On the edge of South of Market, where SoMa’s gritty industrial grid met the city’s burgeoning queer nightlife, Boot Camp opened at 1010 Bryant Street in August 1971 as one of San Francisco’s earliest uniform-themed leather bars. It was more than a place to grab a drink — it was a meeting ground for leathermen, bikers, S&M devotees, and anyone drawn to the raw, expressive spirit of kink culture that was taking hold in the city.
Boot Camp earned mainstream notice early on — it even landed a mention in Herb Caen’s San Francisco Chronicle column, a sign that gay leather life was starting to surface in the city’s broader cultural imagination. Its manager, Marcus Hernandez (aka Mr. Marcus), became an early queer personality of note when he was selected San Francisco’s first gay Emperor in 1972.
Through the 1970s and into the 1980s, Boot Camp stood as one of the hubs of San Francisco’s leather scene — a place where uniform codes, midnight dharma, and that unmistakable SoMa energy converged under fluorescent lights and scuffed leather. Though many of the original bars and clubs in the district shuttered or transformed with the onset of the AIDS crisis and downtown redevelopment, Boot Camp’s legacy endures as an emblem of queer freedom and self-expression.
