folsom didn't come from nowhere

everybody thinks of folsom as the leather thing. the leather thing is way older than folsom. it comes from the motor clubs.

after the war you had all these guys who'd been through it together and came back to a country that had no clue what to do with them. some got kicked out of the service for being gay. plenty just never went home. they landed in the cities, got bikes, and riding was how they found each other without it being obvious, because you can't get raided on a highway.

they did runs. load up on a friday, ride out to some campground with no neighbors and no cops, and you got a weekend to just be a person. that was the radical part, honestly. a bunch of men around a fire who could've done real time for it.

and these were actual clubs, not a group chat. bylaws, officers, the whole thing. you didn't get the patch until you earned it, and the colors on your back meant you belonged to somebody and they belonged to you. it looked like the straight biker clubs on purpose. masculine, serious, and you didn't get in easy.

bars came later, mostly down in the part of town nobody else wanted, and that's where the leather stuff got worked out properly. all the structure. who takes care of who, how you ask, what a yes actually means. service meant something back then. it was a skill and you were expected to be good at it.

then the 80s came through and took most of them. clubs that used to have fifty guys were burying people faster than they could replace them. the ones who made it kept the bikes running and kept showing up, mostly so it wouldn't die with them.

anyway. that's the line we come out of, and that's the garage.

folsom's just the one weekend the city quits pretending. leather back on the street it came off of. put your colors on, we'll leave the door up, and if you show up ready, somebody who knows what he's doing will take his time with you.

property of yes homo. san francisco. ready to service.