PHOTO ESSAY BY MICHAEL SHIREY | With the LGBT community increasingly mainstreamed in American life, many remain determined to celebrate what makes queer life so unique. That includes the kinky things some do behind closed bedroom doors — or on the streets of Chelsea, for that matter. The 19th annual Folsom Street East festival, the East Coast’s largest outdoor fetish and kink gathering, was held Sunday, June 19, where more than 40 vendors lined up on 27th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues. The beneficiaries of this year’s festival were the New York City Anti-Violence Project, an organization dedicated to ending violence against the LGBT community, and Visual AIDS, a contemporary arts organizations that works to raise AIDS awareness and promote HIV prevention while preserving the work of artists with HIV.
