Leather Archives & Museum: 25 Years

moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to start
my leather project, I fell in with the newly
formed San Francisco Lesbian and Gay
History Project. This was a loose assortment
of people investigating various aspects of
queer history, and almost all of us found that
in order to do our research, we also had to
become collectors. In contrast to most
historians, who can go to established
archives maintained by entities such as
governments, universities, and private
foundations, we had to engage in a process
of primary accumulation of sources. Many of
the members of this History Project, such as
popular heyday, almost every bar or retail
outlet patronized by fisting aficionados
provided emery boards, so that people could
work on their manicures while having a drink
or picking up their mail. So I collected emery
boards. I assembled a complete run of
Drummer, and began to subscribe to
publications such as DungeonMaster and
PFIQ. I amassed a small library of leather
related books.
At the time, there was really nowhere to
deposit this growing collection of research
materials, since neither the Gay Lesbian
Allan Berube and Eric Garber, began to haunt
garage sales and used bookstores in search
of evidence of San Francisco’s queer past.
Berube’s project on gay men and lesbians
during World War II began when someone
cleaning out an apartment found a box of
letters and knew enough to turn it over to
Allan. This happy accident lead to Allan’s
1990 book, Coming Out Under Fire.
As the only person in the History Project
working on leather and SM (at that time
extremely controversial and severely
stigmatized even in LGBT contexts), I began
to collect SM and leather materials: books,
periodicals, manuscripts, art work, ephemera,
and artifacts. Much of the history of leather
social events then was recorded in artifacts,
such as commemorative pins from motorcycle
runs. So I collected lots and lots of run pins.
Because cigarette smoking was still
ubiquitous, almost every gay bar and
restaurant, including those that catered to the
leather population, provided matchbooks with
their logos and addresses. So I collected
matchbooks. Since fisting was in its most
Bisexual Transgender Historical Society
(GLBTHS) in San Francisco nor the Leather
Archives & Museum yet existed. Much of
what would become the basis of the GLBTHS
periodicals collection was stored in the small
apartment of Willie Walker, one of its eventual
founders. My collection began to occupy an
extra bedroom, then two. What is now the
One Archives was still mostly in storage,
although in 1979 it was opened as the Natalie
Barney/Edward Carpenter Library in a
Hollywood storefront. That storefront doubled
as the living quarters of its custodian, Jim
Kepner, who slept on a cot in the basement.
When the storefront closed, the collection
went back into storage. These kinds of
situations were clearly unsustainable as long
term arrangements. Moreover, even once the
GLBTHS and the LA&M were finally
established (the GLBTHS in 1985 and the
LA&M in 1992), they were underfunded,
poorly housed, had little or no staff, and were
extremely unstable.
My experience in the emerging worlds of
GLBT history had taught me the importance
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