“With all the changes that are going on, with all the new construction, there’s a sense that this culture and everything that finds a home at this bar is sort of being diluted,” Coombs said. Most regulars live within walking distance, including Chris Coombs, a 31-year-old merchant marine who stopped by the Stud on Tuesday evening to enjoy a Pabst with his boyfriend. I know that’s kind of odd to say, but it’s the building, and everyone mentions it when they come in,” said bartender Bernadette Fons, who has worked there for a decade. “The minute you come in, you just feel this warmth. Inside its current space, there are gilt mirrors and a disco ball and a small performance stage. The Stud opened in 1966 and quickly gained a reputation as a spot with a hippie vibe and eclectic customers. The once-empty lot next to the bar is being turned into housing. Across the street is Thumbtack, a startup where Jeb Bush held a town hall last year as part of his failed presidential bid, famously arriving in an Uber. The Stud is in South of Market, a still gritty and historically gay part of San Francisco where developers are rapidly building condos and restaurants to cater to tech workers who can afford $4,500 for a one-bedroom apartment. San Francisco has steadily shed coin-op laundries, neighborhood dive bars and auto-repair shops - all certainly part of natural turnover but hurried along by changing owners and rising rents. The tale is familiar in a city that is becoming ever wealthier with the arrival of newcomers taking high-paying technology jobs downtown or in nearby Silicon Valley.
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Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter > On Sunday, he called an emergency meeting to break the news to regulars. In June, the building was sold, and the bar’s owner received a notice that the monthly rent for the 2,800-square-foot space would leap from $3,800 to $9,500 in September. A sign at the front door, decorated with gold tinsel, reads: “Everybody is welcome at The Stud. In July, another street fair called Up Your Alley is billed as Folsom’s “Dirty Little Brother”.One of the nation’s most celebrated gay bars may soon go out of business after a new landlord more than doubled the rent, part of a trend that has old-timers lamenting that the San Francisco they know and love - dilapidated and diverse - is disappearing.Īt 50 years old, the Stud is the longest continuously running gay bar in the city and known throughout the country as one of the bohemian, gender-bending, anything-goes institutions that made San Francisco into a gay mecca. The weekend of the fair turn SF into one of the most hedonistic and sexually liberating cities in the world.
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It features over 200 exhibitors, has a main stage full of erotic performances, and encourages nudity. The Folsom Street Fair is a massive leather and fetish street event that draws over 400,000 enthusiasts to its 13-city block area of the historic Folsom Street every year. Like all bathhouses, Eros is busiest when the bars close and the workday is over.Ī hop, skip, and a spank away from the leather bars is Blow Buddies, a kinky sex club with a maze of glory holes. The venue does not have private rooms or hot tubs but does offer non-sexual massages. Inside a city of cruising possibilities Eros is the lone bathhouse. Bars like The Eagle and Powerhouse provide sexualized environments and dark spaces that are ripe for cruising. Read moreīecause so much cruising happens elsewhere, gay saunas in San Francisco are few and far between, though a handful of sex clubs and devious bars offer the same end result, without the steam.
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September’s Folsom Street Fair exemplifies San Francisco's open-minded, adventurous and free-loving community.īecause so much cruising happens elsewhere, gay saunas in San Francisco are few and far between, though a handful of sex clubs and. The city is by far the most creative city in the country when it comes to cruising and alternative fetish communities. Cruising is alive and well in gay San Francisco.