Events

The Dirtiest Disco in San Fransisco 🪩🔥

The largest bear dance party in the US, founded in San Francisco in 2006 and now touring dozens of cities. In San Francisco it lands around Pride, Dore Alley, and Folsom weekend.

A West Coast queer, art-and-creator-focused dance party in San Francisco, with special editions built around Pride, Folsom weekend, Halloween, and other occasions.

A private, pre-registration-only dance party for men in San Francisco, held every few months. Also known as the Stallion and Mare party.

Annual party held on Saturday afternoon during Folsom Street Fair weekend, with occasional Dore Alley weekend editions.

The largest leather and fetish street fair in the world, held 11am to 6pm on the last Sunday of September along thirteen blocks of Folsom Street, between 8th and 13th, in SoMa. Entry is free with a suggested cash donation at the gates, which funds the community grants that Folsom Street, the producing nonprofit, hands out every year. The fair draws crowds of up to 400,000: hundreds of vendors selling leather, latex, rubber, and gear, play stations and demos, an erotic artists' stage, community and health tables, and DJ and live-music stages running all day. It is an adults-only space, and the parties around it are 21 and up. The whole week builds toward the Sunday: a fundraising leather march the weekend before, block parties and gear-shop events, marquee circuit and fetish parties across SoMa's clubs on Friday and Saturday nights, and a long-running community-benefit dance closing the weekend after the fair. The first fair was held in 1984, during the AIDS crisis and a wave of redevelopment that threatened SoMa's leather bars and clubs, and it remains part street party, part act of defiance. In 2018 the city made the neighborhood the world's first Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District.

San Francisco's unofficial closing party for Folsom weekend: a leather-leaning benefit dance held on the last Sunday of September at 1015 Folsom since 1989, raising money for LGBTQ+ and HIV charities.

Street fair in the Castro founded by Harvey Milk, with stages, art and community booths.

A massive New Year's Day block party in San Francisco, running alongside 'It's a New Day' at The Great Northern with stages of continuous music. An SF tradition since 2001.

San Francisco's iconic Easter Sunday costume contest, part of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence Easter in the Park celebration.

One of the world's largest and longest-running LGBTQ+ film festivals.

The traditional opening event of San Francisco Pride weekend and one of the world's largest trans gatherings: a rally and resource fair at Dolores Park before the march steps off through the Mission to Civic Center each June.

San Francisco's annual Pride celebration, featuring a signature Sunday parade on Market Street drawing hundreds of thousands of attendees.

San Francisco's leather community takes over its home turf every July for Up Your Alley, known to almost everyone as Dore Alley. The fair runs 11am to 6pm on the last Sunday of July, on Folsom Street between 9th and 10th plus Dore Alley itself, the short SoMa street that gives the day its name. Entry is free with a suggested cash donation at the gates, which funds the community grants handed out by Folsom Street, the nonprofit that also produces September's Folsom Street Fair. Expect a dense, high-energy block: vendors selling leather and gear, DJ stages, kink demonstrations, and community health tables. The crowd runs 10,000 to 15,000, leans local and gay-male, and the space is adults-only and kink-positive by design. The fair caps a full week of parties, from midweek kickoff nights through the marquee Friday and Saturday dance floors, an official tea dance as the gates close on Sunday, and a recovery party in the Castro on Monday. The surrounding SoMa leather bars stay busy all weekend. First held on Ringold Street in 1985 and settled into its current footprint in 1987, Dore is the smaller, grittier sibling of Folsom, and many regulars prefer it for exactly that reason.