Also know as “Recovery Day”. Because boy do we need it. You can’t catch an evening flight after something like Folsom, because you end up missing some of the events. And you can’t catch an early morning flight, because then you have to leave the evening parties too soon and be totally wasted as well. So I have the reverse issue: I have a full day to kill, with an 8:30 pm flight (which means I don’t get home home until about midnight. Yawn.)
Graves and I had breakfast at Mel’s Drive-In (same building as the Opal Hotel), and then checked out. After stashing our luggage with the front desk, we caught the bus down to Mission and then visited Raging Stallion for Graves’ meeting with Kent Taylor. We also got a small tour of the place, including the upstairs filming area, where they were painting the floors and prepping a set for a movie Tony Buff will be doing for them. Something with a post-industrial torn-up look — industrial equipment, car parts, etc. It will be interesting to see what comes out of that.
We also got to see the box covers for Tony’s new videos, Institutional Encounters and the upcoming Indecent Encounters. One of Graves’ photos is being used for the main image on the later.
We caught some coffee, and then Graves headed off to Oakland to meet a friend and catch his flight home (around 5:00). I went back to the Castro.
Had a crabcake sandwich lunch at Caffe Luna Piena. Bought Christmas gifts for Cliff and Ruby at Under One Roof. Then back to Starbucks (I told you, bow to SODO) for WiFi and more coffee before heading back to the hotel myself. Uneventful trip to the airport, with dinner being a corned beef reuben from Max’s Deli at the gate.
And thus was Folsom survived.
But was it better than in the 90s? Or even different? On the basest level, no, not really. The weather this year made it calmer, but it’s still a huge press of leathered flesh, lots of lines, a decent amount of spectacle, plenty of drug use (like the the couple who hit me up on AssPig, wanting to do glove-free fisting on Ecstasy), and not enough bang for my buck. (Thank God for organized, sane, and stable play parties like Hell Hole and Tom’s, or it wouldn’t have been a good sex weekend for me, either.)
Ultimately, I will continue to use the same line about Folsom that I have for the past decade: “Everyone should go to Folsom twice — the second time to realize that you enjoyed it a whole lot more the first time.” (I use a similar line about International Mr. Leather, for pretty much the same reasons — “…the second time to really empty your wallet”, in reference to the huge vendor market at IML —. I go to Mid-Atlantic Leather each year instead (here’s a past trip report), and in parallel, the smaller Dore Alley weekend is more of what I like about Folsom and less of what I don’t.) I’m sure I’ll get back to Folsom someday — if I win International next year, for example — but I’m not in any rush.
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