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Attendees at 2007’s Southeast Leather Fest illustrate the event’s pansexual appeal. (Photo courtesy Southeast Leather Fest)c
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HOME > COMMUNITY > COMMUNITY FEATURE
By: ROB BECK
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Fest, a pansexual convention of members of the leather and BD/SM scenes, returns to Decatur’s Holiday Inn Select for the festival’s 13th year on June 13. In addition to workshops and competitions, producers Catherine Gross and Kyle Fulkerson look forward to the revamped edition of the festival’s Friday night activities, this year dubbed the Frightening Friday Carnival.
“Friday night will not look anything like it has in the past,” says Gross, who has been a producer of the event since 2004. “We are doing a carnival, and what that means is we are going to be doing all sorts of booths that will cater to lots of different types of play and games.”
The carnival will feature entertainment and prizes suitable for the fest’s far-reaching tastes and sensibilities.
“There’s going to be something for everyone,” Gross says. “There’s just going to be out and out fun. There’s going to be petting zoos, kinky carnival games. The way it congealed, I think we’re going to have so much fun, and we all work hard enough. We need some fun.”
Gross is also excited to announce that, as of the 2009 festival, Southeast Leather Fest will be introduce two new titles to the event’s night of competition: Southeast Leather Sir and Southeast Leather Boy.
“Those titles are specifically for gay men, and they are really wonderful, kinky player titles,” she says, “meaning some titles are educational, and different titles have different focuses. The focus on these titles is fun, hot men who like to play, so we’re actually thrilled to have those titles become part of SELF.”
The addition of the two new titles is part of what Gross calls a conscious move to become a truly pansexual event, open and welcoming to all groups.
“Vision is very much part of what we do, where we must reinvent ourselves,” she says. “The vision is this: we have people who are very heavily master/slave, we have people who are married and kinky, we have the dykes, we have the gay men, and we are working to having a space that is honestly pansexual, not just ‘pansexual’ in name where that means mostly straight people. We’re really mixing, and we want to mix, because there is so much to be learned from each other, and crossover can be so much fun.”
this year’s festival is involvement from San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair, the massive, annual outdoor leather extravaganza that celebrates its 25th anniversary this fall. As a sponsor, Folsom Street Fair Executive Director Demetri Moshoyannis hopes to help SELF fulfill its vision of true pansexuality.
“SELF has been trying to make more inroads with the gay male community and trying to really beef that up,” he says. “So we’re excited about that.”
In addition to signing on as a sponsor and providing information about the Folsom Street Fair’s upcoming quarter century celebration, the San Francisco fest is also hosting a Folsom night at Heretic, where Moshoyannis hopes to give a taste of the flavor for which Folsom is known.
“What we try to do as much as possible is not just give information about the fact that it’s the 25th anniversary coming up and answer questions,” he says, “but we try to bring a little sense of the Folsom Street Fair debauchery wherever we go to get people excited.”
Moshoyannis decided to increase outreach to the Southeast because a sizable portion of the Fair’s attendees comes from this region.
“We like to be in touch with the folks that come and support us the most and encourage them to come back,” he says. “So that was a big draw for us. We wanted to be able to reach out and really get out the message about the 25th anniversary to where people come from the most.”
Gross is excited to have Folsom’s involvement in SELF this year, and highly encourages the uninitiated to check out the festivities in San Francisco.
“They have been absolutely terrific to us this year. To anyone who hasn’t attended [Folsom Street Fair], I would highly suggest going this year. It is going to be an all-out street party, and the only thing that could even begin to compare to it here is Atlanta Pride, and this is slightly different,” she says, laughing. “It’s just more fun than I could even tell you.”
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