Catacombs (sex club) explained

Catacombs
Location:SoMa, San Francisco, California
Opened Date:1975
Owner:Steve McEachern
Building Type:Sex Club
Closing Date:1984
Relocated Date:1982
Known For:Fisting

The Catacombs was a gay and lesbian S/M leather fisting club in the South of Market area of San Francisco, which operated from 1975 to 1981, and reopened at another location from 1982 to 1984. It was the most famous fisting club in the world.[1] The founder and owner was Steve McEachern. The location was semi-secret and admission was by referral only. It was originally a gay men's club, but Cynthia Slater persuaded the management to open up to lesbians.[2] Among the patrons was Patrick Califia, known then as Pat Califia.[3] The Catacombs has been exhaustively described by sexual anthropologist Gayle Rubin,[4] who calls it "exemplary" in its attempts to deal with the AIDS crisis which would eventually lead to its closure.[5] Patrick Moore devotes a chapter to it in his Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality.[6] Sex educator Carol Queen called it "the place to be seen and to play at during the 1980s."[7]

The San Francisco South of Market Leather History Alley, opened in 2017, honors leather culture and community members including McEachern.[8] [9]

Notes and References

  1. [Gayle Rubin]
  2. Call, Lewis. 2013. BDSM in American science fiction and fantasy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p.5
  3. Pat Califia (who later changed names to Patrick), "The Necessity of Excess ", POZ, October 1998,retrieved September 30, 2014.
  4. "The Catacombs: A Temple of the Butthole", in Mark Thompson, ed., Leatherfolk — Radical Sex, People, Politics, and Practice, Boston, Alyson Publications, 1991,, pp. 119-141, reprinted in Deviations. A Gayle Rubin Reader, Duke University Press, 2011,, pp. 224-240, Web site: Archived copy . 2014-09-30 . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20141006082917/http://occupytampa.org/files/tristan/introfem/final/introfem%20final%20final/Gayle_S._Rubin_Deviations_A_Gayle_Rubin_Reader_a_John_Hope_Franklin_Center_Book__2011.pdf . 2014-10-06 ., retrieved September 30, 2014.
  5. "Elegy for the Valley of Kings: AIDS and the Leather Community in San Francisco, 1981-1996, in In Changing Times: Gay Men and Lesbians Encounter HIV/AIDS, ed. John H. Gagnon, Peter M. Nardi, and Martin P. Levine, University of Chicago Press, 1997,, p. 116.
  6. Beacon Press, 2004,, pp. 27-33.
  7. "An Interview with Carol, Queen of Sex," Spread, vol. 1, no. 1, spring 2005, pp. 35-38, quote on p. 36.
  8. News: Paull . Laura . 21 June 2018 . Honoring gay leather culture with art installation in SoMa alleyway . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20180623221933/https://www.jweekly.com/2018/06/21/honoring-gay-leather-culture-with-art-installation-in-soma-alleyway/ . 2018-06-23 . 2018-06-23 . .
  9. Web site: Ringold Alley's Leather Memoir . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20180623193827/http://www.artandarchitecture-sf.com/ringold-alleys-leather-memoir.html . 2018-06-23 . 2018-06-23 . Public Art and Architecture from Around the World.

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