The Catacombs was a gay and lesbian S/M leather fisting club in San Francisco’s South of Market district. It ran from 1975 to 1981, then reopened at another location from 1982 to 1984. In its time it was widely regarded as the most famous fisting club in the world, a semi-secret, referral-only house devoted to extreme leather sex rather than casual bar cruise energy. Founder and owner Steve McEachern built the space; its reputation still anchors histories of SoMa leather and early AIDS-era community response.
Access, gender, and patrons
Location stayed semi-secret, and admission was by referral only. Skill, trust, and existing network mattered before you walked in. The club began as a gay men’s space. Sex educator and SM activist Cynthia Slater pushed management to open the door to lesbians. Among known patrons was writer and activist Patrick Califia, then known as Pat Califia. Carol Queen later called Catacombs the place to be seen and to play at during the 1980s.
AIDS, scholarship, and memory
Sexual anthropologist Gayle Rubin has written exhaustively about the Catacombs and called the club exemplary in how it tried to confront the AIDS crisis, efforts that still could not prevent the epidemic from helping force the venue’s end. Patrick Moore devoted a chapter to the club in Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality, placing fisting culture inside a larger recovery of radical gay sexual history. In 2017 the San Francisco South of Market Leather History Alley opened to honor leather community members and culture, including McEachern. For BDSM and leather readers, Catacombs is the referral-only SoMa fisting institution that mixed men’s and later women’s play, left a paper trail through Rubin, Moore, Califia, and Queen, and still has a name on the city’s leather memorial landscape.
