Members of San Francisco’s LGBTQ community gathered in the South of Market neighborhood on Sunday to celebrate the city’s new Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District.
The Leather Hub on Folsom Street was filled with people celebrating the city’s rich history of kink, BDSM, furries and leather.
![Waldemar Howart laces up Steve Shi with rope as they demonstrate Shibari, an ancient Japanese artistic form of rope bondage.](https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32488_IMG_7680-qut-800x533.jpg)
Bob Brown identifies as a leatherman and has been coming to the South of Market neighborhood since the 1980s, when there used to be 47 gay and leather bars, according to the San Francisco Leather Alliance. Today, the group says there are only seven.
Brown has had two partners, and he met both of them in the neighborhood. He met his first husband at the famous gay bar, The Stud, and he met his current husband at a leather boots business called Stompers. And he proposed to him in the very same spot.
“So I have a lot of history in this area,” he said.
![Mark Benjamin (left) and Mike Pierce wave flags at the Sunday Streets SOMA event. Benjamin and Pierce are members of Flagging in the Park and came to show their support for the newly created Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District.](https://ww2.kqed.org/news/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2018/08/RS32481_IMG_7602-qut-800x533.jpg)
Brown says he sees the newly formed cultural district as a way to maintain and create more affordable spaces for residents and businesses who are part of the LGBTQ and leather community.