History of New Mexico Alternative Communites
Venues • Artisans • Groups • Events • Media • Individuals

NM Alternative Communities History Analysis:
Patterns
By Bear Mike, Version 23July2026

​Here are seven patterns I observed while compiling this history.  They are presented as an exploration of approaches taken in the community.  Later in the writing, some of them will be used to create Historical Pattern and Conditional Pattern studies from the history.

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1. New Mexico community members repeatedly import, adapt, and re-export community knowledge.

History of the New Mexico community is to observe national Leather culture, adopt some, adapt it, and eventually export our knowledge more broadly.

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• Dick Marleau brought experience from California motorcycle culture and Chicago into Albuquerque.

• Nancy Ava Miller brought an educational-support model associated with The Eulenspiegel Society to Albuquerque, transformed it into PEP, and carried the model outward to other cities. The Washington effort helped produce Black Rose.

• Pat Sanchez transformed his regional Drummer opportunity into a New Mexico feeder system.

• Leslie Anderson, Pat Baillie, Cindy Bookout, Lori Ellison, Tyler McCormick, Jayson DaBoi Johnson, and others carried New Mexico into national title systems and brought experience back.

• Mauro Walden-Montoya returned with experience from Washington, Puerto Rico, and Florida.

• Sir Magnum brought knowledge from FetishMenSanDiego and Butchmanns.

• JD Smith brought California craftsmanship into a smaller regional market.

• Albuquerque Leather Daddys regularly brought national influencers to Albuquerque such as Dave Rhodes from The Leather Journal and Mama Sandy Reinhardt (Mama's Family).

• Bear Mike and Bear Marvin have engaged national organizations of many types via events, classes, and making personal friendships.  They have developed new local structures and invited national influencers to Albuquerque.  They have synthesized and exported New Mexico-inspired ideas to the national community by teaching and presenting broadly.

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The recurring process is:

• Knowledge arrives → is adapted to New Mexico → produces local leaders → returns to the national community in altered form.  Connections are made.

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2. A central evolutionary change is multiplication of legitimate ways to belong, not simply “more inclusion.”

Deeper change in our community seems to be multiplication of legitimate ways to belong.  "More Inclusion" is a great way to start, is important in common spaces, and easy to understand, but, if overprescribed, may lead to the issue that a completely inclusive space is safe for nobody.  Entry points or "Ways" to belong is more than how inclusive we are - it's "How" or the path to belonging.  For instance, early history of community participation frequently required access to a club, a bar, a member, or an invitation. Later environments allowed entry through more paths: education, titles, professional domination, bear culture, women’s groups, newsletters, websites, art, age-based organizations, vendors, houses, munches, public events, national identity organizations, and nonprofit programming.  Social media allows almost instant access to find community, yet one will likely find difficulty in belonging quite so quickly to a in-person community.

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Increasing inclusion is about more than who is admitted. It is about changing the architecture through which a community could be entered by a broader set of individuals.

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3. Immigrants to a community cause initial misunderstandings, conflicts, and eventual change.

This is a pattern that we see in human nature and world history, so it makes sense that it happens in our alternative communities.  Various factors explained elsewhere in this writing will bring communities together, perhaps because we're curious or see a lot of fun on the other side of the isle!  Each community has well established but perhaps different norms, expectations, protocols, rules.  When they come together online or in-person, these norms will eventually be accidently broken or intentionally challenged.  When this happens we hope communities learn the expected norms or the norms adapt; however, it's inevitable that some people will amplify conflict into drama, causing damage to the community.  Being aware and intentional about culture mixing can find the best path to the future.

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This pattern is not temporal.  It is situational and can happen at any time.  It has happened repeatedly in the alternative communities.

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4. Specialization is both growth and fragmentation

Diva Marie’s “Growing Pains” writing gives this pattern unusually strong contemporary support. New organizations may emerge because an existing community has become sufficiently large and varied to support different leadership, interests, and environments.

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That produces an apparent recurring paradox:

• The community grows strong enough to support specialization; specialization then makes the community appear less unified.

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Fragmentation is therefore not automatically evidence of failure. The more useful question is whether specialized groups retain enough connective tissue to exchange people, knowledge, resources, and mutual support.

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5. Authority has changed form without older forms disappearing

Authority in our early communities initially rested heavily in membership, patching, club office, experience, and controlled access. Later influences added other forms:

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• titleholding;

• teaching;

• publishing;

• professional expertise and skills;

• event production;

• venue ownership;

• national affiliation;

• nonprofit responsibility;

• identity representation (e.g., age, M/s, ethnicity, neurodivergence);

• accessibility work;

• historical stewardship;

• network building;

• rejection of authority - do what you want!

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These systems coexist. Much contemporary conflict may arise when people recognize different forms of authority—or assume that authority earned in one environment automatically transfers to another.

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6. Individuals remain the principal transmission mechanism

Organizations appear prominently in the history, but individuals carry knowledge across institutional breaks:

• Dick Marleau linked Hijos del Sol, Motorcyclemen, and the Social Club.

• Pat Sanchez connected motorcycle clubs, titles, AIDS service, and national contests networks.

• Diva Marie connected PEP, AEL, Sandia, women’s space, publishing, professional domination, and nightlife.

• Leslie Anderson connected local bootblack stands with international bootblack culture and archival preservation.

• Julian Wolf connected age-based kink, titles, advocacy, nightlife, art, burlesque, and consent culture.

• Jayson DaBooi connected bootblacking, historical preservation, titles, service, and contemporary pansexual organizing.

• Jaie Davis connected Leather, Onyx, drag, Court, nightlife, mentorship, and personal hospitality.

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This is also a persistent vulnerability. When an organization’s connective individual dies, moves, burns out, or withdraws, the institution may lose not only labor but relationships, memory, and legitimacy.

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7. Each successful solution (and evolution of surrounding culture) tends to produce the next environment’s problem

This may be the most useful evolutionary pattern seen in the history records and will lead to HISTORICAL PATTERNS in the next section.  As a solution is developed in the community that meets needs.  Yet that solution is not necessarily sufficient  for evolving community trends.  Some examples of this are:

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• Vetting created safety but also gatekeeping.

• Education created discoverability but challenged closed institutions.

• Inclusion created representation but exposed conflicts over identity and authority.

• Specialization created choice but produced fragmentation.

• Informality created accessibility but weakened governance and succession.

• Formal infrastructure created continuity but increased administration and institutional power.

• Explicit accountability created protection but created opportunities for rigidity, certainty theater, and weaponization.

• Historical preservation prevents erasure but gives the historian considerable power over selection and interpretation.

Issues that arise do not negate the benefits. They demonstrate what we already know - that community evolution never reaches a final, solved condition.  Being aware of the condition in your community at the moment may help you better know how and when to adjust.

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Historical and Conditional Pattern Studies

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The observations above identify broad patterns emerging from the historical record. The studies below examine selected patterns more systematically. Some are Historical Patterns—groupings of conditions associated with a particular period. Others are Conditional Patterns that may recur whenever similar circumstances arise.

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• Historical patterns arise from a recognizable grouping of conditions during a particular time range, such as 1980s rock culture or the early motorcycle-club environment.

• Conditional patterns arise whenever a particular condition occurs and are not tied to one period, such as a pandemic, loss of a central leader, resource scarcity, or contact between communities with different norms.

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These lenses overlap. The pandemic belongs to a specific historical period, but it also provides an example of community behavior under isolation and disruption. Cultural convergence may occur at any time, whenever groups with different norms begin sharing people, spaces, or institutions. Leadership loss, venue closure, technological change, resource scarcity, organizational growth, and increased demand for accountability can likewise activate recurring patterns.​

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I will break each pattern into these headers to describe and explore them:

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• Environment

  • The name or title.  If Historical, list the time period or condition that experienced the situation.​

• Situation Inherited

  • An explanation of the environment to which community members are exposed.​

• Principal Adaptations

  • What the community can do, in a good or bad way, to adapt to the situation.  Not all adaptations are for the good.​

• Adaptation Benefits

  • The positive results of what the community did to adapt to the situation.​

• Issues Created or Exposed

  • The potential trade-offs for the adaptation or related evolutionary concerns in the community.​

• New Mexico Examples

  • Examples of how this pattern has been seen in New Mexico, or the people and organization from our community that have had experience navigating the pattern.

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Here are some observed patterns in the history:

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• Environment

  • A. Protected Club Formation (Late 1970s–mid-1980s)

• Situation Inherited

  • Gay and Leather community faced substantial stigma, criminalization, employment risk, and few safe public institutions. Established gay motorcycle and Levi/Leather culture existed elsewhere but had little formal New Mexico infrastructure.

• Principal Adaptations

  • Imported the motorcycle-club model: officers, membership levels, colors, runs, hospitality, vetting, regional affiliations, and recurring physical gathering places. New Mexico adapted the model so motorcycle ownership was not always required.

• Adaptation Benefits

  • Created identity, fellowship, relative safety, trusted access, durable relationships, regional connections, fundraising capacity, and physical places where Leather culture could develop.​

• Issues Created or Exposed

  • Membership and invitation protected participants but could also become gatekeeping. The model primarily served gay men and depended heavily upon bars, clubs, and a relatively small number of leaders. Knowledge remained personal and oral, making it vulnerable to death and organizational decline.

• New Mexico Examples

  • Dick Marleau; Hijos del Sol; Motorcyclemen of New Mexico; early Albuquerque Social Club; Foxes; early regional runs.  Even Leather Wolves and Albuquerque Leather Daddys sought safe space for themselves through more narrow membership.​

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• Environment

  • B. Discovery, Education, and Parallel Communities (Mid-1980s–mid-1990s​)

• Situation Inherited

  • ​The club environment existed, but many women, heterosexual and bisexual people, professional Dominants, isolated BDSM practitioners, and people interested in less club-centered participation still lacked entry points. The AIDS epidemic created an urgent service crisis.

• Principal Adaptations

  • ​Developed educational forums, support groups, private-home gatherings, professional services, bear organizations, title feeders, and AIDS fundraising. National models were brought into New Mexico and then adapted locally.

• Adaptation Benefits

  • ​Made BDSM discoverable; normalized marginalized desires; created education, employment, and leadership opportunities for women; established pansexual participation; connected New Mexico to national networks; and mobilized Leather visibility for AIDS service.

• Issues Created or Exposed

  • ​Parallel communities developed different norms and sometimes distrusted one another. PEP’s largely heterosexual participation tested the boundaries of existing gay institutions. Commercial, educational, social, and personal authority could overlap. Founder-centered organizations remained vulnerable to conflict or departure.

• New Mexico Examples

  • Nancy Ava Miller and PEP; PEP’s role in the development of Black Rose; Diva Marie’s early professional work and AEL; Pat Sanchez and New Mexico Drummer; Dominick Zurlo, Bears of Mañana, and Sandia Bears; AIDS fundraising through Motorcyclemen and title systems.

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• Environment

  • ​C. Inclusion, Representation, and Community Media (Mid-1990s–early 2000s)

• Situation Inherited

  • New Mexico inherited gay men’s clubs, pansexual BDSM organizations, early title systems, and the severe loss of people and institutional knowledge through AIDS. Women and gender-diverse participants were increasingly active but not always equally represented in leadership.

• Principal Adaptations

  • Expanded women’s participation in Sandia Leather; created women-centered spaces; developed local and national title pathways; used newsletters, early websites, education, Pride involvement, and travel to connect communities. New specialized organizations emerged as the population became too diverse for one organization to contain.

• Adaptation Benefits

  • ​Broadened leadership, visibility, education, coalition building, and national representation. Preserved contemporary information through NEWSLEATHER and early websites. Created women-centered and trans-inclusive discussion spaces. Connected Leather with Pride, public health, consent advocacy, publishing, and nightlife.

• Issues Created or Exposed

  • Expansion produced more organizations, identities, leaders, and competing priorities. Titles could confer prestige without guaranteeing organizational capacity. Print gave way to fragile early websites. Intensive volunteerism created burnout. Organizational proliferation could be interpreted as division even when it represented healthy growth.​

• New Mexico Examples

  • ​Diva Marie as AEL founder, first woman president of Sandia Leather, publisher, WEST organizer, and early digital commentator; Leslie Anderson as bootblack, titleholder, mentor, and preservation advocate; Pat Baillie and LeatherWomen United; Cindy Bookout; Kevin Watson; Lori Ellison; Steve Wearden; New Mexico NEWSLEATHER.

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• Environment

  • D​. Specialization and Networked Plurality (Early 2000s–2010)

• Situation Inherited

  • ​Earlier clubs and venues were declining or closing. Internet communication was replacing newsletters and centralized institutions. Participants wanted organizations reflecting age, role, gender, sexuality, artistic identity, and specific forms of Leather or kink.

• Principal Adaptations

  • ​Created specialized and cross-community groups, age-based organizations, new title systems, educational conferences, artisan networks, public fetish productions, and online communication systems. Individuals increasingly moved among several communities rather than belonging to only one club.

• Adaptation Benefits

  • Produced more entry points and greater freedom to find an appropriate community. Developed younger leadership, local artisanship, pansexual education, performance bridges, and groundbreaking representation. New Mexico gained major national visibility through its titleholders.​

• Issues Created or Exposed

  • ​Choice also produced fragmentation. Organizations competed for the same small pool of volunteers, venues, and audiences. Groups became easier to create but sometimes harder to sustain. Digital records disappeared more easily than paper. Overlapping organizations could obscure responsibility and institutional succession. Rio Grande Leather ended after 2010 despite considerable titleholder success. 

• New Mexico Examples

  • ​NM:TNG and Julian Addams-Wolf; New Mexico Leather Wolves and Ruben Gallegos; New Mexico Leather League and Rio Grande Leather; Jayson DaBoi Johnson; Tyler McCormick’s IML victory; Mauro Walden-Montoya; JD Smith and GearWerks; Tony Travis and burlesque; Alibi Fetish Events; Steve Wearden’s institutional work.  Evolution Revolution brought Fetlife founder to New Mexico.

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• Environment

  • ​E. Restoration and Intentional Broadening (Approximately 2011–2019)

• Situation Inherited

  • New Mexico had a diverse but fragmented community, accumulated national experience, expanding social-media connections, and gaps left by dissolved clubs, discontinued title systems, and closed venues. Traditional Leather institutions no longer served as the single organizing center.​

• Principal Adaptations

  • Restored institutions in deliberately modified forms. Informal groups emphasized friendship over bylaws. Educational programs welcomed the Leather-curious. Corazón restored titles while integrating kink, flexible gender identities, and service. Leaders brought knowledge from national organizations and other cities back into New Mexico. Leather houses and BIPOC organizing began providing alternative structures of belonging.​

• Adaptation Benefits

  • Revitalized public Leather activity; lowered barriers to entry; connected gay Leather and pansexual kink; created education, service, fundraising, contests, Gear Nights, Pride visibility, and new leadership pathways.​

• Issues Created or Exposed

  • ​Informality made organizations approachable but increased dependence on particular personalities. Succession planning and ownership could be unclear. Events sometimes overlapped in name, schedule, or audience. Social media connected people while also encouraging organizational silos. BIPOC representation, accessibility, and cross-community cooperation remained uneven.

• New Mexico Examples

  • Albuquerque Leather Daddys and Ruben Gallegos; Leather Curious; Andy Walden-Montoya’s creation of Corazón Leather; Mauro’s national experience; Sir Magnum and Masters Academy BDSM: New Mexico; House Golden; Bear Mike and Bear Marvin’s Domum Corium Cordis; early development of an Onyx presence; Julian Wolf’s cross-community productions.​

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• Environment

  • ​F. Resilience, Infrastructure, and Stewardship (2020–present)

• Situation Inherited

  • The pandemic interrupted events, relationships, contests, venues, and organizational continuity. The community also inherited decades of fragmentation, inaccessible environments, leadership losses, social-media conflict, and rapidly disappearing history.​

• Principal Adaptations

  • ​Used virtual and hybrid gathering; established identity-centered national affiliations; formalized nonprofit and collaborative structures; made titles gender-neutral; emphasized accessibility, conflict resolution, safety, consent, public education, historical preservation, and multiple kinds of entry environments.

• Adaptation Benefits

  • Increased resilience; created visible BIPOC leadership; expanded gender, sensory, social, and economic access; preserved history; built public-facing interfaces; and enabled organizations to collaborate without merging. Community can now be entered through a munch, bar, class, play event, fair, house, nonprofit, online gathering, title system, vendor event, or identity-centered organization.​

• Issues Created or Exposed

  • ​More infrastructure brings more administration, branding, fundraising, scheduling, and volunteer demand. Numerous entry points can become disconnected subcommunities. Events and organizations may still depend disproportionately on a few organizers. Explicit consent and accountability systems can become rigid or weaponized. Preservation itself raises questions about who selects, interprets, and narrates the history.  Community burn-out from seemingly too many options.

• New Mexico Examples

  • Virtual CLAW and Onyx activity; Onyx High Desert and Bear Marvin; Jayson’s gender-neutral Corazón structure; NM-REAL; Kinktoberfest; New Mexico Leather & Kink Fair; Low Sensory Leather Social; SLaP!; Used & Abused; the New Mexico history project; Jaie Davis’s mentorship and the fragility of his personally sustained events.​
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• Environment

  • G. Immigrants to a community cause initial misunderstandings, conflicts, and eventual change.
    ​(Expanded examination of pattern 3)

• Situation Inherited

  • A condition in the community brings two cultures together.  Each are essentially immigrants into the other's culture.  Each culture has its own norms, and each believe strongly in their norms.  Some persons may not seek to understand the other norms, rather they may criticize the other norms as inappropriate, unsafe, inclusive, or violating one of their norms.

• Principal Adaptations

  • Negative: Online internet drama, people being stuck in the Drama Triangle.​  Resulting community damage and unintended community isolation.  Damage to individuals.

  • Positive: Strong leadership identifies the potential conflict in norms and takes proactive efforts in communication, understanding, education, rules, and setting situations for successful merger and mutual respect.  An alternative adaptation is intentional and respectful separation of events or spaces within an event.

• Adaptation Benefits

  • A primary positive benefit ​is lack of damage to community and individuals through conflict.  Another benefit is broader awareness and access to a wider range of alternative lifestyle activities.

• Issues Created or Exposed

  • Lack of awareness of cultural differences is exposed in these situations.​

• New Mexico Examples

  • SpectrumABQ had its swinger community invited to attend BDSM events at Purgatory Dungeon that were happening in parallel in a separate connected space.  Swinger consent culture is very different and overall more informal with respect to BDSM culture.  Information and education was presented to swingers to understand BDSM culture and adopt it while in BDSM spaces.  This was a proactive positive ​

  • The rise of rope culture in primarily heterosexual environments across the nation has created an amazing and energized population that is often uneducated about Kink and BDSM.  This community, mostly vanilla and starting to explore, adopted strong and extreme consent culture to provide safe space.  This has lead to at least two areas of conflict:  (1) Accountability in this community is often weaponized in 2020-present timeframe causing intense community conflict.  (2) When some people from rope community encounter experienced BDSM culture with consent presented in advanced ways they don't understand, they have criticized those in BDSM culture as unsafe.

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• Environment

  • H.  Specialization is both growth and fragmentation
    (Expanded examination of pattern 4)

• Situation Inherited

  • The community grows strong enough to support specialization.  This may be due to new interests, new people entering the community with different ideas.  This may be due to an underserved portion of the community obtaining a motivated leader.  It may be due to conflict or difference of opinion on how a group should move forward or the safety of a space.  For whatever reason, those with new energy may be opposed by existing organizations that are threatened or wonder, "Why don't you just join our organization rather than starting something new?"

• Principal Adaptations

  • Create a new space that serves the interest of those who are underserved.

• Adaptation Benefits

  • Potential to serve those who wanted something different.

• Issues Created or Exposed

  • Realizing that there was lack of a safe space for those interested may be a hidden first lesson.

  • Opposition may come from those who are threatened by the new activity, particularly if it is viewed as serving the same function that already exists in the community. Opposition may also come due to other reasons.

• New Mexico Examples

  • Diva Marie wrote about this in her article, "Growing Pains" concluding it was a useful thing to do.

  • The Next Generation, nationally created safe space for younger community members that were not being served by broader community.

  • The Leather Wolves fragmented leading to establishment of Albuquerque Leather Daddys and eventual dissolution of The Leather Wolves.

  • Albuquerque Social Club established the same-named event "Leather & Kink Night" that already existed at Sidewinders.

  • Kinktoberfest was position in the same month timeframe as Leather Fiesta. In fact, on the same date as Leather Fiesta in 2025.

  • Overall in New Mexico, the community is much smaller than community larger cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, etc.  Larger events or organizations need the support of a majority of the community so must serve that community well and attempt to cooperate with others.

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• Environment

  • I: Creation of "The Perfect Team"

• Situation Inherited

  • There may be a gap in the community, something missing.  It may be known, or it may be unknown - waiting for a new idea to come along.

• Principal Adaptations

  • In finding a team situation, a chosen family, we are motivated to action.  Like a "Perfect Storm" circumstance, good or bad, brings together a team of exceptional individuals that are strongly motivated to action in a way that seems boundless or unstoppable.  They may be aligned in ways to have fun and support one another in a community.  They may be aligned to overturn a negative situation.  What they have is ability and energy to make things happen.

• Adaptation Benefits

  • As humans, it's more fun to work together.  Those who make change, act in leadership, produce an event, build a venue, take the role of a titleholder, all will face challenges and attacks from others.  Working a a team provides a solid foundation of support.

• Issues Created or Exposed

  • This Perfect Team can be seen as a clique to some or a threat to others.

• New Mexico Examples

  • This pattern is very evident, likely in any community.  Diva Marie & Leslie Anderson produced NEWSLEATHER.  Sandia Leather Leadership created the most active period of Leather, a men/woman organization, main Mr./Ms. NM Leather, Mr and Ms NM Leatherfest and Fantasy titles with events throughout the year.  Motorcclemen of NM leadership created over 10 years of motorcycle runs including the Hot Air series.

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Closing

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New Mexico’s Leather and alternative communities did not evolve through the orderly replacement of one generation by another. They developed through overlapping environments, each attempting to solve problems inherited from the communities before it. Motorcycle clubs created protected fellowship. Educators and support groups made BDSM discoverable. Women, titleholders, publishers, and coalition builders broadened representation. Specialized organizations created more ways to belong. Later organizers restored declining institutions in more inclusive forms. Contemporary leaders have added accessibility, BIPOC representation, nonprofit infrastructure, virtual participation, conflict education, and historical preservation.

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None of these adaptations was complete, and none simply replaced what came before. Older forms persisted beside newer ones. Each solution generated benefits while also creating or exposing problems that the next environment would inherit. New Mexico Leather history is therefore not a story of uninterrupted progress or decline. It is a continuing process of inheritance, adaptation, expansion, fragmentation, repair, and renewed connection.​​

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Have more ideas to contribute or critique of these thoughts?  Additional information or corrections to the history content? Let us know.  Write head@houseofleatherheart.org.

Note: The history compilation on this page is courtesy of and Copyright 2024-2026, Domum Corium Cordis, House of Leather Heart. Have more ideas to contribute or critique of these thoughts?  Additional information or corrections to the history content? Let us know.  Write head@houseofleatherheart.org.