Phil James: Look at all these people
Phil James: reading.
Phil James: hey, Nick?
Phil James: A
Phil James: a I less
Phil James: hey, Mel!
Mel Baker: Hey!
Phil James: Hey, Jose.
Phil James: start note to to recording. Okay, great
Phil James: and get my various computers to
Phil James: cooperate.
Phil James: Nick, are you cooking for us this morning. It's morning here.
Phil James: Yes, you're muted. There we go.
Nick: Yeah, so turned it on. Then there's probably cooking noise back where I bake my dinner.
Phil James: What are you making.
Nick: I'm just doing like spaghetti with like garlic.
Phil James: Alright! Let me get the notes. File started. Oh, let me get the agenda file started.
Phil James: Yeah.
Phil James: Hey? Les.
Les Wright: I
Les Wright: I got a tiny screen. Don't know why.
Phil James: Less is in his aboura, bore aboura of
Phil James: aurora.
Mel Baker: Aurora borealis.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Phil James: Okay, I will someday have a list of the
Phil James: agenda items.
Phil James: Looks like I get it from my phone.
Les Wright: Oh!
Phil James: Let's see, Nick, you're from the farthest reaches.
Phil James: Do you have anything particular that you need to cover? Or do you have any time? Constraints.
Nick: No, I mean not not as long as we're wrapped up in like 45 min. I'm sure we won't be here that long.
Phil James: Okay.
Phil James: and there's Jose, hey, Jose, you're on mute but welcome.
Les Wright: No, thank you.
Phil James: Close personal friend of mine.
Phil James: Where's my list?
Phil James: Oh, okay. So let's go to bear History project. And then the.
Mel Baker: So you're checking your list. See who's naughty and nice.
Phil James: I'm checking the agenda because I read it so long ago. Oh, and it's tiny. Okay,
Phil James: okay,
Phil James: welcome, folks. I was really hoping that Alejandra would be here.
Phil James: So
Phil James: We need to rope him in to.
Phil James: He's the one that showed up for the July meeting, and no one else did so. I'm hoping we didn't scare him away. But I want to talk to him about
Phil James: participation and fundraising because he was
Phil James: keen on
Phil James: getting some ideas going. I think so, are you? Nick? Is
Phil James: some you're you're on kind of the big money front of what? Where can we get
Phil James: some big money
Phil James: right? You're you're pursuing some grants.
Nick: Yeah, I'll get 2 there again. As I've said before, my radar only kind of extends to the Uk. And to a degree, Europe. But Brexit's been fucked up for us. So yeah, most of my kind of radars from the Uk. But I've got 2 in the pipeline at the moment. One of them opens for submissions in September. The other one, if it's the same as last year.
Nick: opens for submission for October, and it will be broadly the same project, but it'll be tweaked slightly for what the requirements are.
Nick: This is specifically about getting Les and I funding to do stuff with the archives basically to do some kind of cataloging of it. And potentially we can work with.
Nick: and the the Leather museum and archive to do something there as well. But that's that's dependent on how much funding we might get.
Phil James: Great. Yeah, les, and I. And maybe I've mentioned in meetings.
Phil James: I've been floating the idea that at next year's international, Mr. Leather end of May
Phil James: might be a good time for the launch kind of the
Phil James: the collaboration and have a table at Iml.
Phil James: and you know maybe less can come to Iml. I'm thinking of going to Iml
Phil James: and either host something at the Museum.
Phil James: or something at International, Mr. Leather, or both. So I would be looking for.
Phil James: you know, trying to get some money for less to get there, kind of as a guest of the history project and or other leather archives, or
Phil James: some such.
Phil James: you know. Book signing blah, blah, etc. So
Phil James: you you looking for money specifically for archiving leather, archive museum
Phil James: and then maybe some kind of kickoff
Phil James: would be great. Alejandro is talking about just kind of, you know, locally San Francisco, the Eagle. I guess you know, Alejandro, our new
Phil James: what's his title?
Phil James: Finance director.
Phil James: who.
Les Wright: See ya.
Phil James: So
Phil James: financial bears what I call him, but whatever his title is, he has some ins with the San Francisco Eagle folks. So he was looking for. When are there one or more slots for the organization to host beer bus at the Eagle, which can bring in a couple of $1,000 here or there.
Phil James: So that's good on the financial front. We have a Gofundme account.
Phil James: Or I guess we we've always had an account. But we now have a fundraiser running. We just haven't really
Phil James: publicize it to anybody. We had a fundraiser running we just had one of our
Phil James: Central Committee members donated some money to it, and that was it.
Phil James: But we are racking up some expenses in terms of
Phil James: the wiki.
Les Wright: Which I'll.
Phil James: Close down as soon as we get the website marks together the website, the descript
Phil James: etc, etc. So we've got some expenses. We need to.
Les Wright: Well done!
Phil James: Try to start getting money to recoup.
Phil James: Okay, so, Nick.
Phil James: I'm gonna put Nick equals sugar, daddy.
Phil James: that's all I'm gonna put in my notes, but we've got the recording.
Les Wright: Okay. Okay.
Mel Baker: Did you put the the gofund make on face on our Facebook main page?
Phil James: I'll look I started putting it on like it's on our link page. It has its own page in the website.
Phil James: I don't think I put it back into the wiki, but
Phil James: on the homepage of the website. There's a link at the top for Gofundme. I'll check on the fund on the Facebook page, too. Yeah.
Nick: Well, have we got any kind of
Nick: So this is my fault for not having checked it. But do we have kind of details in the go about like, what? What, exactly is it that we're raising money to do.
Phil James: Well, that was going to be. My next
Phil James: point is.
Phil James: I did a very cursory, our 1st fundraiser. We just said we're looking for 2023 to cover 2023 expenses.
Phil James: This time I was a little bit more.
Les Wright: One man.
Phil James: Descriptive
Les Wright: And it asked.
Phil James: People to go. Look at that. I'll post
Phil James: the
Phil James: I'll repost
Phil James: the I'll I'll give, I'll kill 2 birds with one stone. I'll repost the Gofundme to our Facebook page and invite people to go go in and look at it. It's not hugely descriptive, but it's got some info in it.
Phil James: About what we're trying to do, or just really what cost. We're trying to cover
Phil James: and you know it. It's not, you know. It wasn't written by a marketing person. But I put together some notes when I when I did put together.
Phil James: Okay, so
Phil James: we want some.
Phil James: we want some
Phil James: participation there, that'd be great.
Phil James: Let me pull up the full agenda. The website.
Phil James: We've made some good progress on that
Phil James: We've got lots of pages on the website. If you look at.
Les Wright: Agenda that's posted. There's a list of.
Phil James: All the pages.
Les Wright: Obviously we have a whole.
Phil James: Page up.
Phil James: There's now a bibliography page.
Phil James: there's a
Phil James: the In Memoriam page, is there?
Phil James: Our link page outward to other organizations, is there?
Phil James: So there's a lot on the
Phil James: on the website. So if people haven't been there, I invite you to go.
Phil James: Look at that.
Phil James: Here's a full agenda.
Phil James: I kind of lifted
Phil James: and links to all the main
Phil James: pages on our website.
Phil James: It doesn't have a traditional.
Phil James: I'm used to web building software that makes you the structure of the navigation based on the structure of the website.
Phil James: I just put links to all the pages where
Phil James: you know, as I built new pages, I put links there
Phil James: and added navigation to either the home page or to every page. So
Phil James: it's a little bit
Phil James: janky, but
Phil James: it's good enough for now.
Phil James: If somebody else either is a wordpress guru, or wants to learn some more wordpress stuff. I can show people some more of how it works.
Phil James: So I listed all the pages that we've done.
Phil James: My plan is, the wiki is also costing us
Phil James: $18 a month.
Phil James: My plan is to sunset the wiki as soon as we get really everything over on the website.
Phil James: so if people can think of places where we might have listed the wiki as our official home
Phil James: and we need to kind of make sure to
Phil James: detour people to the website.
Phil James: Let me know.
Phil James: Okay, that wasn't working. Okay, so website and Wiki
Phil James: Oh, so just in general.
Phil James: Jose, you're like our 3rd person who's ever come to our meetings, who's not either on the board or part of the Central Committee.
Phil James: and I'm going to take, as Les would say. I'll take the toaster. I will claim that you're here because I invited you so glad you could make it. I know you tend to be really busy. You've got multiple jobs.
Phil James: I know you're also an artist. So if you've got ideas of what we should be doing
Phil James: to reach out as an artist.
Phil James: you know. Bring those ideas to
Phil James: the project. I don't know.
Phil James: you know I won't. I won't put you on the spot, but I know your I know your art, and I know you're an artist. So if you've got creative ideas, a lot of us are wonky 9 to 5 people. So if you've got artistic ideas.
Phil James: you know, bring them forward.
Jose Iniguez: Thank you. Phil.
Phil James: Let's see. Gofundme. Oh, okay. So the home of the Gofundme page. It's on our our website. So it's bearhistershire.org slash, go Dash Fund. Dash me! That's the name of that page.
Phil James: For people who don't know. I also have a page called Hall of Fame.
Phil James: Basically, that was like people who are not either on the Board or
Phil James: on the Central Committee, which is how we used to be organized.
Phil James: Like everybody else. I wanted to put somewhere, or Central Committee and people other than the Board. So you find a page called Hall of Fame, that people like Clark, who are important to the group, the organization, but they're neither on the Board nor on the Central Committee. Nor do we really have committees yet. And and people like Nick right? Nick is not officially a committee head.
Phil James: so
Phil James: you'll find a page called Hall of Fame.
Phil James: I promoted. There's a page for the logo itself.
Phil James: And that's got links to several places. Kind of honoring Gary, who created our logo. And and just when people say What the hell like, what?
Phil James: Why are there 7 stars, or whatever there are? Oh.
Phil James: we have a merchandise store now. So
Phil James: I mean, I'm
Mel Baker: How is that working? By the way.
Phil James: Well, I bought 2 things, so here's the mug I bought. It was
Phil James: I think they're the mugs are cheap. They're like $10, and it came really quickly. It came like in
Phil James: 5 days.
Phil James: and I bought a t-shirt
Phil James: yay.
Mel Baker: Yay!
Phil James: And this is, by the way, this is an extra large. I weigh 210 pounds American.
Phil James: so that there it was. It's big enough for me as an extra large, but that's the
Phil James: the T-shirt and also while we're talking about the
Phil James: the
Phil James: content. So the merchandise
Phil James: you pick. This is cafe press.
Phil James: and we are cafepress.com slash
Phil James: shop, slash BHPI
Phil James: so
Phil James: And I put links to that all, all bunch of places. So you pick what products you want, you upload the logo, which I did, and then
Phil James: you say how much you want for markup. You know, those are going to cost you X dollars. And then
Phil James: what markup do you want? So I left everything at a 20% markup.
Phil James: So the T-shirt was, I think.
Phil James: $22 total.
Phil James: The mug, I think, was $10 total, something like that.
Phil James: And so I was thinking, if we wanted to get fancy, we would say, I don't know that anyone's going to ever buy anything, but if they do, we could say, Oh, if you're a member.
Phil James: you know. Here's a discount code. If you're a member, and we cut that by a few percent or something
Phil James: I don't know, or or we just use it as a fundraiser, either more or less money. But
Phil James: the prices were, you know, the old store that Gary had put together those prices were more reasonable because he was basically just passing on the cost of what it cost to produce.
Phil James: I thought we should have a little bit of markup, and then, of course, shipping is just outrageously expensive.
Phil James: no matter what you do. So
Phil James: do people think we should
Phil James: try to shave the price more? We should
Phil James: jack the price and make some money, or just, we'll get money elsewhere.
Les Wright: yeah, I would put in a a little bit higher percentage
Les Wright: and put on on the page that
Les Wright: people are contributing to
Les Wright: to us.
Phil James: Okay, like another 5%.
Les Wright: Something like that. Yeah.
Phil James: Okay.
Phil James: I'll make that change.
Mel Baker: And I think for one of the fundraising goals we should have is to get a bunch of these at cost for the Iml event
Mel Baker: and sell. If we're going to have a table.
Mel Baker: we we don't want to have stuff to sell, stuff to show off, and people will be
Mel Baker: if you're in the
Mel Baker: tabling space at Iml. People are there to buy stuff.
Mel Baker: So that's a way to do it. And that's how we jump. Started bears of San Francisco is we we bought.
Mel Baker: We coughed up enough money and made a bunch of Fran Frisch design T-shirts, and we sold all of them at our one of our 1st beer busts.
Mel Baker: Yeah, not at the Eagle, the other hole in the wall.
Mel Baker: So the same owner, the same same owners now of loan of
Mel Baker: the eagle. Yeah, yeah.
Phil James: Well, so that's another thing we need to fund. Then.
Jose Iniguez: I have a question. Yeah, are the prices like 1049 for the mug, or
Jose Iniguez: what's what's the deal with? With the sense.
Jose Iniguez: Why is it? 1049,
Jose Iniguez: as opposed to something.
Phil James: Percentage above what the
Phil James: it's a, it's a flat 20% above what cafe press is charging
Phil James: us to create them.
Phil James: So it just comes out to whatever it is.
Phil James: Yeah, are you thinking it should be better? It would look better if it were a rounded number.
Jose Iniguez: Yeah, I think so.
Phil James: Make it a little.
Jose Iniguez: And and I'm looking at the items. And they, I think that they could go even higher for sure.
Jose Iniguez: like, okay, way higher.
Phil James: One of the one of Gary's. So Gary designed the logo created our original Facebook page created the original store.
Phil James: and his thought was.
Phil James: you know. Sure there are.
Phil James: you know, gorgeous 2 income muscle bears who can pay a hundred dollars for a T-shirt. But this should be.
Phil James: and the project should be for everybody. So I kind of like the idea of splitting it down the middle, which is
Phil James: let's bring in a little bit money more money for the organization because we really need it.
Phil James: I'm spending like
Phil James: 200 $5,300 a month at the moment. But let's bring in some money to cover some of those expenses.
Phil James: But
Phil James: you know
Phil James: less talks about. It's not every bear who can afford to.
Phil James: you know. Go to these big circuit parties, etc. So
Jose Iniguez: Yeah, that makes sense. I I also think that there's 3 items that can possibly be go high a little higher, just because, as I look at artists that sell in different locations when they do craft craft fairs or
Jose Iniguez: yeah, I can see the Totes being higher, the mugs being higher, and then definitely, the ball caps
Jose Iniguez: those 3 things I feel like.
Phil James: Yeah, les. And I talked about the Totes because Les was looking for a gym bag. Less did you get a gym bag through cafe press? Or was it somewhere else.
Les Wright: Well, I didn't get one. I ordered it through the
Phil James: Store. Oh, okay.
Les Wright: Alright!
Phil James: Because the tote is all I saw. I didn't see. I they don't have a gym bag that I could saw I could see. So
Phil James: okay.
Mel Baker: I'm curious about the art. What you think of the artwork.
Phil James: Logo.
Jose Iniguez: That's nice.
Phil James: The rendering of it, or the actual logo.
Mel Baker: Just the design, and everything is another artist.
Jose Iniguez: Is this for me?
Mel Baker: Yes. Yeah.
Jose Iniguez: I actually really like it. I like the colors. I think it's really balanced. I I when I saw it, I was like, Whoa, it's a really, actually a nice logo. When Bill invited me I was looking at it, and I was like, Oh, that's a pretty.
Mel Baker: Okay.
Jose Iniguez: Yeah. So I I really appreciate it for sure.
Jose Iniguez: I have not read into the history of that. I'm and that's
Jose Iniguez: I actually opened a window of that. So I'm kind of now, curious of what everything means on that. So.
Jose Iniguez: and I think.
Phil James: That it's.
Jose Iniguez: Really nice.
Phil James: We Gary kind of presented to us, you know. Done. And I was like.
Phil James: you know, I'm a flag person like, what the hell were you like.
Mel Baker: Yeah, what do those different things mean? Yeah.
Phil James: So we made him. In fact, we went through like 5 or 6
Phil James: iterations of of the description of what each thing means, and whether we use the term native, American, or on and on and on and on. So
Phil James: I'm not saying we can't
Phil James: alter it or change it or criticize it. But a lot of a lot of thought went into.
Phil James: you know. A lot of Gary's brain went into what do we do, and what are the colors mean and
Phil James: if I think of it as distinctive.
Phil James: And so I'm I'm glad you're kind of okay with that. Jose.
Les Wright: I just wanted to to talk. Mention about T-shirt prices. Yeah, I'm seeing them everywhere now. They're being sold starting at $30,
Les Wright: and I know I don't know. The last time I was in London, maybe 8 years ago, I paid $50 for Harley Davidson T-shirt.
Phil James: Yeah.
Les Wright: Said London on it.
Phil James: Jose. What was the 3rd thing is the ball cap, the T-shirt, and what else.
Jose Iniguez: Hold on just a second. Let me go back to that page. I was thinking. The the mugs, the canvas bags, and then the ball caps for sure. And I think that yeah, for sure, the T-shirts definitely need to go higher.
Jose Iniguez: The sweater itself. I think that
Jose Iniguez: 50 would be probably good, maybe a little bit higher. 55. But yeah.
Phil James: The hoodie.
Jose Iniguez: Yeah.
Phil James: Okay, well, let me go back and add sort of 5% to everything.
Phil James: and then see what those prices come out as. And then I'll see about
Phil James: adjusting the sense. So it's an even number. Then, you, you know. Then there's the shipping and the tax based on where you are. So it's going to be a weird number, anyway. But I just started with.
Phil James: here's what they're charging us. Look at, you know. Then they suggest 20%. So I did that. So
Phil James: great thanks, Jose, for those.
Phil James: okay. And if I were me, where would I put the okay, here's the agenda. Okay? So just kind of other
Phil James: our the rest of our presence.
Phil James: Oh, just again call for participation. Obviously.
Phil James: I'm talking to people who came to the meeting. So thank you.
Phil James: We're just looking for more people to get
Phil James: involved. We've got lots of things that we want to do.
Phil James: Les and I have been doing most of the interviewing.
Phil James: I'll talk about that a little bit in a minute, but we're kind. We're trying to set that up so that other people can do it.
Phil James: We're trying to get our D script
Phil James: account going where we could have better audio recording.
Phil James: Les has kind of a pretty good script
Phil James: of what we ask people.
Phil James: we've we've done about 25 interviews. We have a list of about 70 people total. We want to talk to that we know of so far.
Phil James: kind of every person or 2
Phil James: begat another person or 2 we want to talk to.
Phil James: So those are interesting. But if other people. I know Nick and Mel both. Did. You did a couple of the early interviews, I think. Right.
Phil James: You did.
Phil James: The hunky
Phil James: artist there.
Mel Baker: Yeah.
Mel Baker: but you should have the audio for that, right?
Phil James: Yeah, yeah, we've got that. We've got the audio, the and video, right? He did. Video and web.
Phil James: Those are great. At the moment.
Phil James: I've been using my zoom account.
Phil James: and Mel, you and I are going to practice on the descript side
Phil James: at some point.
Phil James: and we'd get better audio out of that, and then we have 3 descript
Phil James: seats at the moment. So Mel Clark and I have descript seats.
Phil James: so we I hope we can just kind of shuffle those around because those are $20
Phil James: a seat a month, I think something like that. So hopefully, those 3 will cover us.
Phil James: so call for participation. We also hopefully, we'll have events we want to go to.
Phil James: We've got a lot of stuff in place, you know. We've got a logo. We've got merchandise. We now have a Youtube channel, there's nothing on it. But I created a Youtube channel.
Phil James: So we can put that's where we can host our podcast when we're done
Phil James: and or our what we call the stories which is
Phil James: kind of shortened versions of the interviews.
Phil James: So I think of and Mel. And I've talked about
Phil James: the podcast would be, we're going to have 20 people talk about what it's like coming out. And we'll have 10 people talk about
Phil James: their religious upbringing or the military. We'll just kind of cut the other way of let's talk to.
Phil James: Let's talk to meaning let's mine the interviews for 10 people who all talk about the same thing and make that into a podcast.
Mel Baker: Yeah. And and we're gonna let's, we'll make this really narrative and interesting. I don't. It's not gonna be just. It'll be, I'm thinking, a narrative, and it may not be that cut and dried may flow back and forth, but those may be, there may be themes, and there may be history. You can approach it in a lot of different ways.
Phil James: Sure, so.
Mel Baker: But I want to see what we have. And then I'm I'm looking for additional material like on Youtube and things that has like bare events.
Mel Baker: stuff like that.
Mel Baker: And if we can, we can also look at old articles, and we can do quotes from old articles about how the bear. Whole Bear thing was received.
Mel Baker: Lot of people say, the bear thing started at the 87 march on Washington. Actually, there was a lot of
Mel Baker: the 87 or 91 marches that there were a lot of bears that 1st gathered. So, stuff like that. Yeah.
Phil James: And some of the people that Les and I have been interviewing lately. Talk a lot about.
Phil James: you know. Oh, I was there when the original Bear flag was proposed. And here's how that went down, you know. But it's interesting to hear some of these details.
Phil James: but Mel, that's all
Phil James: grandiose and lovely.
Phil James: But we want to start getting these out there.
Mel Baker: No, I let me let me say that that's separate from the stories. The stories are separate things. Yes, no.
Phil James: One thing I'm planning on doing is because we have such a list of people we've interviewed, and some of them are, you know, 2 years old now
Phil James: I just want to start lifting
Phil James: the people we've interviewed as kind of coming, coming soon. Coming stories. I know, Mel, you kind of
Phil James: lean the other way, which is.
Phil James: you know.
Phil James: we want people to
Phil James: What do you call it?
Phil James: we want people to
Phil James: binge right? We want them to be able to sit down. And oh, there's 10 done
Phil James: like, well, I want to start listing like the ones that are on their way. So
Phil James: I'm working on that
Phil James: so we have a Youtube channel. We have an Instagram which has very little on it. I just don't. I don't bother putting much stuff there. So that's bear History Project is the Instagram Channel
Phil James: Youtube. I think it has the initials.
Phil James: But I didn't bother listing it here because there's no content on it.
Phil James: We have the merchandise store.
Phil James: We talked about
Phil James: stories and podcasts.
Phil James: we have a gofundme.
Phil James: we just in this meeting talked about
Phil James: using this merchandise for
Phil James: fundraising. So I will up those prices.
Phil James: and I'll just quietly do that
Phil James: before more people buy a lot of stuff. I just don't. I don't think a lot of stuff is happening.
Phil James: Okay,
Phil James: Before we talk about elections which les asked me to put on the agenda.
Phil James: Nick, I think of you as Mr. International
Phil James: Bear. Oh, by the way, if people haven't, maybe I mentioned this in the Central Committee
Phil James: Channel which everybody except Jose is on what what an odd
Phil James: theme has has come forward, which is! We have a number of bears who have been recorded
Phil James: dancing in high heels. I was like, who thought that was going to be a theme. We have at least 3 people we've interviewed. Who
Phil James: have. They have video, and I've begged them for video. Now we have Mr.
Phil James: Is it Mr. Norway? No, he's not in Mr. Netherlands bear right? He was one of them last.
Les Wright: Okay.
Phil James: Right big black guy, and he did. When he ascended to the throne. His talent competition was dancing in
Phil James: high heels.
Phil James: and then 2 other people. One is a guy who goes by the name
Phil James: spicy tutu, boy, and then a 3rd person. I don't remember who it was, but I'm now, I'm going to try to line these 3 people up. That is a, podcast that is a story of, you know, we've got the diversity. We can show it at some point. So
Phil James: maybe that's not 1st one out of the gate. But
Phil James: it's just amazing, the diversity of our community. So that's great. Okay.
Les Wright: Was the 3rd one, or maybe the 4th would be Beltron, Bogo bear. Yeah, and.
Phil James: Yes.
Phil James: Beltran, who we talked to last week.
Phil James: He's in
Phil James: Portugal.
Les Wright: He's
Les Wright: from Portugal, but he's living. No, no, he's from Argentina, and he's living in Madrid.
Phil James: Yeah, yeah. He's a. He's a go go dancer.
Les Wright: Denise is the guy Denise Sanchez is from Portugal. Yeah.
Phil James: Oh, alright! So beltran is a go go, dancer and
Phil James: social media content provider. Let's call him that.
Phil James: Or if they say on Tiktok. He's an accountant. He's an accountant.
Phil James: Is what he does for a living. So he's got. I, I said, please send us some video he's like, oh, sure! So
Phil James: that's on its way, too. So
Phil James: again, we could make these calls out to like, Hey, community, you know, we've got a number of people who have hidden talent. Let's make them unhidden. What do you have to send us? So that's something we can call for.
Phil James: Okay, Nick, anything. I always put you on the spot, Nick, anything on the international front that you want to talk about.
Nick: Not in particular. But I I know you guys have been talk. Can you hear me? Okay, the noise is fucking outside.
Nick: That's why.
Phil James: Choked to death on your spaghetti.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Nick: No, just swallow the whole Chili.
Nick: No.
Nick: I was mistake. So I know you guys have been talking about sorry one second.
Phil James: This would be really awkward to lose him
Phil James: like if I have to call an ambulance to figure out where he is on live video
Phil James: really awkward.
Phil James: because I will come there and.
Nick: Okay, I think
Nick: alright sorry. I swore the whole chili. Yeah. So I know you guys have been going to
Nick: different events in the States. And I was trying to think about like
Nick: if we were to do any kind of promotion and maybe fundraising it something.
Nick: at least in Europe. What would that be? And it's probably Citrus bear week.
Nick: Have any of you been to it before?
Mel Baker: Now.
Phil James: And no.
Les Wright: I think.
Nick: That usually the one that folk from around Europe would be going to. I'm pretty sure it's the largest kind of bear event in Europe. So.
Nick: and what we want
Nick: isn't Situz, which is a town in Spain. It's close to Barcelona.
Nick: and it's a very popular hall. It's a very popular holiday town for everybody, but I think I think they actually do 2 beer weeks now.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Nick: Twice a year. So if we were going to do some kind of promotion thing, I I think maybe we could think about doing that in 2025,
Nick: yeah.
Phil James: Okay.
Mel Baker: Oh, that's good!
Phil James: Probably along the lines of if people happen to be going, or
Phil James: if you, Nick, can help find money to get less, there.
Mel Baker: What
Les Wright: I'm I'm gonna sit next to every sugar Daddy. I find in the room.
Mel Baker: What what part of the year is that take place in what's the when does it happen.
Nick: The the big one is usually may, and then I think they have another one in September now as well.
Nick: Well that we would be going for the big one, I would guess. And I mean, I'm thinking we could just contact the organizers, saying, Look, this is who we are. We'd like we could potentially do like a little event at it. If we've got some kind of.
Nick: If there was podcast, material out, by, then there could perhaps be a kind of a talk with some talking heads. Kind of
Nick: this is the kind of stuff the project is doing, and we can also set up a wee stand to do a bit of fundraising. Sell some merch that kind of stuff
Nick: so we could keep our eye on that for kind of summer 2025, or something to target.
Mel Baker: But it sounds like
Mel Baker: it would make sense to have you and Les there. Less could talk about the books and about the history.
Mel Baker: and then you could talk about your research and
Mel Baker: that sort of thing, and that that alone would probably be a good.
Nick: Yeah, I think I think Bill Tran does a lot of stuff at it as well. So we could potentially tap him and see if he can get us some ends for.
Les Wright: Great resource. He is. Yeah.
Les Wright: yeah, someone jump in. I I wanted to bring a a couple of brief things about international stuff and maybe ask that. I also. It just occurred to me a little while ago to a quick report about what I learned at Bear Week in Provincetown. It's very helpful for us.
Les Wright: So.
Phil James: Go ahead!
Les Wright: Yeah. So the so the thing about international bears.
Les Wright: I've been making more and more connections and networking
Les Wright: and
Les Wright: I have been.
Les Wright: I now have. There's a bear in Rochester, New York, who teaches romance languages.
Les Wright: who will be happy to work with us.
Les Wright: you know, either translating or interpret like for an interview.
Les Wright: It could be the translator or the interpreter
Les Wright: and so he could give a hand
Les Wright: and I could be a go between with, for example, the Spanish speaking
Les Wright: academics that you know
Les Wright: in in Spain.
Les Wright: and I also
Les Wright: through another contact, who
Les Wright: he has an artist studio in Britain. He's from Toronto
Les Wright: and
Les Wright: oh, actually, between him and another, a guy from Kuwait, called Dubie.
Les Wright: who knows all of the
Les Wright: emigrant bears who live in Toronto, who come from Kuwait and Lebanon and Saudi Arabia, and places like that.
Les Wright: and I'm going to go up and interview them probably in a group interview, and there that was where the issue came up with. They all have to be anonymous, because otherwise they
Les Wright: lives will be
Les Wright: they will be in, you know, physical, physically threatened.
Les Wright: So so there's a couple of developments on more international contacts.
Les Wright: Great.
Phil James: Yeah, that's
Phil James: you know, it is part of our mission statement to
Phil James: expand beyond show the diversity beyond.
Phil James: You know, white men of
Phil James: of England and its domain and the Us. So that's great
Phil James: less. I know. In a couple of our interviews we've talked to people about anonymity. Les and I interviewed somebody who's a member of homeland Security.
Phil James: And I'm like, Do you need to not be like on camera? And wow! That's a tight t-shirt like. Oh, no, no, I'm fine. I'm the gay
Phil James: base of homeland security.
Phil James: He's a 1st responder blah blah blah. So
Phil James: it's interesting. So we'll figure out the anonymity part.
Les Wright: Yeah, he's old. He's an old heartthrob of mine. So.
Phil James: We'll have paper bags for people who need to remain anonymous.
Mel Baker: Less. You speak
Mel Baker: pretty fluent German. Do you speak.
Les Wright: Yeah, my family is fluent. Yeah.
Mel Baker: Yeah, okay.
Mel Baker: yeah.
Phil James: Little Spanish, but only a little.
Les Wright: Yeah. When I do a little little talk about Pton, I will address that
Les Wright: answer that question. Or if anyone go ahead, yeah.
Phil James: So I have. Yeah, I want to talk about P. Town a little bit kind of the morphing between
Phil James: the number of people we've talked. We've interviewed about P-town.
Phil James: Les wants to talk about P-town.
Phil James: And then what Nick was saying about events. So
Phil James: we were just. I was amazed. I've never been to Bear Week P. Town. I was amazed. The Chamber of Commerce said.
Phil James: there are 30,000 people in town the week of Bear Week in P. Town in Provincetown 30,000 people. So
Phil James: I've seen some. You know. I've seen some strolling, but
Phil James: I really didn't know there were 30,000 people in town. So
Phil James: it's great that Les has been to 2 of them.
Phil James: But it's a it's a US. For us, based
Phil James: research. It's another place we should think about trying to have a larger presence.
Phil James: and next year is their 25th anniversary. So
Phil James: it's a good time for expanded
Phil James: stuff. In fact, I'm talking. I'm talking to a couple of people about the
Phil James: archiving. And what are they gathering in terms of materials, and what might make sense for
Phil James: us to get. But you know, next year next May might be a really great time for that last. What else do you want to say about P. Town?
Les Wright: Oh, well, I'll I'll segue just from what you said.
Les Wright: john Burroughs and Gary Turner and I were were the 3 who originally started. P. Town bears and John later did the the bear with which is all of the Ptown bears do now. So you know, I've been able to kind of reconnect. And you know, as I'm seen as a founding member there. So that's very helpful in opening doors.
Les Wright: Yeah, a few things I learned about being a parent, Petan one, is, it really is essential that we be in person? Because that's
Les Wright: we. You know, I was able to network. I met a lot of people
Les Wright: who who are very, very, you know, very
Les Wright: helpful in in doing their history. And you know, leading to other people
Les Wright: that you know, a lot of interviews are coming out of this
Les Wright: and that's been very rich.
Les Wright: you know, as opposed to doing open calls where people basically don't respond.
Les Wright: Another thing that this time I discovered is
Les Wright: P. Town really is A is a big cultural crosswalks for the bear community.
Les Wright: you know. There, there's some pretty
Les Wright: interesting and kind of significant stuff that goes on
Les Wright: with the folks who are not there just to to hang out
Les Wright: and I made some
Les Wright: some good connections there. That. Yeah, for example, that's how I I met Doobie
Les Wright: and and the whole Middle Eastern exile community.
Les Wright: and another thing. In terms of merchandising
Les Wright: I mean I I they gave me a place at the the fire station. That's the table where
Les Wright: it's kind of well, it's like the official outpost, and everybody passes by, and
Les Wright: but they all come, and they either they're late, and they pick up their their goody bags, or they buy P. Town bear merchandise, and I'm off in the corner, you know, with flyers and books, and nobody's even paying attention. Don't don't see me there.
Les Wright: so one suggestion is they have. They have bear market. That might be a better place.
Les Wright: for for all of that stuff.
Les Wright: And
Les Wright: but, on the other hand, being at the table was a way that I I met a lot of people
Les Wright: which led anyway, led to other things. I was trying to think if there's anything else.
Les Wright: and that's it.
Phil James: Okay. So in person is key in person is key.
Phil James: Maybe bear. I'm taking notes at the same time. Maybe bear market.
Les Wright: Oh, the last thing I wanted to say that it finally worked it out.
Les Wright: it's a you know, being there in person. It's a great way, you know, identify somebody to interview.
Les Wright: Then set that up for after the event, because there's way too much going on.
Les Wright: and people don't have time, and they're not focused on that.
Les Wright: So a number of the interviews that Phil and I have been doing have come as a result of that
Les Wright: great.
Phil James: Okay, thanks. Les
Phil James: The only other thing I have on the agenda from beforehand is
Phil James: elections and timing of officers. So
Phil James: the board is currently
Phil James: 5 of us. Is it 5 of us? I'd have to actually look up. So it's
Phil James: it left me, Alejandro
Phil James: Mel
Phil James: and.
Les Wright: Nick.
Phil James: Nick.
Phil James: Okay? So that's the current board. That was, that's our inaugural board. Technically.
Phil James: we had the Central Committee before that, which is
Phil James: anybody who came to a meeting was part of the Central Committee.
Phil James: So Les asked me to raise the idea of.
Phil James: When do we want to think about a new board. How do we want to do
Phil James: elections? What's the what's the best timing? You know we don't need to be hugely formal at this point. But
Phil James: Les has been carrying a lot of
Phil James: the weight of the organization. You know, he's obviously our founder
Phil James: and our guiding principle because of, you know the the mission statement has served us very well.
Phil James: He also has a he has 2 hats because he's also an author. Nick is also an author, but Les is an author, and there's, you know, writing a here's my beef. He's writing a for profit book at the same time.
Phil James: and so we're always kind of stepping around. In fact, we've had a couple of interviews where the person says, Now, who are you representing? What are you we doing like? What's this going to be used for? And we, you know, we explain what the differences is and how the the project becomes archives for various people to
Phil James: use in in future work, which is kind of, you know, less puts on his other hat. That's who he's going to use this interview as part of his research. So that's all fine, but it sort of kind of ties his hands, as both.
Phil James: you know, the founder and the head of this organization, and also a private
Phil James: author. So that's just one thing to think about. And he's just been doing this
Phil James: as ahead of it for a long time. So
Phil James: we should think about succession planning, and
Phil James: if we have a second wave of people who
Phil James: are ready to ascend to the throne, there'll be a big ceremony, I promise.
Les Wright: Oh, right!
Phil James: Yeah. Mel.
Mel Baker: So I think the bear of San Francisco model is good.
Mel Baker: We toyed with all sorts of weird ideas that we.
Mel Baker: the motorcycle clubs of the Era
Mel Baker: all had like a board, and then they had various membership tiers below that and things. So we just decided to have a large board like a board of 9 people
Mel Baker: that way. You always had a core of people who large enough, that could do most of the work
Mel Baker: rather than having this this thing. So I would recommend just quite a large board.
Mel Baker: Maybe the bylaws are set up to allow a smaller and than
Mel Baker: smaller quorum for some decisions and things in case you can't get that entire group together. But 9. If you've a whole board of 9 people, or even.
Mel Baker: you know, you could do 11, just a really large board, so that
Mel Baker: you can have a really diverse group of folks and have people that are doing a lot of different
Mel Baker: work and projects within that. And then, of course, the various officers that need to be elected
Mel Baker: chair vice chair.
Mel Baker: vice President of.
Mel Baker: and then treasurer and secretary.
Mel Baker: So
Mel Baker: that would be my recommendation. It worked well for the bears of San Francisco when we founded it? And did
Mel Baker: did
Mel Baker: international bear rendezvous.
Phil James: Talk to less than I have talked to, you know so many people over the last couple of months especially it's been interesting to hear
Phil James: how different organizations are organized. So like P. Town.
Phil James: you know, the P. Town bears the P. Town event is all they do, and it takes them 7 to 8, 9 months to organize. But that's literally all they do. They, you know, create the event. They decide what they're going to do. They make sure it covers the diversity of what they want people to have happen.
Phil James: And that's it. There's not a structure beyond that. So that's been interesting. And of course, we've got organizations at the complete other end of
Phil James: you know, we had the official this, and we had the bear run. And we, you know, it's just amazing how
Phil James: how many, how people are organized in different ways.
Les Wright: No? Well, yeah, I wanted to chime in in agreement with Mel and and a couple of other observations. One.
Les Wright: I think, I think, that the the larger the board the better, because everyone you know, if you have a buy in, you're on the board, there's like kind of a
Les Wright: your voice counts because you're you're you're on the list. Kind of thing.
Les Wright: And Mike Hernandez had
Les Wright: clarified.
Les Wright: We are not a membership organization, so we don't have those tiers.
Les Wright: We can't offer membership discounts and and all of that stuff.
Les Wright: And yeah, and the and the thing you know, one of the things that that Phil and I have talked about, and
Les Wright: I've started encountering it. Is that you know
Les Wright: I'm the public face
Les Wright: of the History International Project
Les Wright: and people for a lot who have known me a long time simply assume that I'm it.
Les Wright: and don't know that I don't have the power to, you know. Do do the special requests.
Les Wright: and
Les Wright: I mean.
Les Wright: people really need to know that there, that there's a whole core group of us. And people are doing a lot of work.
Les Wright: and the
Les Wright: some people are doing work that I well.
Les Wright: I think it's more important, you know, for us than than my. For example, my interviews.
Les Wright: And there was another thing about that.
Les Wright: Oh, yeah, this, you know, depending on which which hat I'm wearing and sorting out, you know, kind of legal things where
Les Wright: Phil and I do. The interviews, the interviews, you know, are will be available through the archive to anyone who wants to use them, and I just happen to be the 1st person
Les Wright: using some of them.
Les Wright: And I had to explain to one person recently that no.
Les Wright: this is not an interview that I'm going to publish in in my next book.
Les Wright: but I will be pulling information out of
Les Wright: your archived interview.
Les Wright: And there is a difference between the 2
Les Wright: right
Les Wright: great.
Phil James: Okay, so any. I'm not hearing any call, for my suggestion was.
Phil James: if we want a time to do it on an annual basis. It should be like.
Phil James: just after some annual event, like just after international Mr. Leather kind of just to put
Phil James: a stake in the calendar, and
Phil James: that would be an annual time for people to gather or virtually gather. So
Phil James: I have. I don't have a big
Phil James: suggestion.
Phil James: I will
Phil James: eventually tire of being secretary. Let's put it that way. It does kind of dovetail with my interest in genealogy. So I'm kind of using one against the other.
Phil James: but
Phil James: yeah, if
Phil James: you know, we have hard enough time getting people to these meetings.
Phil James: So I'm not sure
Phil James: we're going to get a lot more participation at this point
Phil James: by anybody, but you know call is still out there to get more people interested. And we're we're kind of at the Point. Now we're we're kind of ready to subdivide into
Phil James: some more work
Phil James: project. I mean, I was, I was told. I was told, Les.
Phil James: when the Archives committee met with the leather archives and museum in Chicago. I was like what? What? Something happened without me. I didn't know it could. I didn't know that happened. So it's like, Oh, that's right. The organization is bigger than a couple of us who do a bunch of stuff. So
Phil James: that's good to know we're kind of at that. We're at the cusp of
Phil James: being able to have
Phil James: groups that do different things. So
Phil James: that's good. If you know of people who are interested in
Phil James: having a larger role in some piece of this.
Phil James: Then great
Phil James: Clark has taken the lead since he's just got a master's in
Phil James: archival sciences, or whatever he's got. You know he's going through the interviews and kind of marking them digitally with.
Phil James: well, here's when this person talked about coming out. And here's when. So we've got that little project going.
Phil James: And that's a great example of
Phil James: a very specific job that he's doing. And then we'll use that
Phil James: as we move into the stories and podcasts. So if you know of other people who are interested.
Phil James: I'll put the call out again on our Facebook page, I still want to grow beyond our Facebook page, because I'm sure there are people who
Phil James: they just don't. They don't do Facebook. They don't want to know it on Facebook. But
Phil James: you know, we don't really want to have members of the website. And we don't. You know, some people are being reluctant to give us email addresses. So
Phil James: and we're not physical. We don't want to be. Oh, if you come to this bar, you're a member, so
Phil James: we'll figure it out.
Mel Baker: We maybe we should get somebody who I you know, it's weird that social media has broken itself out into like ages.
Mel Baker: So for a lot of us who are older. We think of Facebook as just the place to be, but it's really thought of as the old person's place, which is bizarre to me, because it seems like a new medium to me. But anyway, so younger people don't use Facebook, they use Instagram and and Generation Z uses Tiktok. So
Mel Baker: once we have a few of these clips that we can start showing on places like Tiktok and things, we can try to grow our audience, but we should perhaps try to recruit some people who are natives within those
Mel Baker: those fields to help us maintain those social media pages.
Phil James: Right.
Mel Baker: because they just, you know, Instagram seems pretty alien to me. I just don't know how to use it properly, and.
Phil James: Yeah. Yeah. So I know Jose through. Many of you know I have a boy who now lives in Chicago. My God! I know, Jose, through my boy, Patrick Patrick has gotten applied for and gotten entire jobs through Instagram. I'm just Ama. I'm trying to talk about Linkedin, and Patrick has gotten jobs, you know, applied for gotten jobs and started work through Instagram. It's so. I'm so old
Phil James: it is so foreign to me. So like this meeting. I never I never thought about posting it on our Instagram account, never, never occurred to me.
Phil James: So yes, Jose, everybody else in the room is really old compared to you.
Phil James: So good reminder. Mel.
Mel Baker: Yeah. And it's really hard
Mel Baker: when we're not like
Mel Baker: the best way is just
Mel Baker: like my other organization. One of my main jobs, San Francisco public press, nonprofit news organization. And we have some younger journalists, thank God, because they're natives within these fields.
Mel Baker: So we. We have a fairly robust presence in these other medias.
Mel Baker: but it's really hard for us. We started out as an actual newspaper. So
Mel Baker: so yeah, I let. So let's stay with the the large board idea, I think, would be my strong recommendation. I like the idea of maybe May of next year. We can kind of limp along and
Mel Baker: add people, but then have a formal
Mel Baker: voting system set up at that point and decide who's can be on the board, and who wants to be on the board from that point forward.
Mel Baker: Maybe by then we can have come up with some
Mel Baker: resources.
Mel Baker: you know. Good.
Phil James: Okay.
Phil James: I think that kind of covers it, for today. I know Nick had a timeframe in mind. I think that's a good timeframe.
Phil James: Let me just wrap things up here. Les, do you have anything else? Specific.
Les Wright: Only this is probably not news to any of you guys. But I discovered that drag bears are a very big thing these days.
Les Wright: So yeah.
Phil James: As we where we have evidence from our interview.
Phil James: Yeah.
Phil James: let me just wrap stuff up by saying, kind of as we reflect on. We're kind of
Phil James: kind of going into like our 4th year of this incarnation.
Phil James: Less did this organizing long ago in many formats. But you know, kind of this group we're going into like our 4th year, which is an amazing
Phil James: idea.
Phil James: and you know, there's lots of us doing lots of. There's a couple of us doing a lot of things.
Phil James: But there's lots of people who've gotten us this far.
Phil James: So, Mel, I'm looking at you, which is, you were very influent, influential, influent, instrumental kind of in the middle range, of
Phil James: getting, making sure some of our formative ideas.
Phil James: as my old pastor would say.
Phil James: put feet on those words and making them walk.
Phil James: you know, getting us kind of going and making sure we're forming
Phil James: correctly. And you've dropped back. You've had, you know you had the car accident, the pedestrian car accidents and
Phil James: you know, Nick comes and goes because he's so far away.
Phil James: He goes to volcanoes and all kinds of things. So
Phil James: you know, we, it's an organization, right? It takes a lot of us doing a lot of different things.
Phil James: Jose, it's nice to see fresh blood here in this meeting.
Phil James: I'm sure I've scared you away by now. But,
Phil James: you know. Let's let's get some more people involved. Let's get move forward, but it's built on everything we've done so far. So thanks. Everybody who's had
Phil James: some part of what we've done so far.
Phil James: I will post. I'm looking at my notes. I'll post some stuff based on what we've talked about. I'll advertise the go fund me more
Phil James: if people would go look at the Gofundme and see what it says and think it. I I'm not sure we can change.
Phil James: because the idea is like you had a car accident, or whatever, and you start to go fund me.
Phil James: The description kind of has to stay as it was defined because people are using it.
Phil James: But it's they're time limited. So at some point
Phil James: our gofundme will expire, and we'll do a new one. We'll just a new campaign. So if people want to, you know. Say, like, let's do one for 2,025,
Phil James: and let's describe it this way, you know. Put those ideas together, and we'll do that for a new one. I I don't think we can edit the one we have, but we can look, we can. Also, we can comment in the Gofundme.
Phil James: We can add some comments
Phil James: because we can encourage more people. So that's something else we can do. But the description, I think, is set. But we can look, and I'll edit the
Phil James: merchandise.
Phil James: Jose, thanks for your input. There, we'll change some. And Mel thanks and les thanks for your input there. We'll edit the
Phil James: description.
Phil James: Speaking of people who've come and gone, I you know one of the reason I put up a logo page
Phil James: was just to honor the fact that Gary created it. And there's a there's a long asked description of what it says. So he, you know he's kind of come and gone.
Phil James: but the fact that he did the logo for us and the Facebook page for us.
Phil James: And something else.
Phil James: you know, that is, that remains as part of our
Phil James: legacy, and part of what you know gets us moving forward. So
Phil James: everybody that's had any part in how we got this far. Thank you. And
Phil James: we'll figure out what's next.
Phil James: I assume I'll set the next meeting for
Phil James: second Saturday in September.
Mel Baker: Okay, and Jose, have to get you in
Mel Baker: to meet my husband. Since you're in San Francisco as well, he's an artist as well, so
Mel Baker: cross pollinate artists. Unless I need to talk to you. I was supposed to do a chapter on Lurch.
Les Wright: Lurch. Yeah.
Mel Baker: I need to talk about timelines for that, because I'm
Mel Baker: I'm trying to finally get out from under.
Les Wright: Oh, okay. Well, you still have a year.
Mel Baker: Oh, my God! Okay.
Les Wright: I, I.
Mel Baker: But it was. I thought I always had. My deadline was September. It's like not the 2024 elections. No, I'm like.
Les Wright: No, no.
Mel Baker: Way. Too busy this year. Yeah.
Les Wright: The the more widespread I'm finding
Les Wright: it all to be. That's also not firm, depending on.
Mel Baker: Okay.
Les Wright: You know, pulling, pulling incredible range of materials together. So, yeah.
Mel Baker: Okay? And Phil, we could talk about this offline. But basically, let's set up. If you have some Saturday mornings or Sunday mornings free.
Mel Baker: I just can't do this during the week, but I have entered a little more energy on the weekends again, now that I actually
Mel Baker: so maybe we could start working on the script and things like that, and I can devote some weekend time
Mel Baker: to finally getting getting these these clips put together.
Phil James: And you have a resource for descript right? Somebody who might help us if we think we need.
Mel Baker: Yes, yes,
Mel Baker: A guy who does content for our radio station uses the script. And
Mel Baker: I I need to use it. I need to learn to use it, because it's we're trying to teach new people how to use audio. And I hear that this is just so much simpler than what I'm using. I use adobe, and with all the bells and whistles, but
Mel Baker: great film.
Les Wright: And I did want to say I did make it, albeit late to the July meeting I
Les Wright: was on the road all day to get to Peaktown, and then I had to walk 3 quarters of a mile from the parking lot, and I couldn't check into the Condo where I was staying, and I don't know, anyway, so I got there, but it was over by the time I got there, so
Les Wright: any of it.
Phil James: Thanks. Les. Okay. So my calendar says the next meeting will be Saturday, September 14.th That's my
Phil James: plan. Oh, I'm going to see Kurt Elling on that Friday. Yay, how exciting! Okay.
Phil James: so that's
Phil James: that's the plan. I'll put a I'll put a zoom out there for that Saturday, the 14, th
Phil James: assuming we're still on zoom.
Phil James: Maybe we'll be on the script by then for these meetings, too. So
Phil James: watch for the meeting announcement.
Phil James: Great.
Mel Baker: Thank you.
Phil James: Everybody.
Mel Baker: Okay, do you want to talk, Phil, about
Mel Baker: timing and scheduling and things.
Phil James: Sure everybody else is. Well, yeah, let me cut the recording.