International Mr. Leather

I haven't been to a barber.

30 years and the only reason I'd go to a barber again is if I was letting my beard grow out and I was gonna let somebody really carve that thing up nicely because I can't do it I have to keep it short because I can manage it when it's short But the other thing you would see of course is what I'm wearing and I always like to plug my leather This is my navy blue leather vest with contrast stitching and the matching armbands that I made I made this earlier this year to wear to IML and if you like looking at me with or without a shirt, I had a comment.

Ah, I'm going into the weeds again.

This is going to be a long episode.

I went to a single lead Leatherman contest night.

I read one book on IML and heard the gossip back from the international puppy competitions in the States.

And from that information alone, I designed APHC.

Okay, and what did you want it to be? I wanted it to be a lot of things.

And it's based partially on the fact that decades and decades of visible queer life is woven into the urban fabric of Chicago.

I go to Chicago every year for International Mr. Leather.

I have walked the streets plenty of times through plenty of neighborhoods.

I've spent a lot of time in Chicago.

It was very nice.

And then add to that the history.

The reason International Mr. Leather is in Chicago is because the North American leather scene was really woven into the fabric of this city.

And we're talking way back into the 60s.

And you've got Honey Davenport involved, which is wild to me.

Just made history as the first drag queen to win International Mr. Leather.

Yes.

And tell us about the collection.

But yeah, so like before IML, you did TCL, Social Wednesdays Leather.

So what, and you mentioned like the coffee shop and, you know, Kurt and Carrie Cho and all of them and all those wonderful people.

When did you actually go to like TCL, like weekend slash decide to run?

Again, hadn't really been, had an idea of it.

Yeah.

But in 2023, I remember having this conversation with Kerry Jo, and he was like, If you, he's like, you should go to IML because Mr. Twin Cities Leather is a theater competition to IML, International Mr. Leather.

And I was like, I don't even know like how, like, it seems like a lot of money just to get out there, find, you know, a place to stay.

I don't really know Chicago like that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And so that's what I try to bring to our weekly gathering here.

And today we're going to be talking about International Mr. Leather and Boot Black.

They made some pretty big news in the last couple of weeks.

Made some waves, so to speak.

And I'd love to go back and maybe see some of the neighborhoods where I designed homes and see what they look like now, just to revisit that era of my life.

I think it's healthy to do that sometimes, as long as it's good memories for us.

And even when they're bad memories, sometimes it can be cathartic to go back and acknowledge that and to see that Now I've got to talk about the big thing, which is International Mr. Leather made a lot of news in the past couple of weeks.

They have a goal, which they announced at the press conference last year, of reducing the contestant count.

And there's a reason for that.

And we're also going to talk about an upcoming event, Salt Lake City Leather Pride.

Yeah, Leather Pride in Salt Lake City.

So let's get started.

I always like to start our episode out with a little bit of inspiration from our social media channels.

On to some leather news.

A couple of title contests happened here in the last couple weeks that I want to point out.

Just over the weekend, there was the Encorado Leather Latin Fetish Weekend down in Los Angeles.