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S&M festival a slamming good time
(SF)
By David Freedlander
Shoppers browsed among the whips, chains, and T-shirts with slogans like "Real tears excite me" at the city's first S&M street festival Sunday, even as some neighborhood residents lashed out at the fair's adult content.
"People from the mainstream community can come here and get an education on alternative means of expression," said Robert Valin, chairman of the group Leather Invasion, which sponsored the event. He was dressed for the occasion in a latex tank top and pants. "They find out we are less threatening than they think we are."
But some West Village residents protested, claiming that Weehawken Street was inappropriate for an event about sadomasochism, and that the fair was approved by the community board without proper community input.
"A leather fair on a street with kids walking by? I question the location," said Elaine Goldman, a community activist who led the opposition. "Anything behind closed doors is no one's business, but this is on the street. We have hundreds of kids walking by here."
The event was part of New York Leather Weekend, which included a Hudson River cruise, an afternoon bar crawl and a leather-store shopping tour.
Opinion about the festival in the neighborhood was mixed. At the soccer fields at nearby Pier 40 at Hudson River Park, Clay Chalem, 47, who grew up in the Village, said he wished the festival was elsewhere.
"How am I supposed to explain to my 8-year-old daughter what's going on," he said. "This is still a community. You have to be aware of other people."
But Marlene McCarty, a mother of two, disagreed.
"This is the West Village. It's been like this for decades," she said. "Now all these families moving in trying to pretend it's the suburbs. If the culture of the West Village bugs them then move to New Jersey."
Some of the event's organizers stressed the importance of leather fetishists reasserting their presence in a community once famous for its gay culture, which has been whitewashed out by gentrification, AIDS, and the Internet.
"We are still here, we still belong here," said Richard Ives, a festivalgoer. "Other communities have the church group or the country club. This is like that for people who don't feel comfortable in those kinds of settings."
Valin, the event's organizer agreed.
"The dynamic in the city has changed so much," he said "We are trying honor the history and the heritage of the leather movement. We are not going to hurt anybody. Unless they want to be hurt, of course."
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