SUPER EGO "If you're snorting coke out of the hollow end of a Parliament filter, you just don't care anymore," quoth supervixen Beccalicious, standing outside Madrone Lounge, spattered by a light drizzle. But I did care — I do care. The night's a mosaic of throbbing subbacultchas, and there're far too many amateur jibber-jabberers hopped up on Bolivian marching powder out there already, waxing the floor with their tongues. Shut up and dance, say I. There's spittle dripping from your numb mustache.
Thus concludes the soapbox moment portion of our broadcast. Anybody got a smoky bump?
I was heading to Basket, the monthly bear party at the Transfer. It was its last night there before moving to Eight in SoMa. The Transfer was suddenly sold three weeks ago under curious circumstances — its future is still in doubt — but Basket's promoters, Kuma SF, had already planned a move because the place was too darn small and hot for them. (Old bear joke: "How was the bear bar?" "It was packed! There must have been 10 guys there!") My experience bore that out.
There were a lot more than 10 hirsute revelers in attendance, and I couldn't even squeeze in, let alone see in — the windows were steamier than Eros with a pipe leak. But from all the rumbling of the sidewalk to the boom of techno-lite beats, I knew it was a jammin' jamboree.
What the heck happened to the bear community? Last time I looked — and, being the desirable cub that I am, I did a lot of looking — it was all flannel shirts, hairy backs, classic rock and country tunes, and an aversion to hip-hop and house that often bordered on racism. Bear with a capital "B" has been around for more than 15 years now — once an important corrective to mainstream images of gay men in the '90s, it's still going strong. (This weekend's International Bear Rendezvous, hosted by Bears of SF, will flood the streets with yee-hawin' roly-polies.) But any movement that fronted a chubby Marlboro Man masculinity — one composed, in reality, of screaming queens elated at the prospect of unselfconsciousness — was bound to warp into parody.
"It all started out with a philosophy of inclusion," says Orme Dominique of Kuma, which is hosting a giant glamourama IBR after-party, Kavity. "But there was all this rejection of youth culture that second-generation bears found too restrictive. We wanted to dance and be really creative outside the flannel-and-boots thing. A lot of the older bears became the pigs in Animal Farm."
There's been some kicking against the C&W aesthetic for a while. Cute cub DJ Jew-C hosted a pumping bear-oriented house party at the Powerhouse in the early '00s, and hairy dreamboat DJ Jonathan's been swathing bars like 440 Castro (formerly Daddy's) with hard techno for what seems like forever. The disco-tinged, mess o' fun biweekly Planet Big at the Stud is almost two years old — and is throwing two big parties during the IBR. And then there's Sweat, the giant bear monthly event from Gus Presents and Castro Bear (happening twice during the IBR), which many new bear promoters view as the standard their parties play against.
Kuma, which started out, according to Dominique, as the "Burning Man camp of Lazy Bear Weekend," ...
It's obvious that both Markie B (gotta love a writer who won's use his full name) and Orme Dominique had an agenda with this article, which was to position the younger cubs (Kuma cubs) as the victims of being ostracized from the bear community and therefore entitled to invent a sub-community within ours. It’s actually kind of funny to hear Orme say that older bears have forced the younger cubs away by being too restrictive. (Leather men have uniforms, doll. Bears have always dressed casually and done whatever the hell they wanted. We’re like lesbians that actually go out). But what’s really interesting is that Orme claims that young bears have been rejected for their appearance in the same article that begins with a clear and unmistakable distain for older, heavier men.
Hypocite much, friend?
Sadly, people see what they look for. Markie B wanted to create a perception that there are two mutually-exclusive bear communities in San Francisco, and Orme was stupid enough to play right into the writer’s point of view. As a free, weekly piece of litterbox liner, it’s a sad fact that the Guardian can pretty much print whatever it wants to without fear of reprisal (or correct punctuation, sentence structure or even coherent editorial, for that matter). The good news is that the Guardian has the lowest readership of any of the free weeklies, and a website that generates about 0.5% of the page views of a real site like SFGate.com
Understanding how the “press” can manipulate words during and after an interview is a talent that comes with experience. Orme certainly lacks that talent. If it true that those who fail to study the past are doomed to repeat it, then I weep for the future of the bear community.
Sorry you think there's "distain" for older, heavier men in the column -- I've got nothing but love for ya, baby, even though I've certainly spent my time as a bearchaser and seen exactly what Orme says. As for manipulating things -- um, well, no. True, I have noticed that there's a giant batch of bear dance parties now and wanted to know what was up. So I talked to someone. And that's what he said. And then I printed it -- that's what writers do. I'm not saying that the older bears are awful, I'm just noting how things are changing. What's actually surprising to me is that no one's really taken a look at the change before. There's room for everyone out there in Bear Country -- there's even room for questions about the community itself.
As for "real" sites: gimme two million dollars or some of Hearst's genes and I'll happily set us up with an sfgate.com web site -- but we're not Big Media: we express an alternative point of view (btw: wow, what a lot of coverage the Chron gave IBR!).
And as for my name, it's Marke Bieschke. I come from Clubland. We use funny names there.
Kitty litterally yours, ;)m.
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