Author: AdminSFLD

Join a committee!  Contribute to the future of the District!

All our meetings are free and open to all. 

Committee meetings are currently held on Zoom.   

For meeting information, visit our:
Home page’s “Timely Reminders” post or,
Our Events List / Calendar, or
Our Facebook Events page.

  Choose Committee Email Subscriptions 

Our current committees:
Arts and Culture Committee
Communications Committee
Diversity and Membership Committee
Fundraising Committee
Land Use Committee
Other Groups (Artist Opportunities, Volunteers, Save SOMA Network)
General Information about Committee Meetings and Membership

Arts and Culture Committee – fourth Thursdays, 6-7pm

This committee advocates for creative activity in the Cultural District, organizes events, performances, public art, and gallery shows, and explores opportunities to attract and support leather and LGBTQ artists in the Cultural District.  Please contact the Arts and Culture Committee chair for more info!

Communications Committee – second Thursdays, 6-7pm

This committee handles the Cultural District’s social media and digital presence, public relations, branding, event promotion, and outreach to clubs, organizations, and individuals.  Contact the Communications Committee chair for more info!

Diversity & Membership Committee – second Mondays, 6-7pm

This committee recruits individual members and works with other committees to ensure diversity of membership, programs and participants. Contact the Diversity & Membership Committee chair for more info!

Fundraising Committee – select Tuesdays, 5-6pm

This committee plans the District’s fundraising events, LeatherWalk and the Golden Dildeaux Awards.  Its work also includes planning other fundraising events and campaigns, exploring grant opportunities, and creating materials to generate donations to support the work of the organization.  Please contact the Fundraising Committee chair for more info.

Land Use Committee – first Monday, 6:30-7:30

This committee tracks construction projects and developments in the District, and working with developers and city agencies to mitigate the effects of gentrification.

The Land Use Committee also works to preserve culturally and historically significant buildings, businesses, organizations, traditions, arts, events, and aesthetics, to protect tenants from displacement, and to promote affordable housing in the District.  Contact the Land Use Committee chair for more info.

Other mail lists

Artists
Information about opportunities and programs:  murals, commissions, grant possibilities, etc. Join our Artists mailing list.

Volunteers
Our volunteer opportunities include greeting the public at event info booths, helping distribute posters and flyers, and helping with special projects throughout the year.   Join our Volunteers mailiing list.

Advocacy
Join the “Save SOMA Action Network” for opportunities to advocate for our District, our businesses, and community institutions through letter writing and speaking at City hearings.  Join our “Save SOMA Action Network”.

General Information 

Our meetings are free and open to all. Unless otherwise noted, all in-person meeting locations are ADA compliant and wheelchair accessible.

ASL interpreters will be provided if requested at least ten days in advance. Please send requests to manager@sflcd.org.

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Participate, help out, and be a part of our historic Cultural District!

As reported on their Web site, on Hoodline, and in the Bay Area Reporter, Blow Buddies will not be reopening after the pandemic. The club, which opened on August 8, 1988 and saw its last guests on March 15, 2020, will be much missed by many in our community. As the Web page says, “The club was created in response to one virus and done in by another.”

It joins Watergarden, the San Jose bathhouse which recently closed after 43 years of operation, a victim of both the cost of being closed, and the uncertainty about when they might return to normal. A Bay Area Reporter article on that closing can be found here.

The good news, however, is that San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is taking steps to make it easier for a bathhouse to operate in the city. In legislation passed by the Board of Supervisors in July 2020, and adopted by the Department of Public Health in January 2021, they have removed the mandate for inspections and the ban on locking doors, making traditional gay bathhouses possible.

They have also implemented zoning changes which allow “Adult Sex Venues” (ncluding bathhouses) to operate in broad areas of the city, including key locations in the Castro, Tenderloin and SOMA, where such venues would be most welcome and successful. You can learn more about the zoning changes here.

The first impact of these changes was the opening of the new Eros SF Sex Club, an SF Legacy Business formerly located on Market Street. The new facility at 132 Turk Street opened in June, in time for SF Pride. Read about the move here, and visit the Club’s website here. 

Of course, the Steamworks bathhouse remains open in Berkeley, for those willing to travel across the bay.

With the new zoning, other adult sex venues are likely to open in San Francisco. If you would like to create one in SOMA, the LEATHER & LGBTQ Cultural District would love to help you. Write to business@sflcd.org for information.

Update:  As of the summer of 2024, we understand that the Blow Buddies building is now a tea warehouse.

Garrett Sohnly, a local artist and member of the LCD’s Arts and Culture Committee, has been compiling a slideshow of the murals and street art of our neighborhood.

View our Mural Slideshow.

We are also developing a “Map ‘o Murals” using Google Map technology.  The map includes photographs of the murals, addresses, the artist’s name (where we know it), and where to learn more.   You can use the small embedded version below, but for best results:

Open the LEATHER & LGBTQ Cultural District Mural Map in Web Browser or Google Maps

You can help us maintain, improve, and expand this map:

If you have better information that the map offers (the mural title, artist’s name,  etc.), please share it with us.  

If you spot a mural in our District – or other example of Leather Culture in the general vicinity of South of Market – send us a picture, telling us where it is, and anything you know about the artwork or the artist(s) who created it.

The Arts and Culture Committee of the LEATHER & LGBTQ Cultural District is very invested in the murals and public art visible throughout our special, South of Market neighborhood.   

Help us create a new mural!

A large, wrap-around-the-building mural has now been completed at the corner of 11th Street and Burns Place (between Folsom and Howard).

The mural, called “SHOWTIME“, decorates two sides of The Oasis, San Francisco’s home for Superstar Drag Shows, Fabulous Cabaret Performances and Unforgettable Events. It has been created by some of the city’s best-loved queer artists — Serge Gay Jr., Simön Malvaez, Elliott C Nathan, J Manuel Carmona, and Christopher McCutcheon — as a love letter to San Francisco.

Thanks to those of you who joined us on Thursday, June 2, at Oasis (298 11th Street) for the official unveiling of the mural, with honored guests Mayor London Breed and State Senator Scott Wiener, and for the party celebrating the five artists.

As reported in The Bold Italic, funding for the piece was secured through the Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District, in association with the SF Arts Commission, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence‘s “Queer Artists for Queer Spaces” initiative, with support from Soma West CBD,.  Of course, Oasis’ owner and creative director, D’Arcy Drollinger, is the impresario who made it all happen.

Here are a few pictures of the work in progress: