As Folsom Street Fair (Sat/24) looms over us like a leather daddy with an itchy whip paw, the city readies itself for the roughest, naughiest, sweatiest weekend of the year. Yesterday, I ran all over the city checking in with the sex scene. I kept my clothes mostly on, but then it is only Thursday... 

Monarchy-Andrew Wedge fitting at Mr. S Leather

"This is Spartaaa!" I'm standing outside one of SoMa's crucial leather one-stops with an old hand local kink photographer Rich Trove (check his site after the Fair for shots of your flings in the sunshine) and a fashion journalist from the Chronicle. Guess which one is trying to explain to the other what a traditional S&M harness looks like? Read more »

In honor of Valentine's Day, a series of parochial films called "Love, Sex, and Venereal Disease," presented by Oddball Film and Video, will premiere at 275 Capp Street on Saturday/13. Local filmmaker Stephen Parr runs the enterprise, and Oddball's public showings are compiled from Parr's enormous archive of offbeat film stock footage.

"Love, Sex, and Venereal Disease" is a motley repertoire. Included are films like "VD Attack Plan," a Disney animation about syphilis and gonorrhea, and the judicious "Social-sex Attitudes in Adolescence," which assures viewers that, being merely a phase, teenage gayness is not to be feared. There is also "Lot in Sodom," a 1933 avant-garde interpretation of the well-known Biblical story, and "The Innocent Party," about a lascivious teen whose past is checkered by venereal disease.

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