The Brig — San Francisco Vintage 1977–1985 Gay Leather Bar Tee

Located at 1347 Folsom Street, in San Francisco's legendary South of Market neighborhood, The Brig was part of the city's thriving gay leather scene during its gloriously uninhibited heyday.

And this wasn't exactly the place for a quiet cocktail and a little polite conversation.

By the late 1970s, Folsom Street had become the center of San Francisco's leather community, a neighborhood packed with bars, bathhouses, motorcycle clubs, and establishments catering to gentlemen who preferred their nightlife with a little more leather, denim, and attitude.

The area was affectionately known as the Miracle Mile, although what constituted a miracle probably depended on which doorway you wandered through.

The Brig opened in 1977, taking over a location that had previously housed several gay bars, including the In-Between, No Name, and The Bolt.

It quickly became another fixture along a stretch of Folsom Street that included legendary establishments like Fe-Be's, the Ramrod, the Ambush, and the Folsom Barracks.

And there was more to The Brig than just drinking and cruising.

In 1979, the bar housed Taylor of San Francisco, a leatherworking business operated by craftsman Joe Taylor, who made custom leather gear for the city's growing fetish community.

Because apparently, if you needed a new leather harness, you could get one made without even leaving the bar.

Talk about convenient shopping.

The Brig flourished during a remarkable period in San Francisco's gay history, when leather bars were far more than places to pick up handsome strangers. They were gathering places for motorcycle clubs, artists, activists, and a community that had created its own distinctive culture in the years following Stonewall.

Sadly, the arrival of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s devastated San Francisco's gay community, bringing enormous changes to the nightlife and sexual freedom that had defined the previous decade.

The Brig closed in 1985, but its address wasn't finished making gay history.

The space became the Powerhouse, another legendary leather establishment that eventually grew into one of the city's best-known surviving gay bars.

Today, the site is recognized by San Francisco's Leather & LGBTQ Cultural District, which commemorates the bars and businesses that helped make Folsom Street an internationally famous center of gay leather culture.