Leather Archives & Museum: 25 Years (1991-2016) [digital]

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
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
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
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
of such institutions for sexually marginal
communities. It was clear that if we did not
collect and preserve our source materials, no
one else would. It was equally clear that it
was not enough for individuals to undertake
the work of accumulation, and that durable
institutions were required to guarantee the
long term survival, preservation, and usability
of such collections. Furthermore, for such
institutions to endure, they required money:
for operating funds, buildings, supplies, and
staff. At some point I realized that leather
peoples needed our own community based
archives, similar to those that had begun to
spring up for GLBT collections. So I began to
27