(Cover photo courtesy of Ray Birch Media Solutions)
Three men huddled on the patio of Leather Stallion Saloon on Cleveland’s East Side on a cool Monday night in late October. They were reminiscing about the early days of Cleveland Leather Annual Weekend (CLAW), an event that dates back to 2001.
CLAW has drawn thousands of participants to Northeast Ohio from across the world, all dedicated to the “advancement, education, and celebration of adult leather and kink communities,” all starting with a bar night over two decades ago.
“It was just all so organic,” remembered Jim De Long, 67.
“I would just show up at the bars and ask, ‘What do you need?’” added 72-year-old David Castro. “That’s how I would end up volunteering, handing out packets at a table over here or collecting tickets at a door over there.”
James Orosz Jr. chimed in.
“My mother had just passed away and I immediately found this community of support at CLAW,” he said.
For all three, the fact that CLAW took place in their own Cleveland backyard is just as important as the people they met.
“Cleveland wasn’t the ‘mistake on the lake’ anymore,” Orosz Jr. said. “During CLAW, it was a special place with a homegrown event we had built that brought good and caring people to our city.”
That dedication to Cleveland changed abruptly on October 11 when CLAW leadership suddenly announced that the entire event was moving to Columbus in 2026 after organizers were unable to book a contract with any Cleveland-area hotels or venues.
Reactions poured in swiftly and passionately.
“In the early days, we never could have considered CLAW leaving Cleveland,” Castro said. “The C stands for Cleveland for a reason.”
“CLAW belongs in Cleveland,” Orosz Jr. cut in.
Some longtime volunteers now feel betrayed that the event is moving two hours south and point fingers at management for past oversight that hurt the event’s reputation in Cleveland.
But organizers say the real problems are changes in hotel ownerships and an increasingly anti-LGBTQ+ political climate.
The question now becomes: can an event created, developed and named in honor of Cleveland survive in a completely different Ohio “C” city?
Decades of history
To find CLAW’s roots, you have to look far earlier than the first event in 2001.
According to a timeline created by leather historian Rob Ridinger for the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago, the beginnings of organizing for leather communities in Cleveland started in 1971 with the formation of the Unicorns MC.
An advertisement for Unicorns MC in a 1972 periodical describes it as “a club for gay men in northeast Ohio who own and ride motorcycles. It welcomes inquiries of membership from like men who wish to contribute to the well being of both the club and the gay community in general.”
The following year, the Stallions were formed, just a few years after Leather Stallion Saloon opened:
“Taking as their home bar The Leather Stallion on St. Clair Ave, the western theme was continued with their October run, which they named Autumn Stampede,” Ridinger wrote. Their insignia was an outline of the state of Ohio edged in black with a black horse facing right and the word Stallions above it. The horse theme also echoes in the name of the newsletter, ‘The Stallion Stall.’”
More leather clubs followed in the 1980s, including Excalibur, Tower City Corps, North Coast Nights and The Rangers. Throughout the 1980s, many Clevelanders competed in the International Mr. Leather (IML) competition, including Marty Donley (1981), Tom Kosinsky (1982), Will Cheeks (1983) and Steve Boger (1984).
In 2001, Dennis McMahon, the first Mr. Cleveland Leather and a member of the New Age In Leather (NAIL) leather club, needed a competition tied to a nonprofit event in order to qualify for IML. So McMahon and Bob Miller, another title holder, designed the CLAW competition to raise awareness about the spread of Hepatitis B and to bring together various LGBTQ+ organizations and businesses.
“And that’s really how CLAW was born, ”said De Long. “It started as a bar night and then it evolved.”
CLAW was registered as a 501c3 in 2001. The first official CLAW event in 2002 featured a bar party, a silent auction, a trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a Sunday brunch and a “Dungeon Party.” CLAW added a host hotel in 2003, a vendor mart and kink and fetish educational programming in 2004 and a night of fetish bar parties in 2005.
“Those early days were just festive,” Castro said. “We were getting people from all over the country and even some internationally. You looked forward to that last weekend in April.”
Charitable roots
From the very start of CLAW, organizers made fundraising and nonprofit support the center of the weekend activities.
Local organizations like the LGBT Community Center of Greater Cleveland and the AIDS Task Force of Greater Cleveland were regular recipients of CLAW fundraising.
Tom Stebel began volunteering with CLAW at the 2007 event, but stepped up his involvement when he saw how much the event was giving back to the local community. He began attending the open board meetings to provide more information on the local LGBTQ+ organizations, many of which he knew well from his many years of volunteering across Cleveland.
“I helped them navigate applications for funding,” Stebel said. “They valued my input and eventually asked me to be on the board.”
Stebel points to several Cleveland initiatives that CLAW funded, including supporting the LGBTQ+ seniors program at the LGBT Center.
“[LGBT Center executive director] Phyllis [Harris] and I spoke to the Board about staffing that program, which at the time was a revolving door of volunteers,” Stebel said. “The CLAW Board signed right on and helped provide funding for the first staff position.”
As CLAW grew in reputation and popularity, the crowds kept increasing. Although CLAW does not have attendance numbers for the early years, by 2011 the event had surpassed 1,000 visitors, growing to over 2,000 by 2019.
But as the crowds continued to increase, so too did participants from outside of Ohio, drawn to the accessibility and affordability of Northeast Ohio. Although early funding was directed primarily to Cleveland or Ohio-based organizations and initiatives, the board decided in the early 2010s to shift the charitable giving to reflect the attendees.
“Fifty to 70% of the attendees were from out of state, so 50 to 70% of the funds donated went to out-of-state organizations,” Stebel said.
That included outside-of-Ohio efforts like the Rainbow Railroad, an organization which helps LGBTQ+ people escape state-sponsored violence.
“[That CLAW donation] meant one person somewhere was going to be rescued and, wow, what a great feeling,” Stebel said.
‘Something changed’
COVID took its toll on the event, but even before that, in the middle of the 2019 event at the Westin Hotel in downtown Cleveland, a pipe burst in the ceiling, raining sewage down on CLAW’s hospitality suite and vendor mart.
Much finger-pointing ensued – explanations ranged from faulty pipes to allegations that participants had tried to flush sex toys down a toilet – but what CLAW leadership does agree on: Their security deposit was never recouped.
Ken Myers, owner of The Leather Stallion and former CLAW Board member, puts that figure at $56,000.
Myers is openly critical of many of CLAW’s actions leading up to the move to Columbus, including the decision not to go after that $56,000.
“[CLAW leadership] kept saying, ‘We did nothing wrong. Everybody loves us,’” Myers said. “But if someone has $56,000 of my money and I did nothing wrong, I’m gonna find a way to get it back.”
Noel LeBoeuf, the Canada-based executive director of CLAW – a full-time, salaried position – said it was impossible to get the money back because the Westin changed ownership. Additionally, he said the new owners were not fans of hosting CLAW.
“The new ownership came in and said, “Yeah, we don’t like what you’re doing or what you stand for,’ so outta there we went,” LeBoeuf said.
Then COVID hit.
“What killed us was COVID, plain and simple,” LeBoeuf said. “We had almost 1,800 attendees that were gonna show up in 2020.”
LeBoeuf said CLAW continued to lose money during COVID as the organization had to pay for storage units and supplies that went unused in 2020. Even their Virtual CLAW events took a loss.
“Virtual CLAW cost more money than it made because now all of a sudden your Zoom has to get a hundred big accounts to meet the interest,” he said. “But we still continued to do that because the community was still coming together and they needed to have a place to meet.”
West Coast bound
When COVID restrictions were lifted in 2021, Myers said there was conversation about CLAW moving from its normal April date to November. Instead, then executive-director and CLAW co-founder Bob Miller and the Board announced that CLAW would instead be held in Los Angeles. Miller had moved to nearby Palm Springs in 2017.
Miller said that the reasons for the move to Los Angeles were entirely pandemic-related. He said that the Westin only offered CLAW a choice between Thanksgiving or Christmas to hold their 2021 event.
“We thought about how hard it would be for people to get to Cleveland during Thanksgiving weekend,” Miller said. “So we started talking about maybe we could do it somewhere else.”
Various warm-weather locales were suggested, and Miller said the board ultimately decided on Los Angeles.
“There are lots of gay leathermen in Southern California who would be able to drive to it,” Miller said. “One thing led to another and we got this tremendously favorable contract.”
Many CLAW attendees denounced the move to the West Coast.
“CLAW got crucified on social media,” Myers remembered. “I was asked to do a post to say that the Leather Stallion stood with CLAW and I said, ‘Absolutely not. I’m not going down that suicide road.’”
After that year, CLAW was held in both Cleveland and Los Angeles. That’s when Cleveland’s event started to decline, says Orosz Jr.
“There’s no way you can start something in Los Angeles and not half-ass both,” he said. “You would need two separate teams for the two separate events, and that never happened.”
Miller said the CLAW Board talked about holding both events and decided they could do it. Still, he acknowledged, it has been challenging, for different reasons.
“There has been difficulty finding a venue in Cleveland and there is difficulty establishing a new event anywhere, even Los Angeles,” Miller said. “Still, it’s a big opportunity for the organization to do more than it had been doing.”
The Renaissance and the IX Center
In 2023, CLAW was held at the Renaissance – now Hotel Cleveland – and again there the following year. In 2024, things seemed to take the turn that jeopardized the event’s Cleveland future.
According to Myers, CLAW leadership hosted a “horse market” (a group sex event) in a ballroom at the Renaissance without informing hotel staff. Myers said previously such events were held off-site, so as not to run afoul of Ohio laws governing “improper conduct” in spaces that have a liquor license.
LeBoeuf denied that’s what happened.
“Certain behavior from certain individuals did cause some issues there, but it wasn’t everybody,” LeBoeuf said. “A few bad apples can really spoil everything.”
Miller flatly dismissed any allegations of impropriety.
“CLAW are law-abiding people,” Miller said. “There’s nothing illegal about what we do.”
Stebel did not comment on the legality of what went on in the Renaissance, but did comment on accountability.
“The situation at Westin was not our fault, but the Renaissance was absolutely our fault,” Stebel said.
Regardless, the Renaissance, too, has changed ownership.
“The new management group said they didn’t want the contract,” LeBoeuf said.
LeBoeuf said CLAW then struggled to find an appropriate venue for 2025 with the square footage they needed for the event.
“The only place I could find was the IX Center (a convention and exhibit hall near the Cleveland airport) to have the event and then have a lot of small hotels around the area,” LeBoeuf said.
LeBoeuf said IX Center staff approached him at one point to complain about individuals having sex in public bathrooms.
“ I did my due diligence and went around and put signs in the bathroom stalls saying, ‘Please be respectful. Let’s not have sex in the bathroom stalls,’” he said.
LeBoeuf said CLAW attendees were also frustrated by the event: as the IX Center was open to the public, CLAW participants had to be reminded that they needed to be completely covered up and the event was not able to host some BDSM spaces they would normally host.
One blogger applauded CLAW staff for their efforts, but derided everything else about the event, from the remote location of the IX Center to the windowless environment to the sparse attendance in the skills and education classes.
“There’s no point in beating around the bush: this sucked.”
Columbus or bust
LeBoeuf said the months-long search to find a space for 2026 was one canceled meeting after another.
“We would have a meeting scheduled, show up, and the meeting would be canceled on the spot,” he said.
Destination Cleveland, the nonprofit organization that helps book conferences and travel to Cleveland, said they worked with CLAW to identify potential host properties.
“Unfortunately, as sometimes happens, none of the properties was able to accommodate the group” based on CLAW’s requirements, said Emily Lauer, vice president of PR and communications at Destination Cleveland.
LeBoeuf blames an “anti-LGBTQ+ political climate” for contributing to the lack of a new venue, whereas Myers said the situation is more of a “self-inflicted wound.”
“No hotel in Cleveland will help you because you have such a reputation that you are an out-of-control event,” he said.
At one point, there was hope that the Cleveland Masonic Auditorium would be a suitable space.
“We explained to them what we needed and how people dress at CLAW and they said, ‘We’ve had Metallica here, so we’ve seen more boobs and butts than you can imagine,’” LeBoeuf said.
But then TempleLive – the management group that operates the Masonic Auditorium – abruptly ceased operations in September, and that potential contract fell through.
At that point Myers advocated for a pause: Suspend CLAW for a year to fundraise and repair relationships with Cleveland hotels and venues. Myers was willing to step in front of these efforts to do everything he could to preserve the event and its Cleveland home.
“If everyone gets together and knows what challenges we are facing, the better chance we have of solving [the issues CLAW was experiencing] and keeping it in Cleveland,” Myers said.
LeBoeuf said taking a year off is not an option, saying that pausing CLAW would be the same as another COVID, a financial burden from which CLAW would not recover.
“To take a year off would mean just shut the doors and just not come back because we wouldn’t be able to,” he said. “It’d be impossible.”
With the future of CLAW in peril, LeBoeuf said they had no choice but to turn to other cities: sending out requests for proposals to locales like Detroit and Columbus. When the Hyatt Regency in downtown Columbus reached out, he immediately questioned if they knew what they were getting into.
“I was like, “We need to have play spaces,” he said. “They replied, ‘No, you want dungeons, we support that, and we’ve been trying to get you all to come here for three years.”
When reached for comment, Hyatt representatives redirected The Buckeye Flame’s questions about CLAW to LeBoeuf.
After the Hyatt Regency and CLAW signed the contract to host the 2026 event there, CLAW announced the move to Columbus.
When some individuals responded negatively, CLAW leadership disabled the public’s ability to comment on the post.
“Some of the people commenting negatively had never even been to CLAW,” LeBoeuf said. “So I put my email address out there. I’ve only heard from three people, and I have been able to address all of their concerns.”
The future of CLAW
CLAW is slated for April 2-6, 2026. The welcome packet for the event lists two “huge on-site dungeons,” a nighttime event transforming “10,000 square feet into a fully immersive adult playground,” and four cash bars.
As of October 21, Stebel said the hotel was 42% booked.
“ I think that’s a sign that some people are accepting this change to Columbus for this year,” he said.
The big question: will CLAW return to Cleveland?
LeBoeuf said the intent was never to leave Cleveland for good.
“We are not saying that we’re done and we’re never coming back,” he said.
Others are more skeptical and feel betrayed.
“[The move to Columbus] was the ultimate insult,” said Jim De Long. “We built it, and now we’re seeing it destroyed.”
They also highlight that the move to Columbus will cost Cleveland-area businesses and CLAW vendors large sums of money. Myers estimates that the Stallion alone stands to lose at least $25,000 without CLAW in Cleveland.
“CLAW is betraying our Cleveland community,” Myers said.
There has been talk about starting a new event in Cleveland to take the place of CLAW, but nothing has coalesced yet. Long-time attendees and volunteers hope that if something new does indeed pop up, the CLAW name would stay where they feel it belongs.
“They should give the name CLAW back to Cleveland,” James Orosz Jr. said. “The least they can do for abandoning this city is give back the name.”🔥
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