GayLifeInAmerica.com REPORTS• Lazy Bear 2004
• IML 2004, Hmm... Wicked. Decadent. Nasty
• Invasion of the Pines, Hot and Sexy
• Rainbow Flag Celebrates its Silver Anniversary
• SEE MORE REPORTS
| Imagine a few thousand hairy men descending upon a small town, and all for the purpose of lounging around the pool, playing games, eating and hanging out in the bars or at the bonfire. A limited shopping district, no contests, no pageants. | ||||
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No attitude. Also, no phones and no internet service, either! That’s Lazy Bear, and that’s the point. It was started as a get together to have good, light hearted fun, raise money for various charities, with no attitude and no competitions. It’s origins began after another hairy man event was marred by attitude; founders Harry Lit’s and Allen Eggman’s response was to discuss starting a get together for hairy men, just fun, no attitude, no cliques. “Ah,” a friend replied, “We’re too lazy for that.” Say no more, and Lazy Bear was started. First held in 1995, Lazy Bear was, from the start, also a fundraiser for various charities in the San Francisco area. In the last two years alone, Lazy Bear has raised over $250,000 for such charities as Food for Thought – Guerneville, Positive Resource Center, The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Tweakers.org, SafeSexCity.com, Bay Positive and many others. Traditionally held in the Russian River area just north of San Francisco, this year’s event was held in the small town of Guerneville, California. With a population of just over one thousand, much of Guerneville seems to stem from a much earlier era. Unspoiled and rustic, with nary a fast food joint in the place, Guerneville has a handful of restaurants, several bars, two gas stations, and one traffic light. It has shops typical of an off beat, gay friendly town: several antique shops, a terrific bookstore, a gay clothing store, a piercing salon, and several art stores. Not a McMansion in sight, but plenty of charming bungalows built into the hillsides and camouflaged with foliage of all types. The restaurants were last renovated when Nixon was President, and that’s not a bad thing as it brings back waves of nostalgia. Booth dividers that slide down so you can talk to the people at the next table, the old milkshake machines (you remember, industrial strength, green, and they made multiple shakes at a time, rather than some premade, chemical infused solution being pumped out of a nozzle), wood paneling and murals on the wall. And not a single restaurant served petite portions…..they feed everyone like you’re a lumberjack. Count on gaining weight there, but at an event called Lazy Bear no one really cares. Many of the residents looked like 1960s or 70s hippies (though their hair might be streaked with grey), but then they’d hope into their Volvos or Mercedes and drive away. Not everyone got burned with the dot.com crash, it seems. The town is extremely liberal, and virulently anti-Bush. Everywhere you looked, bumper stickers and tee shirts abounded with anti-Bush messages. My favorite – which I bought at a cute little store called Hemp and Chocolate – has four words, and two pictures. “Good Bush” and “Bad Bush”, with pictures of a cannabis bush and George W. Figure it out. My own form of individual protest, I can’t wait to walk around NYC during the Republican Convention. Our time at Lazy Bear was totally different from our experience at IML, which was held in a luxury hotel able to house thousands of men. At IML, you didn’t have to leave the hotel, so we seldom did, and saw little of Chicago. There’s no large hotel in Guerneville, but a handful of smaller ones, each able to host anywhere from twenty five men to several hundred. We made our reservations late, but were able to get a room at a very nice bed and breakfast only half a mile from town. It was a bit removed from the various party locations, but we discovered that was an advantage. We could be in the thick of things, but when we needed some peace and quiet, we had that, too. The events were all held at different locations, all within walking distance, so you had no choice but to go out and experience the town. None of the hotels had phones in the room, and cell phone service was practically non-existent. At first we thought it would be impossible to connect with our friends, but it was really much easier than we thought. A half hour walk, and you could stroll through town, pass the hotels where the events were being held, and meander by the local restaurants. By default, you were bound to run into friends, and we did: some men we knew already, some from IML, and, of course, some we met in Guerneville. So, without a contest, what does one do at Lazy Bear? Well, whatever one wants, actually. We always started ours with coffee and breakfast by the pool. As everyone else at our hotel was there for Lazy Bear, we always had someone to talk to and plenty of things to talk about. Once the sun rose over the redwood trees, you could count on the temperature rising from the sixties quickly into the eighties or nineties. You might work up a sweat, then have to take a quick swim before heading into town for lunch. After lunch, you had your choice. The parties were rated mild to wild, depending on whether alcohol was served and if nudity was allowed. Most of the activity was at Fife’s, which also had a restaurant and bar, but didn’t allow nudity. Cabins line the area around the pool, and you could camp out in a shady, grassy area if you wanted to get out of the sun (or if you got there to late to grab a chair by the pool…..). You could always count on at least a few hundred men there, covering the area around the pool, lounging in the pool, and hanging out in the restaurant overlooking the pool area. A little more mellow was the Woods, drawing fewer men, which served food and soda, but as they didn’t serve alcohol you could go nude, so most did. Had to use lots of sunblock to retain the tan line at that one. The pool at the Woods was also full of beach balls, which frequently became airborne, and also several large inflatable penises, which seem to have, er, inspired some of the men, shall we say. That’s what they mean by wild. Parties were also held at a third hotel, the Triple R, but we didn’t spend a lot of time there. We did pay the bar a brief visit one night, as they were showing the final episode of Queer As Folk. This crowd took the show seriously….you could have heard a pin drop. We said hello to a few friends, and quietly made our way out of there to continue the revelry in town, where a little noise wouldn’t draw objections. One of the more memorable afternoons was at Fife’s, who had a really good band one afternoon. Pepper Spray was comprised primarily of men in drag, with their own set of muscle boy dancers, they were very reminiscent of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and provided a terrific afternoon of music and entertainment. Even more memorable from the afternoon, however, was the heterosexual couple hanging out by the pool that afternoon. Of a certain age, they calmly sat by the pool, quietly reading, totally unfazed by the sea of scantily clad men around them. Had they gotten lost? Taken a wrong turn at Des Moines, and somehow ended up at Fife’s by mistake? No, it turned out that their son was one of the singers in Pepper Spray, and they had come to see him perform. Got to love parents like that….we need more of them. Remember Waylon Flowers and Madame, the puppet with a tongue that could cut steel? She’s been retired since Waylon died, but made a triumphant comeback one night during Lazy Bear. We didn’t see it, but heard of it the next day. Some of the men present knew Waylon personally, and some of those big, tough hairy men were not only laughing but leaking around the eyes during the show. After an afternoon of hanging with the bears at the pool, we usually went back to our hotel for a little peace and quiet, and shifted between the pool and the hot tub. Dinner in town, and then you had your choice of nighttime activities. The two bars are the Russian River Eagle (count on it being dark and crowded), and Rainbow Cattle Company. We spent more time at RCC, as it was a little less crowded….and they served Guinness, which is always a plus. The RCC also had benches out on the sidewalk, so that was a great place to hang out, smoke, and bear watch. There were four dance parties during the week: Disco Bears, Stink, Sweat, and Foam. We only made it to Sweat, which was appropriately named. We arrived around ten, and within half an hour the place was packed with hot, shirtless, sweaty men. By eleven thirty you couldn’t really dance, just gyrate in place, and hope not to bump into too many men, and it was so hot it really felt like a sauna. Great fun, but claustrophobia started to set in, and we headed back to the hot tub and the pool. After the bars and the parties, you could also go to the nightly bonfire at Fife’s. Held back in a more private area, they had their own bar and dance floor, so you could drink, dance, or just hang out and talk. Once the sun went down, it really did get chilly, so seats around the fire were at a premium. If you tired of the fire and the dance floor, you could always wander off into the woods for a little entertainment. And, yes, I mean entertainment in the woods just like we have between the Grove and the Pines. Since Lazy Bear has charitable overtones, there were of course the typical methods of raising funds. Buying “Beartags” got you admission to all the events, discounts at many of the local stores, and further discounts on drinks at some of the events. Donated goods were auctioned off, and you could buy tickets to take a try at a piñata, or to dunk a bear in a tank. And, despite the name of the event, it’s not just all big, hairy men, though they were there in abundance, and there was more hair than you’ve ever seen. Beards, goatees, mustaches. Chest hair. Leg hair. Back hair...and plenty of it. But it wasn’t all hairy men; there were plenty of non-bear types (just like us), plenty of smooth chested men, plenty of men you might refer to, in an unkind moment, as “twinks.” In addition to just “regular” guys, bears, and musclebears, some of our favorite hairy men of film were there: Jack Radcliffe, Buster, and Titpig. If you want to see more pics of men having fun, go to shutterbear.com, bearsgonewild.com, or noelbear.com. WOOF!! It wasn’t all hairy men, sweat, and fun, though. We managed a few side trips to see some of northern California. The redwood trees are everywhere in Guerneville, but even so, an old growth redwood forest was right down the road. Fifteen minutes in the car, and we were there. No smoking in the forest, of course (and you could see the vestiges of fire damage in many places), and it was eerily quiet, the silence only broken by the random calls of the many ravens in the woods. The size of the trees was truly immense – the hollow trunks seemed as though they would easily accommodate a NYC studio apartment – and they just went on, and on, and on. We loved the fresh air, the scent of the redwoods, but soon felt the pull of civilization (and the need for a cigarette), and headed back to the car, and town. Three city boys, two from Manhattan and one from Toronto, and we could only handle so much of nature. Main Street was calling, and we went a running. The Pacific Ocean was also close by, so another road trip was in order. There was a colony of seals out there, or so we’d heard, and we were determined to go find them. It was an amazing half hours drive to the ocean. I’m used to the Eastern seaboard, which seems to have houses or apartments overlooking the ocean, from the Florida Keys all the way to Provincetown, but in northern California, there are cowfields bordering the ocean. Yes, and that’s plural…..cows grazing on land that in the overdeveloped east would be prime land for a condo or a gated community. It seemed amazingly unchanged since Hitchcock filmed The Birds in the area many, many years ago. You can’t hurry on these roads, as they twist and wind around the many hills, sometimes with a steep drop on the right side of the road, and no guardrail to keep you on the straight and narrow. It’s worth the tension from the drive, however, as when you get to the ocean, it totally takes your breath away. The northern Pacific is as unlike the Atlantic as you can imagine, with it’s gently sloping lands down to a nice sandy beach. The northern Pacific coast is raw, with towering cliffs that drop down to the sea. There’s no gentle rolling surf, either, as the many signs warn you. Due to the configuration of the sea floor, they have something meaner than an undertow…they have “sleeper waves”, which literally sneak up upon unsuspecting bathers, and drag them back to the ocean. As one sign warned ominously, “Few survive.” We decided to stay away from the water, and kept walking, looking for the seals. We heard some strange sounds in the distance, was certain it came from the ever elusive seals, and kept heading that way, off towards an inlet of sorts. They were strange sounds, of course, for two city boys…..cows mooing. Not a seal to be found, so we headed back to the car to begin the trek back to Main Street once again. Lazy Bear was over way, way, too soon. We sadly said goodbyes to some friends the night before we left, knowing we wouldn’t see them in the morning. Some we saw off to the bus stop, only to help them hitch a ride back to San Francisco instead (noting the license plate number, and taking a last minute pic for the “Missing, Last Seen” poster, and everyone else we saw for a final time in the morning. Packed the car, picked up one friend for a lift to the airport, and we were off. Hot when we left, the temperature dropped noticeably when we neared San Francisco, and the Bay Bridge was totally enshrouded in fog. One last goodbye, and we had all gone our separate ways, hopefully to meet again next year, if not before. |
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