By Abby Wilcox
Over the decades people have flocked to San Francisco with the intention of redesigning their gender. And many of them are strutting their stuff at a soul party called Hard French — where “drag queens mingle with lesbians, leather daddies soul dance with cholas, sharps share hot dogs with activists, jocks make out with twinks, brown meets white meets purple meets gay guys meets ladies meets Q, and everyone leaves excited.”
This outdoor shindig, which takes place at El Rio monthly in the Outer Mission, is boldly turning the gender binary upside down. The recent Winter Ball was a gorgeous mess of wedding dresses, armor, sequined life vests, vintage Betsy Johnson floral bodysuits, zippered straightjacket couture, and more knockout outfits than you could count, and it drew people of every shape, size, color, and sexual orientation.
In line with the “design” theme of Volume 3 of The Bold Italic magazine, we asked the Hard French crew to curate a list of the boldest gender benders that come out for their parties. They came up with some intriguing answers when I asked them,
This story originally ran in Volume 3 of The Bold Italic magazine — SF By Design — which is available for purchase as a single issue or with a subscription.
