Folsom Street Blues

"Folsom Street Blues" is a first hand account of San Francisco¿s South of Market leather arena during the 1970s. Jim Stewart, author and photographer, founder of Keyhole Studios, is a true SoMa pioneer. From his flat near Folsom Street, Jim Stewart lived the life of leatherfolk. Folsom Street Blues is a non-linear memoir of leather culture before political correctness, personal computers, cell phones, and tweets directed our lives. Folsom Street Blues is a visit to a foreign...
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"Folsom Street Blues" is a first hand account of San Francisco¿s South of Market leather arena during the 1970s. Jim Stewart, author and photographer, founder of Keyhole Studios, is a true SoMa pioneer. From his flat near Folsom Street, Jim Stewart lived the life of leatherfolk. Folsom Street Blues is a non-linear memoir of leather culture before political correctness, personal computers, cell phones, and tweets directed our lives. Folsom Street Blues is a visit to a foreign country, a country where drifters from Tulsa and scions of African diamond mines hung out at the same leather bars, took drugs together, hooked up at the bath houses, and partied like there was no tomorrow. Folsom Street Blues recalls a time when gay San Francisco was democracy¿s poster-child. Jim Stewart worked with, and partied with, such classic leather giants as Jack Fritscher, award winning author and founding San Francisco editor of the legendary Drummer magazine; David Hurles, photographer and creator of the infamous rough trade Old Reliable Tape and Picture Company; Oscar streaker Robert Opel, assassinated founder of Fey-Way Studios, San Francisco¿s first Leather Art Gallery; plus many others who, if they are not in the annals of leather history, should be. Jim Stewart¿s haunting tabloid photos conjure Victor Skrebneski images developed in a Weegee crime-lab darkroom. His scattershot poems chart an EKG for the heartbeat of 1970s gay San Francisco.