Behind the Harness & Sash: CLAW Leather Thanksgiving

I’m sitting in yet another hotel room this weekend—another city, another borrowed bed—thinking about last week’s CLAW Leather Thanksgiving and how unexpectedly revived it left me. Funny how memory gets slippery when we want it to be precise. I can’t for the life of me remember how I first heard about CLAW’s Thanksgiving event. Maybe it was a stray Instagram post caught between thirst traps, maybe an early-morning scroll on Twitter back when it was still tolerable. However it found me, it hooked me in 2021, and I’ve returned every year like clockwork, as though I were honoring some seasonal migration pattern in leather and boots.

Those first years at the Westin Bonaventure were something else. That building really shouldn’t have worked for a leather event, and yet somehow it did. Four cylindrical towers connected by Escher-like walkways, all of us scattered across floors like a secret order: chaps swishing down carpeted hallways, vests gleaming under cold hotel lighting, and boots echoing against concrete as if we owned the place. Every so often, the official YAPP app would fire off a gentle reminder that bare butts were strictly forbidden, lest we traumatize unsuspecting conventioneers. We obeyed… mostly.

The event changed over time. The vendor mart shrank. The attendee mix shifted. Locals filled in the gaps while out-of-towners drifted back to their traditional turkey feasts once the world reopened. But that first year? It felt like we were all co-conspirators in a marvelous secret. I talked about it the way kids talk about hidden treehouses: eyes bright, words tumbling out of me, and I dragged friends back with me the following year. They enjoyed themselves, sure, but that original magic was already slipping through our fingers.

Then came last year’s venue change, and the magic didn’t just slip; it evaporated. Higher costs. A fractured layout. A feeling that the whole thing was unraveling no matter how hard the organizers tried to keep it stitched together. I left 2024 convinced it would be my final CLAW Thanksgiving. Why keep throwing money at an experience that had become decidedly mediocre?

But life has a way of nudging us back toward things we thought we’d outgrown. Enter: a newly earned leather title, repeated assurances that this year would be different, and a very welcome titleholder discount. Against my own grumbles, I decided to give CLAW Leather Thanksgiving one last chance—cue the Wicked reference, For Good indeed.

In the early years I’d spoil myself rotten with a full staycation—Wednesday to Monday, five decadent nights pretending to be a leather-clad Eloise at the Plaza. But the shrinking programming meant there was no reason to drag it out this year. I arrived on Thanksgiving Day, got an early check-in, and found myself on the allegedly unlucky “13th floor.” I always thought hotels pretended that number didn’t exist, like it was Voldemort or something, but there it was, printed plainly on the elevator panel.

I unpacked my weekend gear, two large duffle bags somehow holding an entire adult man’s leather fantasies, and congratulated myself on another cost-saving measure: Lyfting instead of paying $50+ nightly for parking. The venue’s refusal to offer a parking discount still irritates me more than it should.

Later, when friends arrived, we discovered we’d all been placed on the same mysterious 13th floor. In all our years of traveling together, we’ve never landed on the same floor. It felt oddly domestic, as if we were suburban neighbors who just happened to wear harnesses to brunch.

And here’s the thing… CLAW kept their promise this year. The event was better. Not flawless, let’s not kid ourselves. The vendor mart was laughably cramped, and as someone who loves a good vendor experience and has organized them in the past, I couldn’t help but mentally rearrange the whole layout. Charging people to enter the vendor mart still feels like punishing attendees for wanting to support small businesses. I need to dig into whether that fee was bundled into a day pass or truly a standalone charge, because if it’s the latter… yikes.

But the vendors who did attend? Familiar faces, a few new ones, and conversations that reminded me why this part of the weekend has always mattered. Community is nothing if not the small reunions stitched between the big moments.

Programming-wise, I saw events and panels I could have attended, but my energy reserves were low. The truth is, most leather conferences cycle through familiar content; there’s comfort in that, but it doesn’t always push me out of my own orbit. Still, I found myself thinking about what fresh programming might look like—and whether I could help shape next year’s offerings. Maybe a reason for more people to treat it as a destination again.

The real highlights, though, were personal.

First, the parade of colors and titleholders on the grand marble staircase felt like stepping into a legacy I’ve spent years circling. Standing there representing CMEN, next to former titleholders who welcomed me into this lineage with open arms… it hit me harder than I expected. A grounding moment. A claiming of space I’ve longed for.

And when the picture came, I made sure, unlike during Folsom weekend, I was in the front, fully visible, allowing myself to take up space.