A Decade of Decadence: Ten Years of “Leather Life”

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #261, May 27, 2005)

From Lavender Lifestyles, Issue #1, June 9, 1995:

“Greetings! New magazine, new leather columnist. When the editors of this publication asked me if I was interested in writing a leather column for them, I immediately assured them I was. By the time I hung up, I had recovered my senses, and asked myself, ‘What have I gotten myself into now?’ Well, I guess we’ll see.”

That, folks, is how it all started—ten years ago. Where has the time gone?

When I started writing this column (at the invitation of my leather mentor, J.D. Laufman), I had no idea how long the column would last, or how long the magazine would last. Back then the life expectancy of any new local publication aimed at a GLBT audience was not very long. Come to think of it, it still isn’t very long—which is why this anniversary is such a milestone.

I decided I would write this column as long as I could come up with something to say every two weeks. When I no longer had anything to say, I would stop writing.

Obviously, I haven’t run out of things to say yet. I have always had the opposite problem: how to cram everything I have to say into the space allotted for me to say it.

It’s been quite a trip. I’ve publicized leather events beforehand, been there to take pictures, and then written about them afterward. I’ve covered leather contests and even helped judge a few. I’ve interviewed a wide array of fascinating people—titleholders, porn stars, leather luminaries and ordinary people who have lived extraordinary lives.

Ten years ago I was asked to make this column “interpretive” rather than “descriptive.” That has meant that besides writing about what’s happening, I have also had the privilege of sharing my perspectives and opinions. I have tried not to abuse that privilege. I have tried to use my writing as an opportunity to strengthen and encourage the community.

I have inspired a few letters to the editor—some complimentary, some not. I’ve occasionally had requests for permission to reprint a column. I was even syndicated to the Gayly Oklahoman for awhile.

I am blessed to have been a part of this magazine since its inception. I think the community is blessed not only that Lavender is still publishing, but that it keeps getting better and stronger. I give great credit to Lavender’s publisher, Stephen Rocheford, and his dedicated staff—I’m glad they understand that publishing this magazine, and producing the website as well, is a business and must be run as such.

Because they understand that fact, Lavender is still here. Over the years, too many leather writers have watched as the magazines or newspapers for which they wrote were pushed into extinction. I feel very lucky to be one of the few leather writers left who still appears in actual print.

I thank all the editors I’ve had over the years for their guidance, for giving me chances to write other articles besides my column, and for not editing me too much. I especially remember two Lavender editors who are no longer with us: Heather Henderson and Tim Lee. I miss them both.

Thanks to Lavender Founding Editor George Holdgrafer for coming up with “Leather Life” as the name of the column—I think it has turned out to be more appropriate than anyone could have known.

A very special thank-you to my partner of over five years, Bill Schlichting, for love, support and encouragement. Bill is also a writer as well as a great copy editor, and my column is immeasurably better and more focused thanks to his suggestions.

I am grateful that Lavender has such a great website that allows these columns to be read anywhere and everywhere, much further than the distribution boundaries of the printed issues. And I am grateful to Joe Gallagher and Leatherpage.com, who link to my column on the Lavender website.

Since I began writing this column, my audience has grown from primarily gay leathermen and leather lesbians to include members of the burgeoning pansexual movement—heterosexuals, bisexuals, transsexuals, gays and lesbians, and those who don’t identify as any particular sexuality or gender but who identify as kinky. Because of the coming together both locally and nationally of previously separate factions, the community is much stronger than it was when I started writing this column.

I have met so many great people along the way. My horizons have been immeasurably widened. It’s impossible to put a price on things like that.

Thank you to everyone who has been reading my column over the last ten years. And thank you to the leather/BDSM community for being such fascinating and beautiful people. Thank you for giving me so much good stuff to write about. If you all will just keep being who you are and doing what you do, your humble columnist will keep on writing about it and sharing it with the world.

Mr. Midwest Leather Contest held in Dubuque

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #260, May 13, 2005)

The first annual Mr. Midwest Leather Contest was held in Dubuque, Iowa, on Saturday, April 9, at One Flite Up (44 Main Street). A Meet & Greet gathering, followed by a Leather & Lace drag show, had been held the preceding Friday evening.

Over 300 people attended the Friday and Saturday night events. Kevin Menning, owner of One Flite Up, was the event host for the weekend and is looking forward to the contest becoming an important annual event for the midwestern leather community.

The new Mr. Midwest Leather is Wes Kassulke of St. Louis. First runner-up was Todd McComb of Des Moines, and second runner-up was Walt Oberbroeckling of Dubuque.

Kassulke will compete in this year’s International Mr. Leather Contest, Memorial Day weekend in Chicago.

PHOTO: The newly chosen Mr. Midwest Leather 2005 is Wes Kassulke of St. Louis.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mister Marcus Hernandez

PHOTO: Mr. Midwest Leather Contest winners: Left to right, second runner-up Walt Oberbroeckling of Dubuque; Mr. Midwest Leather 2005 Wes Kassulke of St. Louis; and first runner-up Todd McComb of Des Moines.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mister Marcus Hernandez

PHOTO: Newly chosen Mr. Midwest Leather 2005 Wes Kassulke of St. Louis, left, is congratulated by International Mr. Leather 2003 John Pendal, right, who was the Master of Ceremonies for the contest.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mister Marcus Hernandez

Andrea Dworkin, 1946-2005: Agreement and Disagreement

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #260, May 13, 2005)

Militant feminist Andrea Dworkin died recently. With her anti-male, anti-SM and anti-pornography reputation, readers of this column might think I’d have problems with many of her ideas.

Not necessarily. I always thought her worldview was extreme, hyperbolic, overblown—and angry, very angry. I still think so. But if one can look beyond all that, one finds that she had a keen intellect and interesting powers of analysis. A lot of what she said makes a certain amount of sense.

Dworkin was an extreme personality who attracted extreme responses—responses often based on misunderstandings, misinterpretations or misconceptions. To comment fairly one must actually read her words, rather than relying on what others said about her and her writings.

Among Dworkin’s areas of activism were domestic abuse, rape and pornography. She considered them hate crimes against women. To her they represented three interrelated manifestations of the same societal disease—the abuse, enslavement, subordination and dehumanization of women by men in a patriarchal society.

My response: That same patriarchal society also victimizes gay men in some of the same ways as women.

Take domestic abuse, something with which Dworkin and I both have firsthand experience. Anyone, of any gender and any preference, can find themselves in an abusive relationship. Too often they will find it difficult to extricate themselves, and they will find the law-enforcement and legal systems adding to their problems instead of helping to solve them.

Rape is an extreme form of sexual abuse. In Dworkin’s view it is used by men to control women, to keep them in their place. She wrote in her memoir, Heartbreak, that she was “struck by how prisons were the only places in which men were threatened with rape in a way analogous to the female experience.” I beg to differ—gay men also get raped (and not just in prisons), both by other gay men and by (supposedly) straight men. It’s physically and psychologically devastating for a man, too.

I start disagreeing with Dworkin, or at least questioning her, on the topic of pornography. She wrote Pornography: Men Possessing Women, and that book title is a good distillation of her analysis: pornography is not much different than domestic violence or rape, except that it keeps on going. Men can use, abuse, torture, maim, rape and dehumanize a woman to the point of killing her—and then they can continue the abuse through pictures of the victim, even after the victim herself has long been thrown away.

Here, my view is quite different. Certainly there are male porn stars who are abused by boyfriends or managers—or, even worse, who bottomed in bareback porn and paid for it with their lives. That’s both tragic and an outrage.

On the other hand, gay male porn doesn’t have a built-in caste system involving two genders, one always on top and the other always on bottom. For gay men, therefore, erotic images need not be exclusively about dominance, dehumanization and control—we are men looking at pictures of other men. There is an element of seeing ourselves in the pictures and celebrating ourselves, our brothers and our sexuality. That’s quite different from the dynamic that outraged Dworkin.

As for Dworkin’s reputation for being rabidly anti-SM—maybe I just haven’t found the proper book of hers yet, but every time I’ve seen the words “sadistic” or “masochistic” in her writing, she’s not talking about dungeon play. She’s talking about real-life, non-consensual, abusive human interactions.

There is no shortage, however, of other feminists who condemn SM and say that it is impossible for a woman to engage in SM without completely degrading herself and replicating yet again the male-dominant/female-subordinate paradigm of the current patriarchal society.

A man can voluntarily play at giving up his power, so the logic goes, because he knows that when the play is over he will be able to claim his power once again. A woman, however, knows on some level that she is only playing at having power—when the scene is over she will be like Cinderella after the ball, her power gone, the carriage turned back into a pumpkin and the ball gown turned back to rags.

That theory does not necessarily correlate with my experiences in the leather/BDSM community—a community built on respect, trust, honor and especially equal valuation for everyone: women, men; all races and ethnicities; het, gay, lesbian, bi, trans; dom or sub. We know the difference between safe/sane/consensual SM play and abuse, and we do not tolerate abuse.

And leather/BDSM, along with the rest of the queer community, has to a large degree thrown away many of society’s patriarchal conventions because we found that they didn’t serve our interests.

Look at the principles to which Dworkin devoted her life. Then look at the present state of leather/BDSM and the rest of the queer community. You’ll see more agreement than disagreement.

MN Leather Pride announces four-part Spirituality Roundtable

Based on the success of the Leather Spirituality Roundtable held during last year’s Minnesota Leather Pride celebration, the Roundtable this year is being expanded to four sessions taking place during May, June and July.

On Tuesday, May 17, the first Roundtable topic will be “Roles and Relationships” in the leather community. The second Roundtable discussing “Rituals, Protocols and Conventions” will take place Tuesday, June 21, and will be followed the next evening by a special guest Roundtable presentation: “Mr. Burke: Master/slave Relationships” on Wednesday, June 22. The fourth Roundtable, on Tuesday, July 19, will be about “Sparking the Future.”

All Spirituality Roundtables will be held at the Bolt Underground, 513 Washington Ave. S. in Minneapolis, from 7 to 9:30 P.M. Roundtables on Tuesdays are free; admission to the special Wednesday Roundtable is $5 (or free with this year’s Minnesota Leather Pride dog tag).

These events are in addition to more than a full week of other Minnesota Leather Pride activities happening in June and coinciding with the Twin Cities GLBT Pride Celebration.

Leather Leadership Conference 9 Ties It All Together

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #259, April 29, 2005)

Six members of the Twin Cities leather/BDSM community (including your humble columnist) recently attended the ninth annual Leather Leadership Conference in Phoenix April 8-10. The theme of this year’s conference, “Tying It All Together,” was an obvious reference to bondage that also had meaning on many deeper levels.

Why does the leather/BDSM community have a Leather Leadership Conference? If a leather aficionado wants to learn about leadership, why not just read John Maxwell’s The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Stephen Covey’s Principle-Centered Leadership, or On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis? Why not go to the nearest major metropolitan convention center and sign up for the next leadership-development seminar (featuring the people who write all those leadership-development books)?

Certainly, if one reads those books and attends those seminars, one will learn something about leadership (although doing that alone won’t make one a leader). But various societal groups find it helpful to hold their own leadership seminars customized to their own issues, politics and areas of concern.

Since 1973, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has held its annual leadership conference, “Creating Change.” (It was after attending “Creating Change” that John Weis was inspired to create the Leather Leadership Conference.) Other leadership conferences are presented each year to address the leadership concerns of women, youth, students, and many other subsets of the general population.

The planners of this year’s Leather Leadership Conference used elements of Phoenix’s southwestern Native American culture to great effect. One of the major themes running through this year’s conference was the concept of tribalism—leadership from a tribal point of view. The conference’s logo incorporated the imagery of the Native American dreamcatcher. The seminars were organized along six tracks: Vision, the Path of the Eagle; Values, the Path of the Turtle; Management Tools, the Path of the Hand; Case Studies, the Path of the Maze; and Organizational Viability, the Path of the Sun.

There was also a “Poster” track, a room filled with informational displays from various organizations, that represented the Path of the Kokopelli. In southwestern Native American lore the kokopelli is known as the seed bringer and represents fertility; these displays represent the seeds of ideas bring brought to the community, where they can be shared, nourished, and allowed to grow.

The opening ceremonies on Friday evening started with spectacular Native American traditional dancing, singing and drumming. Then Master Skip Chasey, originally from Phoenix and now living in southern California, presented the opening keynote address: “Vision, Passion and Direction: The Right Stuff for Authentic Leadership.” Here’s an excerpt:

“. . . as Carl Jung said, ‘The true leader is always led’ . . . . Authentic leaders know that on their own they are not, and cannot ever be, the compass for the journey; instead they must become, metaphorically speaking, a kind of satellite navigational system through which the Universe (use whatever conceptual term works for you) transmits appropriate directions. I believe that, as leaders of our community, we are being universally directed to concern ourselves more with facilitating the spiritual freedom of those we lead and less with demanding our place at society’s table, at least at this time. Once we are free of the false belief that our well-being is dependent upon social acceptance, then our demands for equal rights for leatherfolk will be a compassionate act of service for both our community and for the oppressors of our community, because when one is free one knows that oppression causes the oppressor to suffer most of all.”

(You will soon, I hope, be able to read the entire speech at <www.leatherleadership.org/library.htm>.)

This year’s seminar schedule was ambitious. A total of thirty ninety-minute seminars were presented on Saturday and Sunday, of which one could choose to attend up to six (four on Saturday, two on Sunday). Among the choices:

• “Campaigns Against Kink in the Twentieth Century,” a historical overview;

• “Creating Sex Positive Culture: A Sexual Renaissance,” a seminar about Seattle’s Sex-Positive Community Center (aka The Wet Spot);

• “Liberation—Assimilation—Evolution,” examining future directions for the leather/BDSM community. This seminar was presented by slave david stein, who originally coined the community’s “Safe, Sane, Consensual” mantra in 1984 and is now asking “Where are we leatherfolk going? And what will we do when we get there?”

• “Ethics vs. Morals in a Values-Focused Political Environment,” a fascinating audience-participation discussion that generated updated talking points for sexual-freedom activists. Example: in the previous sentence, downplay “sexual,” accentuate “freedom.” Better yet, rather than talking about “BDSM’ers,” talk about “people with adventurous private lives.”

Other seminar titles included “Tribes to Nations,” “Relating to Mainstream,” “Working with New People,” “Fundraising in a Tapped-Out World,” and two seminars on conflict resolution: “Healing Divided Communities, a Tribal Approach to Conflict Resolution” and “Conflict Resolution within the BDSM Community.”

Available for viewing all weekend, the displays in the poster room concerned topics such as the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, the Leather Archives and Museum, monasticism as a model for Master/slave households, erotic digital content and copyright, and understanding the difference between SM and abuse.

Sunday afternoon’s closing keynote was presented by slave marsha, a litigation attorney who presented “A Closing Argument for the Leather Leadership Conference IX.” Speaking straight from the heart (in a lawlyerly way, of course), she argued eloquently not only for the conference but for the community and our values, ethics and way of life as well.

At the conclusion of the conference the formal announcement was made of next year’s host city: New York City, the place that hosted the first Leather Leadership Conference, will also host the tenth edition.

After New York, will LLC’s next stop be Minneapolis/St. Paul? A committee representing the entire spectrum of the leather/BDSM community from the Twin Cities and surrounding areas has submitted a bid to host the eleventh edition of the Leather Leadership Conference in 2007. Will we be awarded the bid? Stay tuned.

I Sing the Body Electric School

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The Leather Life Interview: Larry Patnoe, Mr. Minnesota Leather 1992

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #257, April 1, 2005)

PHOTO: Larry Patnoe

As Mr. Minnesota Leather 1992, Larry Patnoe represented Minnesota in the 1992 International Mr. Leather Contest. I first got to know him long before that—in the 1970s we both worked at Control Data Corporation. Patnoe was there to offer encouragement and support when your humble columnist, who then was a college student, came out as a gay man. (At the time Patnoe was married—he would come out of his own closet several years later.) It was a pleasure to sit down with him recently and reminisce about life back then and what’s happened to us since.

Leather Life: When you were watching me come out all those years ago, did you have any inkling that you were gay, or did that come later?

Patnoe: A short time later.

And when that inkling came, what did you do?

Well, I got a divorce and set about becoming who I felt I really was. My marriage was very good, though, and we’re still real close friends. Me and my kids and my ex-wife, we have great times together.

You are a long-term AIDS survivor. When did you find out that you had AIDS?

That would have been in ’85.

Tell me a little bit about life since ’85, your struggles with AIDS.

That was really a difficult time for a lot of us because at that point people didn’t know what caused AIDS—they didn’t know how it was passed. There were just rumors. I remember one that I heard was that poppers caused it. There was a lot of fear.

I was really sick the first seven, ten years. I remember people shoving trays of food into the hospital room because they were afraid to come in—stuff like that. And then when I wasn’t in the hospital I remember going to the hospital to take care of people who were on life-support systems. Nobody was cleaning them up or anything, so you went and you helped them out because somebody had to do it.

It was a whole different world then. I had a lover, Jim, and we got asked to move from where we were living because it wasn’t “suitable,” you know. Fortunately we managed to get out of there and have money enough to put down on a home of our own, where we lived together until he died. My relationship with Jim lasted thirteen years, and that was just marvelous—it was just like heaven. And then I went probably about fourteen years before I really hooked up with anybody again, and then I met Dave Olds, and that lasted until he died.

The last time your name was in Lavender was when you were mentioned in Dave’s obituary.

Dave and I met, oh, probably about seven years ago. We became very close companions. He died just a little over a year ago. He had a heart attack, and that was very difficult because that was the second partner I had lost. We were very, very supportive of each other. And he was into leather, too, and it was just a lot of fun.

Let’s talk about leather. How did you get into it?

I met a lot of people who were involved in it, and I really liked them, and it just became part of my scene. There was a lot of comradeship back then—the men, the women, we hung out together. It was a social set based on who we were as people, and how we behaved, and whose parties we went to.

You won the Mr. Minnesota Leather contest in 1991. What made you decide to enter?

It was just for the fun of it. They were having this contest, and I thought, well, hell, why not enter it and show my support for my friends? So I entered, and wound up winning, which really surprised me.

Can you describe the fantasy you performed?

Well, the one that I did when I won in 1991 was probably not nearly as spectacular as the one that I did when I turned it over to Jon Tudor, my successor, in 1992. I was really very proud of my Native American heritage, and in my mind there was some overlap between that and leather, so I used a Native American theme in my fantasy in ’91—I did a grass dance. Then in ’92, when it was time to do a farewell fantasy, I took a scalpel and cut slits in my chest and put stakes through them, sort of like the Sun Dance.

And what reaction did you get from the audience?

Well, afterward I heard that I got quite a reaction from the audience, but at the time I didn’t know, because you can’t see what’s going on when you’re onstage. But I could tell they were a bit interested in what I was doing.

Tell me about your experience at IML in 1992.

Well, I had a good time. We were kept very busy with rehearsals, and interviews, and picture-taking sessions. But I also had a marvelous opportunity to meet a lot of other people and carry on like trash, and I really did. I think when the rankings came out I came in fourth, which didn’t make me feel badly, it made me feel pretty good.

IML was my first time, I think, when I had ever seen that many people in leather at one spot. It was a real high, it really was. And they just loved everything you did—every time you were onstage there’d be this massive applause. That was a high, too—made me consider going into show biz! It was fun.

Have you ever been to IML since?

No, because at the time I had HIV, and shortly after that I started having some difficulties, so I never managed to make it back. I have thought it would be really fun to go again, and see how it’s changed.

How are things now? Do protease inhibitors make a difference for you?

Right now I’m doing okay as far as the AIDS stuff goes. I have some of the general sort of things that long-term survivors have—I’m really tired, I’m really weak, stuff like that. But about three years ago I started having strokes. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but my left side doesn’t work well. I’m dealing with that. I’ve had heart surgery, and all sorts of lovely little physical things that have gone on. I dehydrate easily—the slightest cold and I’m in the hospital because I’m dehydrated.

It’s a lot to deal with.

It really is. Right now I’m not very strong, so I really have to depend a lot on my friends for getting out and going around and doing things. Walking is hard—I could do it if I had the strength, but I can go about a block, block and a half, something like that, and that just about takes it all out of me. So I’m kinda stuck around here. I’ve become a homebody, whether I like it or not.

Let me tell you something that happened at Tournament last year. Around the campfire on opening night, someone brought some sage to do a smudging, and they tearfully remembered this was something that “Larry” used to do. I thought you were probably that “Larry” and that they assumed you were no longer with us. And they were very sad.

Well, it’s probably been about five or six years since I’ve been out and about, so I’m not surprised by stuff like that. Because so many people with HIV have crapped off.

But no, I’m still bouncin’ around.

Fireplay: LA&M Burns the Mortgage

(Leather Life column published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #256, March 18, 2005)

PHOTO: Leather Archives & Museum Founder and President Chuck Renslow burns the mortgage.

After seven years of intense fundraising, the Leather Archives & Museum (LA&M) in Chicago finally owns its permanent home. To celebrate, a mortgage-burning was held at the LA&M on Sunday afternoon, Feb. 20. A capacity crowd filling the Etienne Auditorium watched LA&M President and Founder Chuck Renslow set the mortgage papers afire.

The mortgage had been paid off in August of 2004. The LA&M capital campaign raised $400,000 from community donations, enough to purchase and improve a 10,000-square-foot building at 6418 N. Greenview Avenue on the north side of Chicago.

The afternoon’s events, underwritten by Randall “Bear Man” Klett and the LeatherWerks of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, began with a reception buffet and cocktail party in the lower-level museum area. After the reception John Krongaard, LA&M Vice-President and master of ceremonies, opened the mortgage-burning ceremony with the following words:

We’re brought together today for a celebration that’s been seven years in the making. Today, rather fitting for this very special place, we’re making history. Five years ago, this building was purchased to become the international repository of all things collectible from the leather & fetish community—our own private Smithsonian . . . . Today we’re celebrating our taking full ownership—ownership by the entire leather and fetish community, ownership of this property and all that is protected within its walls.

Rick Storer, LA&M Executive Director, then introduced Renslow, who reminisced about the moment of inspiration and discovery that led to the LA&M:

It’s hard to believe that I had an idea, and I talked to a very good friend of mine, Tony DeBlase—in fact, one of the things I feel sad about today is that he’s not here—but we were sitting in my living room, and had the idea of—I didn’t [envision] a museum, just an archives—and he said, “Oh, you’ve got to have a museum, too.” And then he said, “You know, we have to have enough material to start it with.” . . . And I said, “Tony, come on down in my basement with me.” . . . So we went downstairs, and Tony walks into the basement and he sees the boxes. And he starts opening this one, opening that one—he says, “My God, you got stuff here!” He looks a little more and says “Chuck, thank God you’re a pack rat!”

Randall “Bear Man” Klett, after Renslow the longest-serving member of the LA&M’s board of directors, continued the story of the LA&M’s early years:

The first question we all ask, once we’ve been fed, clothed, sheltered, and been laid, is: “Who am I, how do I fit into this world that I live in, and what makes me special?” And we answer those questions by creating a religious space. We create a holy space. That space preserves our heritage, our stories, our literature, our art, our fiction. And this, my friends, is a holy space to the leather community. . . .

How did this start? We hear about Chuck [Renslow] and Tony [Deblase], but the reality is, this started with the story that was reported in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly report on June 5, 1981. Five men in Los Angeles were diagnosed with pneumocystis carinii in the previous few months. A plague was coming. And a result of that plague was, our history, our art, our stories, our clothes, our fiction was disappearing into dumpsters. . . .

Originally founded as the National Gay & Lesbian Archives by Chuck, Gary Chichester and Judy McCarthy, a year later it became the Leather Archives & Museum. Not much happened during those days. . . . They had a dream, and they kept it alive, and that’s what’s important.

Chuck opened a museum on Clark Street in 1996—managed to hire Joseph Bean to work for the princely salary of $600 a month to be the first Executive Director. Very shortly thereafter, Joseph said, “We need a holy space to call our own.” . . .

It was five years, nine months and three weeks ago that Tony DeBlase and Bill Kostamiris got me in a room at The Congress Hotel [during the International Mr. Leather Contest weekend], plied me with liquor—and if you know Tony, it was Jack [Daniels], I remember the hangover clearly—and said, “We found the building. Now we have to come up with the down-payment.”

Well, the best way to do that is to go out and get a half a dozen people to write you a check right off the bat. And I said, “I’ll put up $1500. Go out in the vendor market.” . . . And they went out into the vendor market and solicited people to put up $1500 with me. And we stood on stage during the contest the following day, the following night, hangover and all, and passed the hat. And we came up with the down-payment in two weeks. . . . We moved into this building a couple months later. . . .

Since then, we’ve gone from the kind of an organization that has a board that meets for an hour-and-a-half and tells people they’ve been elected afterwards, to a real organization, with a real board of directors, and no mortgage . . . . We’ve created a holy space to preserve our art, our stories, our fashion, fiction, our oral traditions. And for that, I can only do one thing that goes with holy space—say thank you.

Others speakers talked briefly and passionately about the LA&M’s present and future. There were awards: “Above and Beyond” plaques were presented by a contingent of LA&M volunteers to executive director Rick Storer and Facilities Manager Jeff Wirsing, and the first-ever President’s Award was presented to longtime activist Roger Klorese for his support of the LA&M. Past contributors who did not live to see this community milestone were remembered as Krongaard read a list of their names.

Then, after Krongaard playfully propped a fire extinguisher on the lectern, and while the audience did a countdown from ten, Renslow lit the mortgage papers and set them in a silver chafing dish, where they burned instantly and quite dramatically. After the cheers and applause died down, Krongaard ended the ceremony by inviting the audience to “continue to make some history.”

The Leather Archives & Museum compiles, preserves and maintains the history, archives and memorabilia of leather and related lifestyles for historical, educational and research purposes. Information on the organization, membership and publications is available at the museum or at <www.leatherarchives.org>.