Folsom Street Fair: A Liberating, Kinky, and Thrilling Experience

Have you ever seen public sex in front of thousands of people? We saw fisting, dick sucking, full on fucking, pegging, bondage suspension, just to name a few tame visuals.

Welcome to Swinger University. I’m Ed. And I’m Phoebe. Join us as we explore the exciting world of ethical non-monogamy, sexual health, and sex education with an intellectual and sexy twist. Remember to subscribe to our podcast and YouTube channel. Be sure to join our Patreon community for the behind the scenes stories and extra sexy content. And if you like our show, do us a favor and tell a friend about it. We hear all the time how our podcast helps others. So in the spirit of swinging, please share. All right, everyone. What is the Folsom Street Fair? The fair is an all day celebration of sexual liberation and openness. It is in a six block radius where pretty much anything goes. There is no judgment. There is no stigma. And we actually had the pleasure of going this year. And we’ve been hesitant every single year, a bit timid about going and we went. We did it. And we’re going to tell you a little bit more about it. To be clear, we weren’t timid about what was going to happen there. We were timid because of the crowds and the size and kind of just the overwhelming nature of how many people were packed in this maze of booths and right sexual frenzy. Right. And I honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. It’s no different than when you first started out swinging. You’re freaked out. You’re thinking the worst, right? You think the classic throw the keys in the bowl, walk in the door and all of a sudden you’re naked and everyone attacks you, right? No, it wasn’t anything like that. And it was, in my imagination, far more, not scary, but I was a little more worked up about it than I needed to be because I didn’t know. Yeah. Folsom Street fair is not much different than any art and wine festival, but just changed the art out for other things, dildos, leather. And the wine was being served and there were lots of cool cocktails and all kinds of fun stuff. Cocktails and cocktails. There was tales and lots of cocks. Folsom Street is a nonprofit arts and cultural organization. It cultivates that safe, open and inclusive environment for the kink, leather and alternative sexual community while centering equity for the BIPOC and the LGBTQA2I plus people. If you’re interested in learning more about this organization, go to FolsomStreet.org. And we will put that link in the show notes for you. Who attends Ed? Ed. Everybody. There’s all flavors of sexual preference and orientation and hobbies, interests. So anything from, like you said, the kink community to the gay and lesbian community to the transsexual community. We saw a fair number of swingers there. Yes. We saw some people who looked very vanilla. Oh yes. But who knows how vanilla they were just because they were dressed?

I don’t know. Conservatively. Right, right. You have no idea why they were there or what their, what happens behind their bedroom doors. Exactly. We’ve saw and met people from all over the United States and all over the world. Yeah. There were, there was a group of people that we spent a little bit of time talking with, taking some pictures with from Glasgow, Scotland. Yes. And we connected with them. It was great. It was fun listening to their accents and hearing something a little different than our normal American accents. She was blond and in a black leather bodysuit with fishnet stockings and her doll was in full, a full latex doll costume. The Japanese anime mask, big, huge anime head. Right. I mean, this was a full suit. You could not see the person at all. Yeah. Head to toe covered. It was fascinating. And there’s some pictures on our social media if you’re interested in looking at those. We saw just about everything. One of the first gentlemen that we ran across, we got there early. We got there, hmm. 10 30? About 10 30ish or so. So people were starting to roll in, but the crowds weren’t there, which was nice because we got to see the booze and we kind of got to interact with people and not feel like we were being crowded. Yes. So the first guy we met was Mr. Purple Balls guy. We’ll call him that because he’d caged and stretched his junk to the point where it looks like he’d cut the circulation off. It’s a kink. It’s this aesthetic that he was going for. He finds it pleasurable. He had a very large chain kind of hanging and suspending from his junk. He was claiming that it extended his orgasms, which was interesting and that it increased his stamina. Now, I could kind of see that if he was desensitized and used to having lots of kind of tension or pressure on his penis, but I don’t know how good that is. I mean, typically they’ll tell you not to wear a cock ring for longer than 20 minutes because cutting the circulation off for longer than that isn’t good. Like you can cause tissue damage. So I do wonder if he’s done some long-term tissue damage, but he seemed to enjoy it. Like that was his thing. And it was fascinating. It was a gorgeous setup. Clamp. Right. I’m not sure if it’s do you just call it a clamp because clamped more than just around his balls. He had a hole for his penis. So his penis came out the front and then his balls went down below. Yeah. There is a picture of this on our social media. So if you’re curious about what this guy’s equipment looked like, these balls were the size of like a bigger than a fist, like a big fist, almost the size of both my fists. Yeah. Yeah. It was fascinating. He found it pleasurable and extended his orgasms. I did a little bit of reading on it and I found that some of those claims to be written now on the website, whether it’s true or not, I don’t know. I haven’t talked to enough people, but if you have, please let us know because I am fascinated by this. Yeah. And if you happen to be this gentleman, also write to us and tell us how your experience was that day being yanked around by your chain. We wandered a little bit further down the road and there was a small inflatable pool. Yep. And there were four or five gentlemen sitting in there, some of them in ski masks, some in latex, some just dressed in some… Some with goggles, I think. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. This was with a particular group of gentlemen who were part of a black and yellow bandana group. So within the gay community, there’s a kind of a color code for different colored bandanas in terms of communicating what you’re into. This goes way back, right? This goes way back. Yeah. Into the 20s and 30s, is this where that’s… I don’t know how far it goes back, but it goes back a long way as a secret form of communication so that when they were at events or in public spaces where they didn’t want to verbally say what they were into, they could kind of secretly code out what they were into, which was kind of cool. You’d match up with who matched your color preference. Yeah. Swingers have tried this at parties, but it doesn’t really seem to take off much. Yeah. The different colored wristbands to indicate full swap, soft swap. Right. And you’re right. Yeah. Your mileage will vary. Well, it’s been much more successful than for the LGBTQ community. If you don’t know what the yellow bandana was for, it’s for golden showers or piss play. So they were sitting in a pool and people could come up and sprinkle them. Sprinkle. How can you say that? Sprinkle. Sprinkle. I’ve seen a few comments through social media where people were taking advantage of that situation and utilizing their… Had I known that,

I probably would have done it. Yeah. That’s been a thing recently for you to consider. For some reason, it’s very powerful. And I don’t have a problem with that for some reason. I know a lot of people will be like, “Oh my God.” But you have to understand, I grew up so conservative that you didn’t even pee in a public bathroom until everyone left because that’s how embarrassing it was to hear somebody hear you peeing was really embarrassing. You’d never pee next to somebody in the other stall until they left. I mean, there’s a little bit of a bro code where you skip a urinal. Right. But yeah, that’s pretty extreme. You never knew that about me. I did not know that. And so now, being an avid backpacker and just dropping trial and going when you need to, because when you got to go, you got to go. Being an exhibitionist, I thought that was a missed opportunity for me. Yeah. Yeah. It could have been an interesting experience for you to have. There wasn’t all just kinky stuff there. There was go-go dancers that they had organized up on little individual stages and they would rotate out all different shapes and sizes. Men, women, one of the women had a full mastectomy. She was rocking her full body and that was great and entertaining. They also had sex positive fenders and sex therapists and all the toys that you talked about. Right. Leather stuff, the jewelry,

erotic art. Someone was making tiles and I mean, it was… Yeah, the paintings on the metal and paintings on tile. In the beginning, when we very first got there, and I’m glad we saw this because you wouldn’t have been able to see it later because of the crowds. We got to see a pony parade, which was really fun. Everybody had pretty elaborate costumes. Their outfits were amazingly detailed. They went into all kinds of elaborate manes and hooves. Some ponies were pulling carts for their masters and it was probably 30 or 40 people in the parade. It was a pretty… A good 40, I think. And they went down one side of the street and then they did a turnaround and came back the other way and we got to see both of them. We’ll include footage in this episode so that you guys can get to see the pony parade. There was also public sex and lots of it. We didn’t get to see as much because as the fair day progressed, it got more crowded. Sometimes you just couldn’t move very quickly from location to location where some of these things were occurring. But guys giving head. And ladies. And ladies, men and women, fucking doggy style right on the street. Right. And people being dominated. There was a couple men being fisted by one man. Both hands. Wow. Right in the center of where their crossroads met. It was a phenomenal display of kink and sex and passion and expression. It was just the overall feeling was really wonderful because it felt so judgment free and so relaxing. Yeah. Very liberated. Everybody there was there to have a good time and it may not have been their kink or their particular thing, but nobody was making fun of or degrading or well, I mean, maybe intentionally degrading because that was part of the kink. But it was all about people’s personal expression and how they express their sexuality. And everybody was there to just observe and celebrate that and support everybody else. And it was super cool. And I will say, I think this is the largest event I’ve been to where everyone self-policed themselves. Right. Because honestly, I didn’t see a police presence anywhere. And if they were there, I couldn’t tell. There were very few. They were wandering around occasionally. I did see a few officers, but you’re right. They weren’t at the entrances. They weren’t in heavy force. It’s also interesting because I’ve been to a lot of large events. And typically when people start drinking and having a lot of fun, people get reckless or rowdy and bad things happen.

People bump into each other. They start fights, things like that. That did not happen here that we observed or that we heard. And we were there till late in the afternoon. So we didn’t stay till the end at six, but we stayed there probably till I think four. Yeah, four or so. It is part of the community. The King community, the BDSM community, which was largely enforced there, they don’t drink, they don’t do drugs when they are involved in scenes or anything that involves consent, really. Right. As swingers, we should do the same, but we don’t. Yeah. Everyone was fully aware, fully present. And that’s partially, there were, like we said, there was a large spectrum of people who were there. So not everyone was of the kink persuasion, but everybody seemed to be at least maintaining some level of civility. Yeah. And not disorderly conduct. Right. Who else did we run into there? Well, we ran into some flogging. There were a number of kink booths set up where they had flogging demonstrations. You could volunteer to be flogged if you wanted something to be checked off of your list. You’d never tried it before. There were doms there that were more than happy to help facilitate that expression and let you try it out. We saw some suspension work. Oh my gosh. Really early on in the day, which was fantastic. They had very large kind of A-frames set up. Massive. And people were hanging from them.

The rope masters were tying them up in different ways and adjusting them and putting pressure on their bodies, flogging them with the rope. It was fascinating to see two or three of those different A-frame set up and how each one was a little bit different in each person, the way that they performed or expressed was different. Right. So it was quite a show. The one you and I observed was fascinating to me because he was so quick at his craft. Oh yeah. And he knew it like the back of his hand and that extra weight that he added to her body by crawling on top of her body and hanging from the top was phenomenal. I’d never seen anything like that. No, we’ve never had. And just as quickly as he got up there and did that, and then he was done and started then unwinding her in the same way that he put her up there. It was a full reverse of everything he did before. So it was amazing. I thought it was art and erotic all at the same time. Yeah. We ran into some of our local friends there, which was great. We went with some friends and hung out with them most of the day and helped them with their outfit.

We’ve got pictures once again in social media of a lot of that. Full Shabari corset. Yeah. With a chain skirt. It was really cool. Three to four hours of work to get that on. Yeah. At least. And yeah, so local swingers hung out with them, got to talk to them. We interviewed a group of four swingers and I’ll put that excerpt in here so that you can hear what we talked to them about and get their piece of this. We’re interviewing a couple of people, some listeners, and we wanted to ask them about their feelings about the Bolsom Street Fair. So here we are. Say hi, everybody. So what do you guys think of the Bolsom Street Fair? Why do you enjoy it? What does it bring out for you? I love the sex positivity. I love the no judgment. I love that we can all enjoy different things. They can all enjoy different things. Nice. Nice. Every time I come here, I learn something new. Not only about just this environment, but about myself. Nice. Because I feel free and open when I’m here. Very cool. Very cool. How about you gentlemen? I’m in intensity. People are here trying to be who they want to be. Right. Not who they pretend to be, somebody else outside of the circle. And I love that about it. Very cool. It’s amazing. There’s so many different varieties of people.

Yeah, it’s almost a different group. But we crossed over a little.

Cool. Well, thanks for stopping to talk to us and I hope you guys enjoy the rest of the day. It was really awesome meeting people who actually listened to the podcast and hear their perspective on the street fair. We also ran into Yub Kim, who was from Ohio and he was with a group of gentlemen from Ohio. And he was a sex therapist. And it was fun. Towards the end of the day, we got to talk to him a little bit about shame and stigma and how people are really struggling in today’s modern world with their sexuality and how he’s got his work cut out for him. And he appreciated that we were also there and that we were doing the work that we were in terms of destigmatizing sexuality. Yes. And still, people are dealing with shame at the level of,

I’ve masturbated three times a week, I think I’m going to hell. And he’s like, no, nope, you’re not. That’s totally normal. And honestly, you should probably do it more. I mean, that’s the level of shame that individuals are still carrying around with them. And it’s it’s, it’s, it tugs on my heartstrings because I’ve been there and I’ve grown so much and I can only

hope and wish the, you know, the journey that I’ve had through my own progression of sexuality for those people as well.

So this is kind of the public version of what we went through. And there’s a lot that can be said in terms of other things that had happened at the fair, but we’re going to go into those in our Patreon episodes. If you’re interested in hearing more of the juicy, sexy stories, check us out on our Patreon. Exactly. And we did have a listener question, or actually we had a couple of them this week. And they were very similar. The context was basically, how can I get my wife interested in swinging? And we get this question frequently. It’s a pretty common question just in lifestyle forums in general.

And so what are some three good tips that we have for this listener? Well, first, you have to be able to talk about your preferences, your kinks, and your fantasies. If you can’t talk about sex in your relationship, there’s probably not much hope that you’re going to be able to get into swinging. Second, why are you interested in it? You have to be able to articulate it to your partner. If it sounds shady or dodgy, they’re going to pick up on that. So don’t try and fake your way through that. You’ve got to have a pretty good reason for trying it out. And if both of you are open to it and comfortable enough, try going to a meet and greet. Go to a swing or meet and greet. Go to a local event and just watch, just observe. If you can get past those hurdles, a lot of doors start to open and you’ll start to have a lot more conversations about the lifestyle and what you feel comfortable with. Right. And then we have a series of how to get started in swinging on YouTube. And we’ll put that link here in this podcast as well. Absolutely. Check the links. Well, thank you again for listening and watching. We had a great time at the Folsom Street Fair and we’ll definitely go back again next time. We’re going to be more naked. I think so. I think so. I’m going to be more naked. I might just be all naked. That would be fabulous. That would be pretty cool. My photo would be everywhere though. That’s true. There are a lot of cameras out.

Once again, thank you. And we were thankful for this experience and being part of the rowing kink and open sexuality community, swinger community. And I was inspired and uplifted. And hopefully you are too. Thanks for tuning in. We appreciate you joining our community. Don’t forget your homework, tell a friend about our show and leave a review and a comment. You can also leave us a voicemail at 916-538-0482 or contact us at swingeruniversity.com. Keep learning, keep growing and keep it sexy.