Dore Alley Fair

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The Dore Alley Fair or simply Dore Alley (Pronounced dorey) are the common moniker of the officially named Up Your Alley Fair, a leather and fetish event held on the last Sunday of July on Folsom Street between 9th and 10th Streets and on Dore Street ("Dore Alley") from Howard Street to half a block southeast of Folsom Street. The streets are lined with vendors' booths and a sound stage (for dancing) is located at the 10th Street end of Folsom Street.

The first Up Your Alley Street Fair was held in 1985 on Ringold Street between 8th and 9th Streets (and it was known as the "Ringold Alley Fair"). The event was moved to its current location on Folsom Street at Dore Street in 1987. Among the original rationales for this fair was to illustrate, in the face of redevelopment pressures, that the South of Market neighborhood was already home to a community and that this community was still active and organized in spite of the AIDS epidemic.^[1]

Run by the same non-profit organization the produces the much larger Folsom Street Fair, the world's largest BDSM fetish and leather event, Up Your Alley Fair draws several thousand fetish enthusiasts and onlookers and serves not only as a "warm-up" event for the organizers but also as a less tourist-focused event for locals. This fair is one of many large neighborhood street fairs San Francisco has weekly towards the end of summer, ending with the Castro Street Fair the first weekend of October. Recently San Francisco street fairs, many run by non-profit groups, have begun to network more and organize in response to increased police fees.

[edit] Notes

^ Rubin, Gayle. "The Miracle Mile: South of Market and Gay Male Leather, 1962-1997" in Reclaiming San Francisco: History, Politics, Culture (City Lights Press, 1998)