The Stud is a gay bar currently located at 1123 Folsom Street in San Francisco. It was started by associates George Matson and Alexis Muir (Muir was a transgender woman then known as Richard Conroy) on 27 May 1966. According to George Matson, it was a “bar for people, not just pretty bodies.” Originally The Stud stood at 1535 Folsom Street; in 1987 it moved to Ninth and Harrison Streets. The Stud closed in May 2020 because of financial troubles stemming from a COVID-19 shutdown; it reopened on 20 April 2024 at 1123 Folsom Street. Across those moves and crises it has remained a landmark of South of Market queer nightlife and leather-adjacent culture, later folded into San Francisco’s Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District.
History and Ownership
The Stud was originally started by George Matson (also given as Mason in some accounts) and Alexis Muir in 1966. Alexis Muir was a transgender woman then known as Richard Conroy; her surname Muir may be a reference to John Muir, who was her great-uncle. In the early 1970s George sold his half to Alexis. Alexis then sold it to Jerry “Trixie” Jones, Heidi Steffan, and Jan Hill. Jerry “Trixie” Jones was also a partial owner of Hamburger Mary’s, an iconic gay restaurant across the street—SOMA social life stacked on both sides of the pavement. In 1974 the Stud was bought out by Jim “Edie” Fleckenstein. Edie died in 1994, leaving the Stud to his partner and resident DJ Larry Holloway (aka LaRue) and his accountant Ben “Fiesta” Guibord. They then partnered with Michael McElheney. LaRue died in the 1990s due to complications from HIV/AIDS. Ben “Fiesta” Guibord died in 2011 at the age of sixty-three, also due to complications from HIV/AIDS. Originally the Stud was at 1535 Folsom; in 1987 it moved to Ninth and Harrison. That ownership chain tracks not only nightlife real estate but the epidemic’s long shadow over gay bar inheritance.
In the summer of 2016 the Stud was hit with a very large rent increase and Michael McElheney decided it was time to retire. When the bar faced closure, members of the local community began to organize in hopes of preserving the historic room. That organizing produced a collective of nightlife professionals who bought the business from McElheney. Members of the collective include artists, DJs, and performers such as Honey Mahogany, Siobhan Aluvalot, Vivvyanne Forevermore, and Rachel Ryan. The collective took ownership on 30 December 2016, making it—according to collective member Nate Allbee—“the very first co-op nightclub in the United States.” The Stud closed in May 2020 due to pandemic financial collapse, then reopened 20 April 2024 on 1123 Folsom. The co-op rescue and the Folsom return are now as much part of the myth as the 1966 founding.
South of Market Gay Culture in the 1960s and the Stud’s Significance
In the 1960s San Francisco’s primarily gay areas were Polk Street, the Tenderloin district, and South of Market. South of Market became the hub of the leather subculture in the gay community in 1961 when the gay bar the Tool Box opened as the first leather bar in the neighborhood. When the Stud, along with Febe’s, opened on Folsom Street in 1966, other gay leather bars and establishments catering to this subculture followed, creating a foundation for the growing gay leather community. The Stud and the other establishments in this neighborhood created safer space for gay people to gather, be themselves, and build community. The Stud was also originally a Hell’s Angels hangout; by 1969 it had become a dance bar for hippies on the margins of the leather scene and had a psychedelic black-light mural by Chuck Arnett. That mix—leather geography, motorcycle culture, hippie dance floor, Arnett art—shows SOMA nightlife was never only pure old-guard protocol rooms.
Trannyshack
One of San Francisco’s longest-running drag shows, Trannyshack, was started in 1996 by Heklina, a well-known San Francisco drag queen. Many famous drag queens and celebrities graced the stage at Trannyshack, including many contestants from RuPaul’s Drag Race and RuPaul himself. Due to controversy over the use of the word “tranny,” the show’s name was called into question, prompting Heklina to end it and rebrand. In 2008 Trannyshack ended its run at the Stud. The history still matters for mapping how Folsom leather-adjacent bars doubled as major queer performance rooms, not only cruise dens—dance bar and drag stage sharing the same SOMA address book.
Honors and the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District
Alexis Muir, cofounder and former owner, was honored in 2017 along with other notables, named on bronze bootprints as part of San Francisco’s South of Market Leather History Alley. The Stud is part of the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors established the district with legislation signed into law by the mayor on 9 May 2018. A ribbon cutting was held on 12 June that year outside the Stud—public recognition that a dance bar with leather roots is civic heritage, not disposable nightlife real estate under rent pressure.
Why Leather and BDSM Readers Still Track The Stud
The Stud is not a pure dungeon or formal leather club, but it is indispensable geography for SOMA leather history: 1966 Folsom opening alongside Febe’s after the Tool Box opened the district; Arnett’s black-light mural; AIDS-era ownership succession through Edie, LaRue, and Fiesta; Trannyshack’s long drag run; co-op rescue in 2016; COVID closure; and 2024 Folsom reopening. Related nodes include the Tool Box, Febe’s, Hamburger Mary’s, the Leather History Alley, and the Leather and LGBTQ Cultural District. For adult readers of leather-bar history, The Stud is the long-running Folsom institution that insisted it was “for people, not just pretty bodies”—and that the community fought to keep when rent, pandemic, and time tried to erase it. Official website and district maps still point visitors back to Folsom when they want living nightlife history rather than only archive photographs.
