available to meet their needs ... but these are very private parties.

For a complete list of all the parties that you can get into, follow this link to an earlier story, Folsom Street Fair - Leather week in San Francisco.

Bon appetit!