48 Hills is proud to be the 42nd annual Folsom Street Fair‘s exclusive San Francisco media partner. Up until the Fair itself on Sunday, September 28, we’ll be guiding you through the history, looks, parties, and people of the world’s largest kink and fetish celebration. Check www.48hills.org/folsom-2025 for updates.
San Francisco’s high holy day of leather and liberation is almost here again, and the 2025 Folsom Street Fair (Sun/28), its 42nd installment, is already buzzing in the city’s collective imagination. One can practically hear the basslines bouncing off brick walls and envision the rainbow of bodies pressed together, boots and harnesses gleaming in late-September sun, and a thousand small moments of consent-forward connection happening at once.
Welcoming visitors is Mocha Fapalatte, a drag artist, kinkster, and community organizer who’s determined to make this year feel bigger, better, and more welcoming than ever. Her goal? Turn the gates into a party, stretch the stages wider, and make sure everyone who shows up knows they belong.
Fapalatte’s path to Folsom wasn’t obvious. Referred by Stages & Entertainment co-lead Fawks Gilić, she joined the Folsom Street Events board three years ago and immediately found herself managing a 40th anniversary fashion show at the fair. Not long after, she was running the Gates program while still working full-time at Old Navy.
“As of July, I am the Programs Director of Folsom Street,” she says.
That leap—from corporate retail to running programs at one of the city’s wildest, queerest, most iconic street fairs—gave her a chance to rethink how the event works for performers, sponsors, and attendees alike. As Programs Director, she now manages contracts, oversees operations at the Folsom Street Community Center, and shadows Executive Director Angel Adeyoha to learn the ins and outs of producing one of San Francisco’s most significant cultural events.
She’s been pulling in new sponsors and sketching out programs to bring more art into SoMa, but her most visible contribution is reinventing the event gates. For years, the first thing people encountered at Folsom Street Fair was a line and a donation bucket. Fapalatte thought that was a wasted opportunity.
“We really wanted to center the attendee experience when developing the Gates program,” she says. “Where’s the fun? The gates are the first impression an attendee has when they arrive, and no one likes waiting in line just to be asked for money.”
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Her fix was to work with local drag performers and nightlife personalities to turn the gates into a stage of their own. “Folsom Street Fair is a party, after all—and who better to amp people up than the people who are out every night in our bars making audiences laugh, cheer, and tip,” says Fapalatte.
She notes that since partnering with, and most importantly, paying, local performers, Folsom Street Events has seen a sizable increase in the amount of gate donations it’s bringing in.
It’s classic Fapalatte: practical, joyful, and uncompromising about inclusivity. “As a trans woman of color myself, I really want to make sure that my trans siblings are being booked and paid well for the work that they do, without alienating our cis community,” she says.
This year, she’s especially proud to highlight the 20th anniversary of The Playground, Folsom’s space for women, trans, and non-binary folks. “The Folsom Street Fair honestly has something for everyone.”
Even with so much responsibility, Fapalatte is letting herself be a fan. She can barely contain her excitement about a new theatrical twist. “It’s hard to pick just one thing to be excited about, but I can’t help but fangirl a little about Peaches Christ bringing a teaser of Terror Vault to the fair,” she says. “Beyond the fact that I’ll be performing in the haunt in October, I’m such a big fan of hers and love the way that she also centers paying queer and trans artists to do what we do best. Plus, I’m a total horror addict. This year, I’m determined to catch her set.” (And maybe her soaps.)
That sense of admiration runs throughout the fair. The Playground is living proof of how Folsom Street Fair has stretched and expanded to reflect more of its community. Board President and legendary performer Alotta Boutté traces it back to the early 2000s.
“The space was created for people who have ever identified as a woman—past, present, or future, as the main street fair is a men-focused event,” she says. “It grew out of a Friday night event called Rebels of Venus. As society at large expanded its understanding and ever-evolving language around gender expression and identities, so has The Playground.”
Dropping “Venus” from the moniker marked a shift. “It was a pivotal moment,” says Boutté. “It signified an expansion of who the space was for.”
For her, the space was transformative from the start. “The first time I entered The Playground was such a sweet relief,” she says. “I was able to release what I wasn’t fully aware I was holding. When we can release that extra armor, it gives space for us to create community in beautiful ways.”
Her co-lead, Koja, doesn’t sugarcoat the history. “Folsom has historically catered to white, cisgender gay men,” she says. “But we’ve really worked to change that with the creation of The Playground, and in recent years, Folsom as a whole has made some pretty tremendous and successful efforts to move away from that.”
She points out that many attendees now say they wouldn’t come to the fair at all if it weren’t for The Playground.
For Koja, leadership means humility. “As an organizer, I approach this work from a place of service, not power,” she says. “The Playground attendees are used to being at the mercy of deeply fucked up power structures already. My role is to serve my community. I believe that’s part of what’s made us successful.”
Meanwhile, just a few blocks away, another stage offers its own expansion. Rope artist and educator Shay Tiziano curates the bondage stage with an eye for both intensity and artistry.
She opens up when asked about her bondage journey. “I craved rope, but tended to have partners who were not as into it as I was, which contributed to my interest in self-bondage,” says Tiziano. “Sometimes, if you want something done, you’ve got to do it yourself!”
That spark became a career as rope evolved from a smaller, more niche subculture, where enthusiasts learned in private, to a more public and widely celebrated global art form. There’s been a vast growth in accessibility: more classes, more conferences, more online education, and a greater diversity of voices.
Her event, Twisted Windows, puts that growth onstage. “I wanted to evoke the intimate nature of the performances we feature,” says Tiziano. “I wanted to give the impression that attendees are voyeurs, getting a glimpse of something they might not usually get to see—a window into the performer’s connections, kink, and sensuality.”
The Playground gave Tiziano a stage for her first rope performance, and she’s never forgotten it. “I adore the Folsom Street Fair,” she says. “Folsom stages are about celebrating diverse performers and sexual liberation as a form of performance art. I hope that watching these performances will empower people to explore desire, consent, and pleasure.”
Pull all of this together, and attendees of the 2025 Folsom Street Fair get an event that looks markedly different from the one they may remember. Once dominated by leather men, Folsom now sprawls across drag-run gates, women-led stages, rope suspensions, and this year, a haunted tease courtesy of Peaches Christ, at which Mocha Fapalatte will scream along with every other horror buff. It’s still sweaty, outrageous, and unrepentant—but the tent is bigger, the lineup broader, and the welcome unmistakable.
For one day, San Francisco turns itself inside out—and everyone who comes through gets to see themselves reflected in the glow.
FOLSOM STREET FAIR September 28. Folsom Street (between 8th and 13th Streets), SF. More info here.
