There is also a cultural district in the Tenderloin to honor the 1966 riot at Compton’s Cafeteria. Other recently created cultural districts include “Calle 24” in the city’s traditionally Latino Mission district and SoMa Pilipinas, also in the vast South of Market district. The designation gives a district negotiating rights in future development and access to public money and planning, supporters say.
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San Francisco now has five cultural districts, and city leaders are eager to create more as a way to protect and promote longtime businesses, community space and affordable housing. “The leather culture has always been a rock in the community where we will fight for the greater good,” said Lex Montiel, co-owner of legendary leather bar SF Eagle. The Folsom Street Fair donates proceeds to public health, arts and human services organizations, as do countless clubs that raise money for nonprofits. The first gay leather bar in the area, the Tool Box, became famous when a photo of a mural inside painted by Chuck Arnett was published in a 1964 Life magazine article called “Homosexuality in America.”īehind the leather gear, the community has a rich record of public service. “This is an opportunity for us to revitalize the area.”Īccording to the resolution, police in the 1960s forced gay businesses from the waterfront to the South of Market area. “It was a lot easier to run into people on the street, if you will, and it had sort of a neighborhood feel even though not a lot of people lived in the area,” he said.
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With plenty of tiny leather briefs and bare chests, studded dog collars and whips, the fair is an annual ode to celebrating the San Francisco values of free speech and sexual freedom.īut the scene today is nothing like the bustle in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when more than 50 businesses catered to the leather culture, said Bob Goldfarb, chairman of a community group that supported the resolution. South of Market attracted the leather crowd and remains the site of gay bars and the popular Folsom Street Fair, which draws tens of thousands of people every year dressed in their bondage best. It has several neighborhoods significant to LGBTQ history, including the Castro and Tenderloin, where transgender women fed up with police raids rioted in 1966. San Francisco, birthplace of the rainbow gay pride flag, has long welcomed sexual and other minorities.
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On Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a resolution creating the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District as a way to honor the past and ensure the area remains a refuge.