All Geared Up
This year’s Folsom Street East festival harkens back to the grit and kink of old school New York.
June 17, 2015
Donning your best leather and baking in the sun might sound like an odd way to spend a hot summer day, but for some of New York’s kinkiest men, it’s an annual tradition.
The biggest fetish street fair on the East Coast, Folsom Street East brings together leather and kink communities for a day of camaraderie, celebration, and entertainment. The entirely volunteer-driven event benefits the New York City Anti-Violence Project and Visual AIDS. With sex-positive vendors and performances by queer rapper Will Sheridan, dazzling vixen Farrah Moans, electro-punk drag band Bottoms, and more, this year’s Folsom is set to be the sexiest ever.
This year’s theme, “The New York You Were Warned About,” harkens back to the heyday of cruising the Meat Packing District and hooking up in dirty alleys with men who seemed as dangerous as they were sexy. Before choosing the theme, organizers “set out to refine our mission as an organization and our vision of a perfect world,” explains Folsom Street East communications leader Paul Harrison Phillips. “We decided that New York City in 2015 is becoming too clean and shiny. This is our 18th year causing a ruckus on the West Side, and we want to bring back some of that dirt and grit that New York was once infamous for.”
Folsom is, after all, a fetish street fair, and attendees will be challenged to step up their game—whatever that means to you. “You don’t have to have any gear to enjoy yourself at Folsom Street East,” Phillips adds. “If your curiosity is piqued, we want you to come as whatever freak you are.”
Folsom Street East at West 28th St (btwn 10th/11th Aves), June 21 from 11am–4pm; $10. Visit folsomstreeteast.org for more info.
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