Despite lower attendance figures, Brisbane’s longest running Men’s Leather Club says the city’s 2011 Leather Pride Festival was a success.

This year’s festival may have suffered from a lack of numbers and support, but the two week long festival as a whole attracted around 400 people to its events and made the leap from the colder month of July to the much kinder and warmer month of September.

Not only was it a celebration of the leather lifestyle, but it also saw its organisers at BootCo celebrating its 21st birthday, making it Australia’s longest running men’s only leather club. Congratulations guys!

The president of BootCo Pierre Brand says having the festival in spring was certainly a success, but feels it still needs to get the support of the community behind it.

“The workshops were very popular again, the dinner was a very special BootCo birthday celebration and ‘My Favourite Things – Forum’ was hugely successful.”

“Numbers right across the board were down from the previous years attendance. BootCo is a not-for-profit organisation and money raised from the event goes back into our community. These events are run by volunteers and on an oily rag. We will have to look at the figures to see if we can have another leather festival next year. People need to realise that if they do not support these events, they simply cannot survive.”

As someone who up until this year had never ventured into the leather scene, while not all aspects of it were my thing, I did find intriguing nonetheless. In my own personal opinion, the leather scene is at the best of times quite misunderstood.

Like so many others, I hadn’t realised until this year that the ‘leather scene’ covers more then just leather. People such as Pierre and many others who work behind the scenes are more then willing to explain things in a non-confrontational way.

So my advice is that if you hear of any leather events happening between now and next year, be sure to check them out. Just like our night clubs need support, so do our many different scenes.

BootCo has regular nights downstairs at the Sportsmans Hotel, and you can find the group on Facebook, or check out their webpage at www.bootco.org.au.