It’s been nearly two weeks since SF’s Dore Alley filled South of Market with kink and queer frivolity … and we still can’t get over this drag queen’s headpiece.
San Francisco hosts Folsom Street Fair, a.k.a. “Folsom” — the largest leather festival in the world toward the tail end every summer. Coming up on 41 years, the gathering — a sex-positive, kink-friendly affair that regularly attracts north of 400,000 people annually — descends in the city’s Leather District, creating both elation and controversy (among the narrow-minded and emotionally stunted). But before Folsom, a smaller, albeit lesser-known to the general public event takes place in July — Dore Alley.
Also known as Up Your Alley — the event, which takes place in and around, you guessed it, Dore Alley, which is also in SF’s Leather District — attracts smaller, predominately gay male kinksters who fill the area with the smell of VCR cleaner and sun-warmed leather regalia.
It’s a more intimate affair, less crowded, and organized around more monolithic fetishes and tastes; the Folsom Street fair famously touches on a wide swath of kink culture found in queer and heteronormative cohorts.
This year saw festival regular attendees at the fair … but, unarguably, no one stole the proverbial show more than Juanita MORE! Well … more specifically, her leather-wrapping headpiece that featured tall plumage.
“People are going to be shocked with this look,” MORE! Tell me in conversation, her eyes glowing brighter as she waxes more in-depth on the headpiece’s making and inspiration. “It’s going to be in two parts, with the feather cap attached to the best of the leather mask — I couldn’t get in and out of a car if it was one whole piece.”
Glammamore, MORE!’s longtime collaborator and close friend, constructed the piece entirely by hand; the wrap-around leather mask featured a zipper in the back; more than 150 feathers were fastened to the cap, each one made structurally sound and erect through malleable metal wrappings.
When the headpiece — and by proxy its wearer, MORE! — graced this past weekend’s Dore Alley Festival — jaws dropped, attracting curious kinksters to get closer looks.
In typical MORE! fashion, her convivial and warm nature was met with the most forceful, empathetic finger-wagging when passersby got too close. But may this window into her monochromatic plumage and like-colored leather mask help satiate some of those questions and curiosities.
