I found this graffiti on the side of my building’s call box this morning. Booty call? Not exactly street art, but perhaps something close, if viewed in the right light. I suppose this is one way of giving voice to your desires, though perhaps not the most effective…
-AidanAbroad
Oops… I mean, a SARONG, not a dress.
Kabuki Springs (the Japanese baths in San Francisco is apparently worried that its male customers will feel insecure in their masculinity if they are expected to wear the same garment as the women who come there. So to compensate, Kabuki offers the male-sounding title of “Court Classic.” Humorous directions for achieving this style include such masculinity-affirming suggestions as “spread your legs wide” and “breathe.”
Seen in the locker room at Kabuki Springs and Spa in Japantown SF, which I highly recommend…the baths, that is. (Tuesday is coed; Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays are men-only, clothing-optional nights.)
-AidanAbroad
Posted in Men, Photography, San Francisco, Signage
Friend of this site George Wong passed away the morning of June 6, 2011. George was a long-time officer with Avatar Los Angeles and a Gay Games gold medalist in volleyball. He will be missed. For the Leatherati obituary, click here.
Posted in Leather, Los Angeles, Men, Obituary, Subcultures, volleyball
Tagged Avatar, Culture, Gay, George Wong, Kink, Leather, Los Angeles, Obituary, R.I.P., Volleyball
Noel Ibay
Noel Ibay is exhibiting his images of Bears and Chubs at Magnet. The show is called BEarMUSEMENT, and includes graphite drawings, electronic media, cartoons, and pop-culture parodies and is intended to queer audience notions of male beauty. At Magnet in San Francisco through June. 4122 18th Street in the Castro district. Part of the 14th Annual Queer Arts Festival. More on that here.
Posted in Activism, Art and Artists, Collecting, Comics, DIY and Maker Culture, Men, San Francisco, Subcultures
Tagged Art, Bara, Bears, Chub, Comics, Culture, Gay, Magnet, QCC, Queer Arts Festival, San Francisco, Sexy, subculture
Seeing this advertisement, with fit male baseball players’ crotches at eye level, beer was not the first kind of “bud” I thought they were suggesting that I grab. Nor did I think of “buddies.” A friend from Mendocino thought of green buds when he saw this. Quadruple entendre? Maybe even quintuple?
Seen at South Van Ness and Division Streets in SF.
-AidanAbroad
Posted in Baseball, Men, San Francisco, Signage
Opening Saturday from 1-4 pm at SOMArts: Queer It Yourself: Tools for Survival. How do we make and do things that will have a lasting import? Straight culture has its traditions, institutions and social formulations and so have we. Sometimes they are parallel, other times a bit askew. When queers ask one another: “Is he family?” the word means something very different than when it is deployed as a semiotic weapon, as is the case with the coded phrase “family values.” How can we reconfigure notions (ie: the family) that have historically been used to separate, condemn and alienate us into useful tools for our collective long-term survival?
Artist and friend of this site Richard Bolingbroke explains how this works for him:
“These two pieces are part of my series Family Portrait in which I portray the men and women I am close to. As a gay man I needed to create my own ‘Family’ and I decided to document it myself rather than let straight society do it for me.. These men are my lovers and close friends. This is my community, my family. There are over 40 drawings in this series and these two of Frank and Luca, and Gary and Joe, are of couples who have both been together over 30 years.”
You can see Bolingbroke’s portraits, and lots of other fresh art Saturday afternoon at SOMArts, 934 Brannan Street in San Francisco. Opening at the same time in the side gallery: A History of Queer Street Art. More on that later.
Posted in Collecting, DIY and Maker Culture, Men, Richard Bolingbroke, San Francisco, Subcultures
Tagged Art, Culture, Gay, QIY, Richard Bolingbroke, San Francisco
Eric Robinson and "Leathermen" at Las Manos Gallery in Chicago
Eric Robinson’s wet-plate ambrotypes will be showing as part of QIY: Queer It Yourself, which opens Saturday at SOMArts. The exhibit presents alternative, queer, do-it-yourself processes and projects, collaborations, zines, posters, green architecture, activist interventions and recuperations of low-tech media. Robinson took his 19th century kit (big awkard camera, portable darkroom, an array of chemicals, beakers and trays…) to the Dore “Up Your Alley” Fair in 2010, supplementing a series of portraits of Leathermen that he began the previous year. Images from that series will be on exhibit. More on Robinson here, here, here and here.
Robinson at work making wet-plate ambrotypes. These one-of-a-kind photographs on glass were common during the mid 19th century. As it disappears into the digital realm, this work reminds us of the physical, chemical and optical origins of photography. At the same time, generic conventions suggest that “fetish” photography should be slick and polished, suitable for publication in magazines, and “straight” in the photographic sense. These images kick that cliche, their hand-hewn aesthetic underscoring the sense that we are looking into not only the history of photography, but that of Leather. Old Guard all around…QIY is part of the National Queer Arts Festival. This year’s theme is A Sustainable Queer Planet. More on the festival here and more soon. QIY opens Saturday, June 4th with a reception from 1pm until 4pm. SOMArts is located at 934 Brannan at 8th St. in San Francisco. The gallery is tucked under the freeway, just to the east of the Trader Joe’s complex.
Posted in Art and Artists, Beards, Collecting, DIY and Maker Culture, Eric Robinson, Facial hair, Leather, Men, Photography, San Francisco, Southern Illinois, Subcultures
Tagged 19th century, Ambrotype, Art, BDSM, Culture, Dore Alley, Eric Robinson, Gay, Kink, Leather, Leathermen, LGBT, Old Guard, Photography, QIY, Queer Arts Festival, Queer It Yourself, San Francisco, Sexy, SOMA, Somarts, Up Your Alley Fair
Hide/Seek Curator Jonathan D. Katz
Last October, The Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery opened Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, the first major museum exhibition showing how the questions of gender and sexual identity have dramatically shaped the creation of modern American portraiture.
For background on the censorship scandal that ensued, click here, here, and here.
On June 3rd, Jonathan D. Katz, director of the doctoral program in visual studies, State University of New York at Buffalo, will discuss his role as co-curator and will consider such themes as sexual difference in depicting modern Americans; how artists have explored the definition of sexuality and gender; how major themes in modern art-especially abstraction-were influenced by this form of marginalization and how art reflected society’s changing attitudes. -via QCC
The program is at The LGBT Community Center at Market and Octavia. It begins at 8pm and costs $10. Want to get more of Katz? Want to give more to regional arts and humanities? Come to the Pre-party!
From 6pm until the lecture starts, enjoy a reception for Dr. Katz to benefit the Queer Cultural Center‘s Queer Conversations on Culture and the Arts: a series of lectures co-presented by QCC and the California College of the Arts. QCCA brings together locally and nationally renowned artists, writers, filmmakers, and scholars for a series of conversations to discuss a broad range of topics in the humanities and the arts. Reception tickets are $25-$100 donation and include wine, hors d’oeuvres, and preferred seating at the lecture.
Posted in Activism, Art and Artists, Collecting, DIY and Maker Culture, History, Men, Photography, San Francisco, SCANDAL: Politics, Crime, Revolution and More., Scholarship, Video, Washington DC
Tagged Art, CCA, censorship, Culture, Exhibition, Gay, History, National Portrait Gallery, Photography, Portraiture, QCC, QCCA, San Francisco
This one is via friend of this site George Wong. Thanks, George! For more sexy holidays, click here, here and here.
Posted in Men, Military, Photography, Sexy Holidays
Tagged Memorial Day, Photography, Sexy
Posted in Baseball, Men, Photography, San Francisco
Tagged Buster Posey, Catcher, Get Well, Injury, Photography, San Francisco, Sexy, SF Giants, Sports
gayhighwaymen
Maštíŋčala Sáŋ
The Gay Highwaymen 