Aye lads and lassies, let me tell ye a tale o’ the wild land of leather, rope, and displays of depravity I encountered while sailing… oh, sorry.
I went to the 2026 Folsom Street Fair dressed as a pirate this year. As one does.
It’s been years since I’d been to Folsom, and the tone this time was much more positive. Perhaps it was the unusually sunny afternoon, or the variety of events going on. Or maybe it was all in my head, which (again) was wearing a pirate hat.
Of everything going on, to me there was one clear standout: the wrestling.
This was my first experience seeing Full Queer wrestling. For those familiar with Hoodslam/SlamTown, it’s very much along the same lines, and one of the competitors on Sunday was Hoodslam founder Dark Sheik.
Some of the not-strictly legal wrestling moves on display included karate kicks, strangulation with barbed wire, and cannibalism. To be fair to the referees, one of them was a victim of the aforementioned cannibalism.
While I’m no wrestling expert, the same concept of “kayfabe” comes about all the time in art and comedy: presenting something ridiculous as though it were real, then getting the audience to play along.
In a case like Full Queer, wrestlers would get boos from the crowd if they were presented as a villain, they trash-talked San Francisco, or their persona didn’t match the gender-bending theme.
I got really into the crowd participation aspect, leading people to join in my chants of “Bite his dick off!” and “Death to America!” — the last one because… look, you had to be there.
