San Francisco girls of Leather (SFgoL) September President’s report

It’s been another great month for the SFgoL!

The end of August brought Balls to the Walls– a Leather community softball game organized by Jessie Vanciel, Daddy Ray Tilton, and Leland Carina. With major thanks for funding by the Leather Alliance and Shawn Kinnear, the event was a success with close to 40 attendees! Queen Cougar called out the sunshine with her beautiful rendition of the National Anthem and Daddy Vick kept everyone fed with pizza. Arnell and ava won MVP’s for their high-spirited participation. Kate took some hot photos of the fun antics, including spanking at bases!

Our member Summer has been hosting a pre-meeting meet up for a few months now. This is quickly becoming a tradition and provides a great place for new girls to meet some members of the group more informally than at the monthly meeting.

We had our fourth official SFgoL slumber party! This time we were fortunate to be able to hold it at the Center for Sex and Culture. It proved a great venue, thank you to Kate for securing it for us. The staff was so friendly and accommodating; they set up a huge pile of dog beds for us to cuddle on. We watched 70’s cartoon porn, played games, and ate way too many cupcakes. Epic!

Directly following the slumber party a group of our girls went to serve lunch at Glide Church soup kitchen. Thanks to our member Jess for organizing this. We will be working with Glide again in the future, as the girls had a very good time.

The Alan Spafford Progressive Dinner was very well attended by our girls with about 10 of us showing up! We had an excellent time visiting all the businesses and socializing with people from other clubs and the greater community.

If you haven’t seen it yet, please check out the article about our club in the BAR! We had such fun hanging out with Scott Brogan for the interview! Here’s the link: http://www.ebar.com/columns/column.php?sec=leather&article=178

We also walked in Mama’s Leather Walk! There’s a photo in the BAR (thanks to Scott Brogan again!) of us holding the girl colors high and proud, here’s the link: http://ebar.com/artscolumns/artcolumn.php?sec=leather&article=182

Folsom Weekend, the SFgoL hosted a discussion and play demos for Mission Control’s party called Velvet, with thanks to Kate for organizing. We were also a sponsor of Venus’ Playground (VP) at Folsom Street Fair. We volunteered for a number of shifts. Our member Sailor has been working with VP for some time and we thank her for coordinating this.

SFgoL is so excited to have officer elections coming up in October! It marks the one year anniversary of when we voted in our official bylaws!

Much love,
Leland Carina
President SFgoL

date: Thursday, September 1st, 2011
time: 07:30 PM to 9:30 PM
where: Chase Bank community room
address: 2112 15th Street at Sanchez St. in the Castro

This is our monthly business meeting, held the first Thursday of each month. It is open to all Leather girls– members and those who think they might want to join. Come check us out!

Please note that the bank will be closed, the community room is to the right of the main entrance. You are welcome to park in the lot for the duration of the meeting.

The San Francisco girls of Leather (SFgoL) are so happy to welcome ava as our new Secretary and Angel as our new Treasurer!

We are also proud to report that we now have 30 full members! We are excited that without fail every month we have new girls who are attending their very first meeting.

August brought a successful end to our toiletry drive. Since we had already overwhelmed La Casa de las Madres with the generous donations from the Leather community, we dropped the remaining 9 boxes off to Women Organized to Make Abuse Nonexistent, Inc. (WOMAN Inc.) This marked the start of a new relationship between WOMAN Inc. and the SFgoL. Our member Z is taking lead on organizing volunteer opportunities. During August we helped stuff gift bags and staffed their volunteer appreciation party.

Our mentor/mentee program within the SFgoL is going so well that we have decided to expand it! We are welcoming members of the Leather community to contact us if they would like to offer mentorship to one of our girls. If you have something to offer, whether it be a BDSM skill, organizational know-how, or lessons on Leather history please contact us at info@sfgol.com to be paired with a girl!

Many of our girls attended the San Francisco Slut Walk to march in solidarity with people who have been victims of sexual assault.

At Leather-Levi Weekend we joined forces with the Exiles to create a stop during the Saturday evening cocktail party. We brought juice and champagne (pink, of course!) and the Exiles provided tasty chocolate treats.

We attended the Alameda County Leather (ACL) contest in support of our girl, Kate, who ran and won the title of Ms ACL 2011! We are so proud!!!

On August 27th we are participating in Balls to the Walls Leather Softball Exhibition and Social organized by Jessie Vanciel, Leland Carina, and Daddy Ray Tilton. The SFgoL are so excited to socialize with boys who might be interested in being part of the San Francisco boys of Leather and everyone else who comes to hang out. The National Anthem will be sung by Queen Cougar. Beth Downey and Deborah Isadorah Wade will be umpires.

We have an upcoming slumber party (girls and potential girls only!) at the Center for Sex and Culture on September 9th. Directly following we will be serving lunch at Glide soup kitchen.

Make sure to look for us at Venus’ Playground during Folsom!

I’m so proud of our club and everything that we are working on!

In Leather,
Leland Carina
President, SFgoL

date: Thursday, August 4th, 2011
time: 07:30 PM to 10:00 PM
where: Chase Bank community room
address: 2112 15th Street at Sanchez St. in the Castro

This is our monthly business meeting, held the first Thursday of each month. It is open to all Leather girls– members and those who think they might want to join. Come check us out!

Please note that the bank will be closed, the community room is to the right of the main entrance. You are welcome to park in the lot for the duration of the meeting.

We are very excited to be on the cover and featured in the SF Bay Guardian! An incredible article about SFgoL and the Leather/BDSM community written by Amber Schadewald

SF Bay Guardian featuring the SF girls of Leather article 

All photos by Jeffery Cross

girls and supporters,

First and foremost, we are so happy that the SF Bay Guardian published a cover feature on the SF girls of Leather! The article is so well-written and researched. I find it heartening in relation to the SFgoL, but also for Leatherwomen and our community in general. See the photos and get a link to the full article! If you are in San Francisco– look for the print edition this week! Huge thanks to Amber Schadewald, Mirissa Neff, and Jeffery Cross.

Over the last couple of months, we’ve been busy as usual!

May kicked off with our first ever self-produced fundraiser! Thank you to everyone who came out to play with us. BIG thanks to the SF Citadel for the donation of the space. We made a profit of over $700 dollars which will help us fund future projects. With the bit of seed money, we expect to be able to provide better service. Great job to our VP Kate for taking lead, and to so many of our girls for putting in a lot of hard work to make that event run smoothly.

Mr. S Leather invited us into their back production shop for a work day. We were very happy to be of service to a business that dresses our community so well! (And we didn’t mind the overwhelming smell of leather as we cleaned. Yum.) We’re looking forward to more workdays there in the future.

We also had a social “takeover” night at the SF Citadel. It was a great chance to socialize with each other and our supporters. We’d like to repeat this, so keep an eye out!

We had a very fun jaunt down to Redwood City for Rainbow Skate night. Thanks to Zed for keeping us roller skating!

With thanks to Angel, we were Bronze sponsors of Northwest Leather Celebration (NWLC). This gave us the opportunity to host the meet and greet, opening the contest weekend. It was a wonderful way for us to reach out to a new group of people. We are so proud of our Sargeant at Arms, Pink, for winning the title with her Master, Daniel Basse!

Speaking of Pink, the SFgoL is so very excited to have our first baby on the way! Huge Congratulations to Daniel and Pink! They are expecting a baby girl in October. We have added “I heart SFgoL” baby onsies to our supporter merchandise! (http://www.cafepress.com/SFgoL_supporters)

June brought another SFgoL slumber party. We had a lot to celebrate! June was the one year anniversary of this group’s incarnation! Looking back over the last year it is so overwhelming to realize how much we have accomplished and how much we have learned.

Chris Raisbeck (aka Sister Jezebel of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence) generously lead us in a team building workshop. Chris asked us questions about the importance of working in groups and gave us the space and opportunity to openly praise each other. It was a great opportunity to take stock of how far we’ve come and to also look to the future.

Pride weekend was incredible! We marched in the parade– out and proud– with the Leather Contingent. We also had a table at Leather Alley. We took the opportunity to hand out our new business card size membership and supporter cards. We got quite a lot of interest and hope to see a boost in membership.

Speaking of Pride– the same day that we were marching in San Francisco, our new sister group, the Seattle girls of Leather (SgoL) were marching in Seattle! I’m so heart-warmed and excited to see them starting strong. If you know girls in or near Seattle, please let them know! Their group is being spearheaded by Candace Cantrell. I’ve been so impressed with her leadership and respect toward our group as she works on getting SgoL going.

We have many exciting things coming up in the months ahead! We can’t wait to see our supporters out at Up Your Alley, Leather-Levi Weekend, Folsom, and all the events in between!

Deep love,
Leland Carina
President SFgoL

date: July 7, 2011

time: 7:30pm – 9:30pm

where: Chase Bank community room

address: 2112 15th Street at Sanchez St. in the Castro

date: Thursday, June 02, 2011
time: 07:30 PM to 10:00 PM
where: Chase Bank community room
address: 2112 15th Street at Sanchez St. in the Castro

This is our monthly business meeting, held the first Thursday of each month. It is open to all Leather girls– members and those who think they might want to join. Come check us out!

Please note that the bank will be closed, the community room is to the right of the main entrance. You are welcome to park in the lot for the duration of the meeting.

General info

Join the San Francisco girls of Leather for our very first self-produced fundraiser at the SF Citadel. Let the girls entertain you with dirty stories, belly dancing, a Maypole and a kinky kissing booth! Bid on the many fantastic prizes in our silent auction, including a no longer available Madame S latex dress, brand new latex designs from Lust Designs, jewelry by Jane Rose, tattoo gift certificate from Gauge Strongarm, as well as items made by SFgoL members, including photo prints by Leland Carina, girl gloves from Anita and fire wands made by Zemis.

A very heartfelt thank you to August and Phil for the donation of the space!

Thank you to Haven Wilde for running this story about the SFgoL in the April Society of Janus Growing Pains!

I am utterly astounded at how far the San Francisco girls of Leather (SFgoL) have come since our first meeting in June of 2010.

Let me back track a bit. In April of 2010 I was at International Ms Leather Weekend checking out the silent auction. I noticed a SFgoL shirt (from the previous incarnation of the club) as one of the items up for bidding. I was instantly intrigued. I asked around and got the names of a few of the original girls: Pilar, Sheryl D, and August Knight. I contacted them and asked if they would be willing to restart the group. “No,” they said, “but we would love for you to!”

Fast forward. We are now a member club of the San Francisco Bay Area Leather Alliance. We have over 100 girls on our mailing list. We get between 20-30 girls at our monthly business meetings. In 9 months we’ve had more than 10 social events and have volunteered service at over 20 events. We have a huge club presence, so much so that when announcers say our club name they often pause for the excited screams they know are coming. We’ve been featured on Leatherati.com, the SF Bay Times, and the IMsL blog. To top it all off, we were recently named the Leather Alliance Best New Organization of 2010.

Before I continue the story, let me tell you more about us: we are a group of self-identified Leathergirls. Membership is not limited by race, creed, orientation or gender; however, an identification of Leathergirl is essential. Our solidarity and commonality is found in our understanding that the definition of Leathergirl involves who you are and not just how you play.

Our mission is twofold; we provide camaraderie, and a safe space to any individual who identifies as a Leathergirl. We also provide community service within and outside of the Bay Area Leather Community at large.

Sometimes I wonder how we came so far, so fast. The answer I always come to is that the girls involved in this club are incredible and the community surrounding us is amazingly supportive.

Many of our girls were deeply involved in the Leather community before coming to our club. We have quite a few party hosts from the Citadel, burlesque dancers, an Exiles’ Board member, BDSM educators, and so on. The newer girls are awesome in their own right, jumping in full force with such enthusiasm.

[The following paragraph was edited out due to size constraints in the print version.]

As far as community support, we have over 25 Supporting Members and 4 Supporting Organizations! Many hot people have purchased our “I heart SFgoL” merchandise and wear it with pride. The members of the previous SFgoL have been so encouraging and generous with their blessings. The San Francisco boys of Leather gave us all of their remaining assets after disbanding. Mr. S provided us with gorgeous Leather colors. The Big Pink House gave us a meeting space. August Knight has donated event space at the SF Citadel. DJ Mora and Daddy Vick helped us gather samples of other clubs’ bylaws when we were writing ours. The Leather Alliance has welcomed us with open arms. The community at large has donated an overwhelming amount of toiletries for our Casa de las Madres drive and brought 12 garbage bags of toys to the beer bust we co-hosted with the SF Leather Daddy’s boys for Mama’s Toys. The list just goes on and on.

Looking forward, watch out for us at IMsL- we are bronze sponsors and our Sergeant at Arms, Pink, is helping us coordinate that. We also have a May Day Fundraiser Extravaganza coming up at the SF Citadel on May 1st, coordinated by our VP, Kate. Last, we are bronze sponsors of Northwest Leather Celebration near the end of May with thanks to Angel.

I love SFgoL! We are going to have a lot to celebrate during our one year anniversary in June!

Yours in Leather,
Leland Carina
President SFgoL