Tag Archives: bear club

LIVE

just say no

gentlemen, start your hormones

Hibearntion started today… we’re not attending…. and it feels friggin weird.

As we have done since 2000, we’ve developed the identity for this year’s event – but mid-year the club suffered a PR tragedy, and the political infighting, pissing contests and rouge ego trips have skyrocketed.

I decided to, as gracefully as possible, step back and distance ourselves from the club and try to ween them off of their reliance on us for their marketing / graphic identity support.

It’s not been easy… Saying “no”…

This year they got their theme logo, poster and application design but that’s about it. The countless hours we’ve spent in previous years coordinating and managing the visual elements of an event we’ve left to this year’s committee.

In the past our efforts have been rewarded by deep gratitude, a comp hotel suite at the host hotel and a few sponsor mentions for my company. This year it didn’t feel fair to ask for anything since I essentially pulled our support mid-year.

A genuine sense of burn-out and annoyance with a lot of the petty shit has made us INSIST that we receive ZERO compensation – not even a mention.

I think we’re just tired of clubs (and all the dynamics they imply).

Nonetheless, it feels weird not participating in what used to be our “big November thing” for the past 5 years.

Regrets aside, this year’s event committee seems to have re-molded the event to be very “sexcentric” – which, is not part of or priority set. So chances are if we “did” attend this year, we’d probably feel displaced wanting to simply mingle and meet folks from all over instead of going to one of the reported TWO dungeon sex rooms they’ve created this year. (shrug).

chrisglass will be in town for the event and we’re scheduled to have brunch on Sunday.. woohoo! it’s always great to get some “Glass-time” in… even if we have to share him with 500 other guys.

LIVE

old guys are cool

let GO of my nipple

Feeling much better – I opted to go into work today. Aside from producing snot in super-human quantities, I’m pretty much back to my old self.

We left straight from work to JJ’s for the bear club’s happy hour fundraiser and elections meeting which followed directly after.

We don’t regard ourselves as “club types”, but since we’ve been doing the design and marketing support for the club’s run since 2000 – we are considered so by proxy. The work is gratifying because the club does so much for local charities, plus it’s nice to have a client that gives me carte-blanche in developing concepts with little static.

We try to maintain a low profile and steer clear from the clashing egos, in-fighting and political bullshit which plagues most organizations. (Especially ones run by fags or women).

For every annoying member, there’s six gems. Two of our favorites is Mike and Marty, a couple of old hippies who we simply adore.

M&M have been together for 4 less years than I’ve been alive. That kind of shelf-life on relationships is always enduring. They’re both retired carpenters who have built every gay bar in St. Louis during the 70’s and 80’s. They now live two hours outside of the city on a nice plot of land where they’ve built (and continue to add onto) their dream home.

Their most notable characteristics is Marty’s long white pony tail and Mike’s rosy cheeks. I’ll risk cliche and say they’re jolly.

Something’s happened since hitting 30. For some reason I’m completely enamored with people from my parent’s generation.

I hope when we reach that age we’ll all still be together and know that kind of security and companionship that’s forged through decades. Perhaps some young 31 year old punk will befriend us and will decide to make a holographic-blog entry about us.

Of course, the punk would deny he was holo-blogging when he makes his entry.