Queerness Archives

The Weekend Catch-Up: San Francisco’s 2023 Folsom Street Fair Descends on the City

26Sep

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

The Weekend Catch-Up: San Francisco’s 2023 Folsom Street Fair Descends on the City

Hundreds of thousands of sex-positive bipeds walked San Francisco's SoMa district in leather regalia (or, basically, nothing at all) this past Sunday during SF's 40th Folsom Street Fair festival. Now in its 40th iteration, San Francisco’s foremost sex-positive festival — which is also the largest leather, kink, and fetish event in the entire world — defined the weekend. An estimated 250,000 kinksters flocked to the SoMa, where all sorts of shenanigans, debauchery, and queerness intersected for the annual festival. Folsom Street Fair has never been an event for the narrow-minded or unexplored. As one wades through a sea of warm bodies, the unmistakable smell of sun-warmed leather and musk permeates the air, bumps into leashed pups, and angle feathers made from cowhide occur. Permitt...

The Importance of Explicit Consent in Kink and Fetish — at SF’s Folsom Street Fair and Far Beyond

24Sep

By Matt Charnock1 Comment

Culture + Travel, Editors' Picks, Queerness

The Importance of Explicit Consent in Kink and Fetish — at SF’s Folsom Street Fair and Far Beyond

The largest kink and leather festival in the world descends on SF this weekend, putting into focus the need to ask for permission before exploring sexual intimacy. The human experience exists in tandem with sexual expression, regardless of where one falls on its spectrum. (Asexuality is, after all, a form of sexuality that exists outside the realm of celibacy, the latter connoting refrain from engaging in sexual behaviors, rather than representing a person’s sexual expression; “aces” — the term used to describe asexual people — may still have interest in sex; their intimate lives aren’t organized around sexual intercourse, but rather emotional intimacy and relationship building; aces often masturbate and remain selective if they do choose to have sex with a consenting partner.) ...

The Long Weekend Catch-Up: San Francisco’s Iconic Queer Stud Nightclub to Be Rebirthed in 2024

6Sep

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Hyperlocal News + Stories, Queerness

The Long Weekend Catch-Up: San Francisco’s Iconic Queer Stud Nightclub to Be Rebirthed in 2024

Plus: Dozens of sea lion deaths around the Bay Area are linked to a certain disease — that can be spread to dogs, FYI. San Francisco exists as a nexus for a litany of matters — one intersection being queerness and entertainment. (SF is still widely considered the queer mecca of the world.) But alas, the pandemic reminded us all of the semi-permanence of things and that our lives can painfully change in the blink of an eye… or the howl of a cough… or fit of a sneeze. The shuttering of the Stud, a touchstone of LGBTQIA+ nightlife in San Francisco, was such a nudge. However, as SF continues disproving its ill-ascribed doom loop narrative, growing pockets of vitality around the seven-by-seven are glowing by the day. The grand opening of downtown’s IKEA location saw thousands shop a...

Remembering SF’s COVID ‘Reopening’ at the Last Gay Bar on Polk Street

25Aug

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Essays, Queerness

Remembering SF’s COVID ‘Reopening’ at the Last Gay Bar on Polk Street

What was intended as an outing to celebrate SF's "reopening" in June of 2021 morphed into something perhaps more special: an ode to the importance of queer safe spaces in a heteronormative world. "I'll just take a gin and soda, extra lime,” I told the bartender June two years ago on June 15th — the same day San Francisco "reopened" after lifting a long list of then-relevant COVID-19 health protocols. It was a request heard not muffled by wearing a mask. The thirtysomething libation slinger — who was by himself amid the frenetic energy that pulsed across San Francisco Tuesday evening, scurrying behind the bar to contend dozens of drinkers — hurried to mound ice and generously pour house gin, leaving what looked like enough room for two tablespoons of carbonated water to float on top. “Th...

This SF Bay Area Activist Continues to Tackle the Dangers Around Sexual Stereotyping

16Aug

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Hyperlocal News + Stories, Queerness

This SF Bay Area Activist Continues to Tackle the Dangers Around Sexual Stereotyping

Activist-writer-extraordinaire Julia Serano’s ongoing work around sexualization casts a spotlight on how pervasive certain stigmas are for queer individuals, especially in regard to bisexuality. Julia Serano personifies the idea of what it means to be a true multi-hyphenate individual. Serano is a celebrated writer, whose work has appeared in the likes of The New York Times, and The Guardian; she’s also an activist in many realms. Serano, too, is a performer — musician and biologist. Her work spans the gamut of creative and scientific expression, as well as sexuality and culture. There's a reason why some have described Serano as a “tour de force” on under-theorized topics — like sexualization. Her most recent work, Sexed Up: How Society Sexualizes Us and How We Can Fight Back, ...

FYI: August Is Transgender History Month in San Francisco

2Aug

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Hyperlocal News + Stories, Queerness

FYI: August Is Transgender History Month in San Francisco

In 2021, San Francisco became the first-ever metropolitan in the United States to dedicate an entire month to transgender advocacy and the history that wraps up the community. San Francisco’s synonymous with queerness and gay rights activism. The intersection of the two has cemented the city’s importance as a leader in moving the needle forward for LGBTQI+ people — with representation and recognition being cornerstones of that progression. In 2021, San Francisco declared August Transgender History Month, helping shed more visibility on transgender advocacy… past, present, and future. The country’s first Transgender History Month honored the 55th anniversary of the Compton’s Cafeteria Riots, which occurred in August 1966 i...

8 of My Favorite Neighborhood Treats in San Francisco

25Jul

By Juanita MORE!No Comments

Food + Drink, Queerness

8 of My Favorite Neighborhood Treats in San Francisco

SF is home to an ever-rotating number of bakeries, donut shops, and street-side cafes — but the best treats are always in my orbit. I am a creature of habit. I find comfort in routine and the predictability of my daily tasks. For instance, I wake up at about the same time every day and make a pot of Esperanca, Brasil Ritual Coffee, which tastes like orange marmalade, milk chocolate, and toasted pecans. I then return to bed to watch the gayest news program currently on television — ABC7 Mornings with Reggie Aqui, Jobina Fortson, Drew Tuma, and last but not for a second least, Kumasi Aaron. Watching the news with them is like catching up with old friends with many important issues to discuss. It's the same with Jackson and Macho; keeping the boys on a schedule is incredibly important for...

Revisiting the Story Behind That Aerial Shot of SF’s Illuminated Pink Triangle

29Jun

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Queerness

Revisiting the Story Behind That Aerial Shot of SF’s Illuminated Pink Triangle

This year, San Francisco's pink triangle returned to its familiar form: a textured shape that doesn't light up come nightfall. But in 2022, the symbol of resilience glew like a cotton-candy-colored torch in the night. Amid the pandemic’s darker moments of 2020, San Francisco Pride’s virtual festivities offered a Zoom-able balm during a time marked by colorless days, weeks, and months. There were digital dance parties; the Queen Diva herself, Big Freedia, headlined SF Pride’s 50th-anniversary festivities; the cruising at Corona Heights Parks was, however, a non-existent affair. But Twin Peaks did light up with thousands of LEDs that year, each emitting a purple hue and assembled in a way to resemble the city’s Pink Triangle installation installed during Pride Month. The latte...

I’m Obsessed With These Queer-Supporting Millipedes in SF

23Jun

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Culture + Travel, Hyperlocal News + Stories, Queerness

I’m Obsessed With These Queer-Supporting Millipedes in SF

The San Francisco invertebrates in question each have over 400 legs — and they’re putting all those little feet down against homophobia. Few things in life bring me as much predictable joy as a stroll (or scroll) through a zoological facility (and its social media accounts). It’s an experience rife with both biophilia and natural wonder; it’s also an excuse to fawn over, say, large African wildlife without the need to bust out one’s passport. An often overlooked gem in any zoo is the reptile and insect houses — bastions for ostensibly creepy-crawly ectotherms society has otherwise cast aside as unfavorable to more warm-blooded beings. But what those indoor exhibits contain are nothing short of alien-like creatures that even James Cameron couldn’t render into worthy CGI animations. ...

This Victorian House in SF Was a Rare Female-Only Bathhouse

15Jun

By Matt CharnockNo Comments

Editors' Picks, Queerness

This Victorian House in SF Was a Rare Female-Only Bathhouse

Opened at 955 Valencia Street over 40 years ago, Osento Bathhouse was a women-only, Japanese-style communal public bathhouse in San Francisco. San Francisco was once rife with bathhouses. The institutions were ideated from plucked leftovers of the early American bathhouses that evolved out of traditional 1920s and 1930s Turkish and Russian baths, which offered communal hot tubs and showers to men. These male-centric places were conceived around comfort, relaxation, and same-sex socialization. The kind of gay bathhouses that became synonymous with San Francisco — many of which opened up as early as 1950, but some in the United States can trace their origins much further back; the Ariston Hotel Baths in NYC had the first recorded raid of queer patrons inside a gay sauna in 1903 — dis...