digg_url = 'http://digg.com/odd_stuff/Photos_Dore_Alley_Fair_San_Francisco_s_Leather_Sex_Fair'; (By Joe Kukura) Yesterday's Up Your Alley Fair is what the Folsom Street Fair used to be before all the tourists pushing baby strollers started showing up. More than 8,000 leather daddies -- and as many as perhaps a dozen biological women -- braved the cold fog wearing little more than a gimp mask and a smile to benefit PAWS, the AIDS Emergency Fund, and others. We tried to limit the......

We've received a few curt emails this afternoon, upset over our use of the image in "Strip Club Etiquette: De-tipping?" Sexy, no? But It seems if we post a female form that's neither a tweaked out, Nair-estranged Burning Man girl, nor a zaftig, of-a-certain age Codepink protester, many of you dear readers get all aflutter. (PS, though, we thank you for sending us personal email on off-topic discussions such as this.) That said, it's......

You know you've made it in San Francisco as a marginalized group when you start getting in fights with other marginalized groups -- so a local bisexual advocacy/social group is under fire for their policies excluding certain transgender persons. Namely, the Chasing Amy Social Club (which you may remember from Gay Pride this year, complaining about the lack of bi visibility at the Pride Parade) has gotten called out by local literary doyenne and transgender......

If the prospect of watching a gay pride parade on television thrills you, you'd better have cable -- because KRON, which has previously broadcast the parade over the air on channel 4, is this year bumping their coverage all the way up to Comcast's channel 99. KRON's broadcast license is up for renewal, see, and the chance of losing it over something unexpected during the parade is just too great. (You can read a......

--Spot (at least) four problems with this picture! [zippy_monster on Flickr, from the SFist Flickr stream.] --Fight at the Metreon! [Chron Culture Blog] --Pat Murphy claims to feel bad about his nemesis Chris Daly getting deposed as chair of the Board of Supes Budget and Finance Committee. [SF Sentinel] --Chris Daly takes his reassignment like a man. [Fog City Journal] --Hey! Our Ed Jew coverage goes national! Thanks for the referral, reader DM! [TPMMuckraker.com]......

We're (sort of) proud to admit we used to play in a youth orchestra ourselves, in our misbegotten youth. Oh, the drama! The miserable attempts to rise in the ranks of the seating chart, the sinking realization that you're two pages behind the rest of the string section in the music, the haughty unfriendliness of the principal trumpet player and his bevy of giggling flautists..... oh, it takes us back. Well, we can't speak for......

Security is a "top priority" for tomorrow's Mausoleum Party, hosted by the Stanford frats. You gotta love an article that starts with the splash headline "Police: Stanford not the place to go for free beer on weekends." As one officer tells the Stanford Daily, "I’ve had experiences where a high-school student from Palo Alto has gotten a hold of a Stanford ID card, made copies of it and put it over their own ID. Then,......

Breaking the law, breaking the law We -ist folks love us some crime, and no misdemeanor is too petty for a post on any of our sites. This week, join us for a rogues' gallery of miscreants major, minor, and alleged. Gothamist gets us started with "Law & Order", muppet style. Oh, you know what isn't a crime? Taking pictures on the MTA. So, why are cops stopping photographers? In other Gotham crime, a......

SFist interviews Barb Traub, author of "Desert to Dream: A Decade of Burning Man Photography"...

Theater about technology about theater, sexy performance art with a message and more theater about theater....

Even as the stores sport back to school sales (which depress us, even now), summer lingers on your friends the -ists. This week's collection of links provides some of the best, worst, and oddest bits of summer fun. So, bring your laptop up onto the roof, make yourself an umbrella drink or ten, and enjoy this week's choice posts from across the Gothamist network. Torontoist (where it's 75 degrees F as of this writing)......

Are you on the hunt for a local slice of Burning Man? You're in luck. Tomorrow, the Duck Pond Crew is offering up Burn-style fun in Dolores Park. Sounds like it will be cheap, fun and crazy. For only five bones, take endless rides on a custom built (!!), giant Slip 'N Slide, rumored to have more curves and thrills than any store bought Slip ‘N Slide. (This Crew is expert at setting up Slip......

There's always a lull in touring during the late summer, perhaps because most other cities in the U.S. are experiencing temperatures in the triple digits and that’s not the best climate for when you pop a tire on your Econovan and have to wait on the side of the highway for roadside assistance. But some brave musicians soldier on to bring the rock to us, grabbing some respite in San Francisco’s chilly summer nights. Magnolia......

More nonsense from the world of videogames: the best-selling game of the moment is Bethesda Softworks' epic role-playing game Oblivion. That popularity has made it a target for modders and, now, opportunistic politicians. The story began when the Entertainment Software Ratings Board announced a re-rating for the game, bumping it up from its original "Teen" rating to "Mature." [all links in this article are from GameSpot News] The ESRB claimed that Bethesda and publisher......

We first heard about Jimmy and Judy at this year's IndieFest benefit party, when Bruce Fletcher, the Fest's director of programming, excitedly announced to us that it was his "new favorite movie." High praise indeed! While we had hoped to see the film on the big screen at its IndieFest premiere on February 4, when we heard that Edward Furlong and Rachael Bella, the stars of the movie (and who are involved in real......

SFist was recently contacted by local artist Alyssa Morgan, who had an interesting story to tell -- apparently, she had been contracted to provide art for the grand opening of John Colins, a new bar in SOMA. Throughout the creation process a member of the bar's ownership team viewed the art, but once delivered to the bar the art remained for only one evening. The reason? The bar's owners determined that her work, which......

Thanks to Friend of SFist Min Jung Kim (who wrote an awesome essay on blogging recently), we had ringside seats for the Carnaval Parade. We gorged ourselves on photographs, and even busted out the cellphone to record some of the great bands. There were representatives from, oh, five or six continents on hand, all tied together by a spirit of celebration. The nearly nude (and in one case completely nude save for some creative......

In Sunday's Chron, Ray Ratto had a pretty funny little piece about all the obstacles the 49ers, and A's, face in getting a new stadium built. In it, Ratto turned the challenge into a board game you can play at home. Land on the "Board of Supervisors," for instance and you're told that you will "lose five hours of your life while they argue about what kind of plants to put in the stadium foyer and which gardening service should water them." But while Ratto mentioned all the usual problems, he never mentioned the difficulties the Niners might face when an extremely politically incorrect training video that makes fun of the Mayor mysteriously shows up in Matier & Ross' in-box. Also in the video are lesbian scenes. Not to mention ethnic jokes, gay marriage jokes, gay prison sex jokes, lots of nudity, and all sorts of other goodies. Aye carumba! ...

Saturday morning, around 7am, a line started forming outside the Metreon to see British playwright Tom Stoppard's new film, based on a late-70s film by a young experimental filmmaker from USC. By 9:30, the line stretched down around Jillians and up over the stairs, spilling into Yerba Buena Gardens -- about 1,500 people were estimated present. But these were small-scale nerds, not the type who camp out for weeks; as employees of the LucasFilm......

So good luck dealing with any state agencies tomorrow -- they'll be shut down in observance of Cesar Chavez Day (though that could all change if the Governator has his way). So if you just have to find State Comptroller Steve Westly, he'll probably be sipping cocktails at the 19th Green somewhere -- we mean, uh, reflecting upon and honoring the life of one of America's greatest folk heros on what would be his......

While it's always fun to snark on the Religious Right, lately it's just been too darn easy. After taking on Sponge Bob and "No Name Calling Week," those whacky Bible-thumpers are at it again, this time with yet another cartoon (do they watch anything else?) In this case, the upsetting thing is a cartoon airing on PBS, a cartoon about a cute little bunny named Buster. Postcards From Buster is about Buster's adventures travelling to......

Of all the words that are likely to cross your mind when we say Marin, we are going to bet that "alternative" isn't at the top of the list. But check out the brand spanking new alterTheatre ensemble, which is offering a stripped down night of one-acts (get your pants back on, stripped down in a no-sets-and-lighting sense, not a full-frontal-nudity sense) entitled A Smorgasbord of Shorts, one of which is Stephen Belber's surprising and......