Folsom Street had been the center of San Francisco's leather community since the 1960s. This community had been active in resisting the City's ambitious redevelopment program for the South of Market area throughout the 1970s. But as the AIDS epidemic unfolded in the 1980s, the ability of this community to stand up to downtown and City Hall were dramatically weakened. The crisis became an opportunity for the City (in the name of "public health") to close bathhouses and regulate bars---businesses that had been the cornerstone of the community's efforts to maintain a gay space in the South of Market neighborhood.