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October 03, 2005

Castro Fair Photos 2005

The Castro Street Fair, started by the late San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, is older than the Folsom Street Fair, but always follows one week later than the much larger and more intense Folsom Fair. By comparison, the Castro Fair always seems lackluster simply because the two events are so close together. Many of the hardcore Folsom participants are forced to take that weekend off to recuperate. Harvey always chose the first Sunday in October because of the weather, and Folsom always chose their date according to Summer Sostice. One year however, the dates were the same for both fairs and nearly caused a battle of competing street fairs. It was finally settled that they should be consecutive weekends to encourage tourists to stay for both, even though it may be a strain to have that much fun within a seven day period. Only the heartiest partiers survive!

For more historical perspective, look at the shirt my friend Robert (aka Berta) saved from the 1988 Castro Street Fair, which also fell on October 2nd. The theme was "A Tribute to Sylvester" and Robert was the one who pushed the openly gay pop/disco star around in his wheelchair all day. Also, that handsome man on the right is Stuart Milk, the openly gay nephew of Harvey Milk, just before he addressed the crowd on the main stage.

In preparation for the last big street fair of the season, I bought myself a second camera. This way I can shoot all the Sisters and drag queens that roam around these events with my new little pocket camera, and save the big camera for just the sexy boys. It will make it easier to put the drag photos all on SisterZsaZsa.com and the photos of hot men in the VIP Room at Lavender Lounge.

With that in mind, I set out on two separate photo assignments, but wouldn't you know, the first performer on stage was Varla Jean Merman, and I didn't want to take a chance of missing those shots with a brand new untested camera. Turns out I got some gorgeous shots of the brilliantly talented Varla with the big camera, and it was worth the time to sort the pictures. To see more of Varla, and other drag creatures, visit SisterZsaZsa.com. It's FREE and safe to look at from work, unless you work for Pat Robertson or something.

The weather was beautiful, but not quite warm enough to run around shirtless. But the boys were frisky and most wore snug vintage tshirts and low slung jeans that show some belly button. Love that! In fact, it was while I was shooting closeups of bellies that the guy in the photo demonstrated his Stupid Human Trick. He pulled his pubic hair over his belt and said, "Look, it's a crotch combover!" I think we're going to have some fun with this at BellyWorship.com!

Posted by lavenderloungeblog at 02:30 PM

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