Phil James: Probably get message there. Let's see.
Phil James: Magic of zoom.
Les Wright: I'm Terry Gross, and this is fresh air.
Phil James: You are not terror gross. We haven't done that in days and days.
Phil James: Wow, my old computer is so slow. Okay.
Phil James: okay, I didn't do a new agenda
Phil James: for this meeting, and just as well, since there's nobody here to talk about nothing.
Phil James: I thought.
Les Wright: Go ahead!
Phil James: I just I thought we would talk about
Phil James: Well, we've had some progress on
Phil James: getting
Phil James: Okay, here's the invitation. Let me send that to the Central Committee.
Les Wright: Now, as I say, the meeting is was in my calendar for today, but somehow
Les Wright: I was not registering your
Les Wright: reminders of them.
Les Wright: and I don't know why that is. But maybe other people kinda also.
Phil James: Yeah. Clark was the only one who thumbed up the fact that
Phil James: or maybe one other person. Oh,
Phil James: Dan said he was gonna try to make it. Dan Don Dan.
Phil James: our correspondent in Japan.
Les Wright: Oh, okay.
Phil James: But he said, you know
Phil James: he was cat sitting, I guess so, you know.
Phil James: Important priority.
Les Wright: The cat's probably holding him hostage.
Phil James: Yeah, no
Phil James: And it's like.
Les Wright: It's like one o'clock in the morning in Japan right now. Something in the middle of the night.
Phil James: Yeah, he's attended one.
Phil James: so a couple of things today.
Phil James: I went ahead and published
Phil James: some of the highlight reels
Phil James: of interviews. The 1st 5. 0, here comes Mel. Okay. Great.
Les Wright: Okay.
Phil James: I published the 1st 5 of those morning mill.
Phil James: No.
Phil James: Mel, you seem like a goldfish this morning, somehow, like you're you're waiting for your morning goldfish feeding. I don't know why.
Mel Baker: Had my beard trimmed.
Phil James: Oh, yes, I did that, too. This morning.
Phil James: I look left like a
Phil James: hobo.
Phil James: I was saying.
Phil James: I went ahead and published the 1st 5 of
Phil James: the highlight reels of interviews.
Phil James: So again, full disclosure that is, using the bare bones of our descript software, letting artificial intelligence
Phil James: take over.
Phil James: I've also generally let AI sweep across and delete all of the stop words
Phil James: of one of you know of the underlying video.
Phil James: and I'm not quite sure whether that's
Phil James: permanently deleted or a copy deleted. But I just went ahead and did that on, because some of them, like for the hunter Harden interview, which was an hour and
Phil James: 15 min, or, you know, 750.
Phil James: Stop words. I said, Okay, let's take a chance on. Let's just go ahead and do it automatically, and you know, kind of see, and you've got the choice of. Do you then want to add a little gap of space, which was one of Mel's concerns. Is, it ends up sounding
Phil James: choppy and horrible. So I did that, and that helps a little bit. It's definitely not humanly.
Phil James: These are. And then the highlight reel is AI goes through and just picks out things that
Phil James: I don't know how it picks stuff. You tell it how long. You want the maximum video to be
Phil James: so for less, for less is, I said, make it a maximum of 5 min
Phil James: for hunters, I said, make it a maximum of 8 min, because I know he had talked about a lot of stuff.
Phil James: and then you just hit a button and it it creates this highlight reel.
Phil James: Then you have to decide.
Phil James: I'll call it all the stuff that Mel wants is there is there? Add, you know, is there back and forth between the interviewer and the interviewee. Is there intro text? Is there intro music?
Phil James: Is there an overlay? Is there? Are there chapter headings?
Phil James: All of that I just I kept stumbling over it, I said, let me just get a couple of these out, and literally they take about
Phil James: 3 min each to create.
Phil James: So. And then, Oh, do you want to publish them privately? Oh, do you want to go into Youtube studio? I was like, just get them out there. So those 1st 5
Phil James: are there I posted. They're in our Youtube channel. I should post that again here. I posted to our Facebook page.
Phil James: I'm going to start
Phil James: putting that in our list of Hey, welcome, new members. Here's what we're doing. Come to our Facebook page, come to our come to our website, come to our Youtube channel, come to our merchandise channel.
Phil James: So I'm gonna keep working on those because we have about
Phil James: 2030 interviews that we've done something like that. Clark would know better than me.
Les Wright: Oh, yeah.
Les Wright: I have 35, but not all of them were recorded.
Phil James: Yeah.
Phil James: So I certainly don't want to
Phil James: push aside the work that Clark did with his metadata work, because.
Les Wright: Oh!
Phil James: I still think of these highlight reels as
Phil James: how can we get something out there
Phil James: and
Phil James: entice people to come back for more? And we still want to do. You know, the in my mind, the 2 major things are stories and podcasts. I just think of them that way, although they're probably both podcasts. But you know, longer form than 5 min of somebody who talks for an hour and a half.
Phil James: That psychotherapist talked for like an hour and 45 min, as I recall last. Remember the guy in the
Phil James: in the forest
Phil James: or in P-town, wherever it was. I guess.
Les Wright: Yeah, it was in P-town. Yeah, yeah.
Phil James: So nice long interview with him.
Phil James: You know the 5 min of him is not going to be very
Phil James: instructive, and so these are obviously not great editing.
Phil James: I still think we want to make use of what Clark has done.
Phil James: But this gets something out there to kind of begin to tease people with
Phil James: the variety of opinions and people being raw about. You know I was almost married to a woman. I was married to a woman, and she outed me to my family. I mean, some of the stuff is just great, so I think we want to begin exposing that
Phil James: anybody object to that approach, so far
Phil James: parked is not left. Is not Melbourne okay.
Phil James: cool. So I'm going to continue to publish these to our Youtube channel.
Phil James: And I'm gonna mark them, I'm tagging them.
Phil James: I think I'll put them in a playlist of highlight reels.
Phil James: And then they're marked as highlights and Bhpi.
Phil James: because eventually our Youtube Channel will have a bunch of stuff in it.
Phil James: Okay,
Phil James: Iml.
Phil James: I'm going to International Mitchell letter in May. I've decided
Phil James: my husband's like, Oh, really, like, yes, we're going to Iml in May.
Phil James: Less. We're gonna get you there one way or another.
Les Wright: One way or another. Yeah, I, yeah, I am definitely going one way or another, even if I have to put on my
Les Wright: my best red dress and shake my tambourine on the street corner. I'll be there.
Phil James: Okay,
Phil James: Mel, you're a founding
Phil James: member of this
Phil James: reborn group.
Phil James: I don't know whether that's too much of a stretch for you.
Mel Baker: I'm going to Yosemite in May for a week. I guess I might right now to be honest with you.
Mel Baker: I don't know if I want to do a lot of traveling in this country.
Mel Baker: I'm a Californian now, not an American. So I'm a little concerned about going across the border.
Mel Baker: Yeah, I can't take my husband. I'm reluctant to leave California. I have. My husband is Hispanic, and.
Phil James: Yeah.
Mel Baker: You know I don't want to take the risk of
Mel Baker: crossing over any Red States
Mel Baker: that I have to.
Mel Baker: I mean, Illinois is fine. Chicago is fine.
Mel Baker: but.
Phil James: Yeah.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Mel Baker: I'm I'm kind of trying to hold on to money and try to.
Mel Baker: We have some sort of emergency funds. When this, when the balloon goes up and this gets bad. Yeah, it could get could get really catastrophically bad. It'll probably just be miserable and horrible.
Mel Baker: But it could be like.
Mel Baker: yeah.
Mel Baker: so. But I think I think going to Iml is great. I wouldn't mind going to iml
Mel Baker: I've always kind of wanted to go
Phil James: Well, also, we'll see if
Phil James: Nick comes up with
Phil James: any funding, for.
Phil James: you know, technically
Phil James: the archive work, because that might
Phil James: allow, you know, several like he has said
Phil James: we're trying to talk about Airbnb, and he said his university won't allow funds to be used for Airbnb. They think of it as detrimental to the local, whatever the local housing community is.
Phil James: So it's gotta be hotels, he said. Well, screw it. I'm just gonna up the travel budget and down the
Phil James: the support budget when he gets back with whatever he does.
Phil James: And and I said, Okay, well, a bunch of us, we're gonna we'll help with the administrative work
Phil James: because you're gonna have less. And you know, he was thinking he'd hire some
Phil James: intern to do
Phil James: whatever I'm like. Well, that's what we're all doing. So we can do that instead. Yeah, we'd rather have you like be able to come or come a couple of times. Come to Cornell
Phil James: come to Iml. He had no idea when Iml was, I was like, Put this on your calendar.
Phil James: Yeah, last Sunday in May
Phil James: Clark. Of course we'd love to have you out semi West as well.
Les Wright: The once we get the 1st grant
Les Wright: that becomes a plus for future grants.
Les Wright: Yes, yeah.
Mel Baker: That's it's always like trying to get that 1st loan, and they get the 1st loan, and everybody wants to loan you money now. So it's the same thing with grants. Once you get one. Grant you can approve that. Oh, they trust them. I guess they're trustworthy. We'll give them a grant.
Phil James: Yeah.
Phil James: Yeah. So that'd be great. I'm gonna talk to
Phil James: Let's just say someone who has ties to Iml privately and ask about
Phil James: at least a comp
Phil James: entrance for left.
Phil James: You know. I don't know whether. Oh, we also might ask them about
Phil James: maybe not free accommodation, but
Phil James: a hotel suite that we could use for interviewing.
Phil James: or something like that.
Phil James: So.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Phil James: I'm not gonna mention any names here. I don't want to incriminate anybody, but
Phil James: we have somebody on the inside at Iml. So
Phil James: but you, too.
Mel Baker: Somebody up at Iml. You said, oh, no, you had ties to somebody at Iml. Yeah, a suite would be great if you could
Mel Baker: get one that we could use. And then maybe that could be a place that we could put up a couple of people
Mel Baker: in the rooms. Specifically less
Mel Baker: because they should. If they're booking the entire hotel, they should get a
Mel Baker: fair number of comped rooms
Mel Baker: from the hotel for for booking the rooms booking that much. And I I'm assuming Iml is
Mel Baker: really huge. Still, it's thousands of people.
Phil James: Yeah, yeah, we'll probably be staying around the corner at the whatever that hotel is. It's not a roadway, it's a
Phil James: whatever it is, and that's just a in fact, last time I met Mike it was there at that coffee shop in that hotel.
Phil James: So
Phil James: it's just around the corner.
Phil James: So, and then we should start thinking about. We've already. We've already been thinking about Mel. I was bad mouthing you the other day
Phil James: drove off the highway.
Phil James: We've got people who are saying we need a big board of 9 or 12 people, and we can't get people to come to the meeting.
Phil James: My husband's trying to keep me on the road.
Phil James: So we, you know, that's the other piece of Iml, is we? We think of that as our annual time. Right. We want to have
Phil James: elections, or, what will probably be more like begging an appointment, then so
Phil James: scare up your friends, for may.
Les Wright: No.
Les Wright: so are you thinking of ha! Holding the elections during Iml, or just before, or just after.
Phil James: I don't know. I I'm kind of hoping.
Phil James: At some point Iml becomes an annual bear history project. International event.
Phil James: So kind of you know that weekend is when
Phil James: elections are held. I mean, obviously, you know, a lot of people are not going to be there, so
Phil James: I assume it would like. It would be a virtual event for a lot of people, but it would be
Phil James: like
Phil James: in conjunction to that. Weekend. People would bring stuff to the archives.
Phil James: People would come and play at Iml.
Phil James: People would. You know
Phil James: we would get other? We we would. We would recruit
Phil James: right?
Phil James: Oh, Dan is active on Facebook. So
Phil James: maybe he'll come.
Phil James: So I hadn't thought anymore beyond, let's you know, Iml is a convenient time to say, let's do it, then that's all.
Mel Baker: If we, if we do a fiscal year that starts in
Mel Baker: at the end of June, right? Or what? What are do we have a figure. What kind of year we're gonna do financial year, we're gonna set up for
Mel Baker: funding and things or less. Do you know, if there's a standard in the nonprofit world.
Les Wright: no, there, there isn't. I mean, it's usually either. Yeah.
Les Wright: January 1st or July first.st
Les Wright: Typically, yeah.
Mel Baker: We could make ours July first, st and then that gives another advantage to having new officers elected in May. And you know we're starting out a new calendar year financially, and all of that.
Mel Baker: so that might be.
Phil James: Team.
Mel Baker: Yeah.
Phil James: People can work on their inauguration, inauguration ball gowns for the whole month of June.
Mel Baker: No.
Les Wright: That? Well, that's the whole point of the organization. Yeah.
Phil James: Picking up streamers from pride parades across across the land.
Phil James: Yes.
Phil James: that's that's
Phil James: all I'm thinking about, Iml and timing.
Phil James: okay, I see, Allie is continuing to
Phil James: promote
Phil James: this
Phil James: international bear
Phil James: gathering at
Phil James: bear pride.
Phil James: 2025 in Washington, DC.
Phil James: But it's like a private. It's like he has said, Hey, bear.
Phil James: let's gather on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at noon on that Saturday, or whatever it is.
Phil James: it's not a
Phil James: I don't. It doesn't seem like a big destination of the universe.
Phil James: I mean, he's invited a bunch of people. So
Phil James: that's great. I think I put it on our
Phil James: calendar.
Phil James: Yeah.
Les Wright: I've spoken with him about that and
Les Wright: the Host Hotel and the vendor tables ha! Were sold out months and months ago.
Mel Baker: Hmm.
Les Wright: so
Les Wright: so I don't. You know I don't. I don't see that it's necessary that that we be there or or I be there.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Les Wright: if I you know, if I could stay with friends in Baltimore then I would go down for for the day for that.
Les Wright: The rally on in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
Phil James: Yeah.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Mel Baker: So, my, I was confused about this. This is not just a bear event that he's going to do at the Lincoln Memorial. This is part of some other much larger Lgbtq event.
Phil James: Yeah, I put in notes from last time. What did I say?
Phil James: international celebration in DC,
Phil James: let me go to this link. He has. He put up a Facebook
Phil James: page he linked to a Facebook page
Phil James: leather and bear world pride. Gathering the Centaur Motorcycle Club would love to invite the leather and bear contingent contingents of the world to celebrate our brotherhood at the Lincoln Memorial.
Phil James: So I'll add this to our notes again. But
Phil James: yeah, it's a big
Phil James: gathering group.
Mel Baker: I wonder if this is gonna morph into something more like the march on Washington's the 87 and 93 march on Washington to show be a show of force.
Mel Baker: It's not exactly a you know. Let's go have a party in DC. It's gonna have to be a
Mel Baker: we're here. We're gonna punch you in the face if you fuck with us sort of thing.
Phil James: Yeah.
Mel Baker: You know, it's got to be like what we did during Reagan's era.
Phil James: Yeah.
Les Wright: So so the event is world
Les Wright: queer pride.
Les Wright: And the and the leather and bear contingents are just one of them.
Les Wright: and
Les Wright: Ollie's purpose in the
Les Wright: the Lincoln memorial thing is that bears and leather folks get marginalized.
Les Wright: This is a, you know, taking, you know, taking a stand and saying, we are here. No.
Mel Baker: It's also it's also a call back to 93. When there was the. There was the 87 march I worked on, which was the 1st really huge one after the 79 March, which was the 1st one
Mel Baker: and the 8 93, was during the 1st year of the Clinton administration, and there was a gathering on
Mel Baker: the steps of the bears.
Mel Baker: Yeah, there's pictures of lurch and a bunch of other people that took part in that.
Mel Baker: So it's kind of a nice callback to that.
Les Wright: Do do you have, or know where we could get access to any of those photos.
Mel Baker: I think the
Mel Baker: let me let me just ask Boss if we could just ask bears of San Francisco if they have any photos
Mel Baker: of that era
Mel Baker: or so
Mel Baker: had photos of that. He went to that as well.
Mel Baker: There might be something on one of my Facebook feeds that got scooped up over the years.
Mel Baker: All I can look around for that.
Phil James: My Facebook feed of suggested events is such an interesting place.
Phil James: Okay? And that's off topic.
Phil James: well, there's 611 people interested in
Phil James: Ali's post about
Phil James: this event.
Phil James: so it might be something of significance. I think you're right, Mel is, you know.
Phil James: presumably the planning needs to be for more of a protest response and less.
Phil James: Let's grope each other.
Phil James: There's always room for that. But.
Mel Baker: Yeah, it's like the 87. March was was the 1st you know we were.
Mel Baker: It was a big, huge political organizing and activation. It was also the 1st time the quilt Aids quilt was displayed. It was really a show of force, and we brought more than half a million people to DC. And I think we scared the fuck out of the Republicans that realized that were that many of us would come.
Mel Baker: and then 93 was meant to be another protest. March, and it kind of became more of a party because it was under the Clinton era.
Mel Baker: But but it just depends on what the organizers are thinking of doing, but I would guess they're under a lot of pressure. You've got to set
Mel Baker: event in place. You need to turn it into a. This needs to be a march in protest and etc.
Phil James: Yeah. Ali was. Ali came to the last meeting, and he was
Phil James: in my mind, soft peddling it, as I think he wanted to avoid
Phil James: the parade contingent
Phil James: cost and insurance, and no, just a bunch of bears are gonna get together and.
Mel Baker: Yeah.
Phil James: So I don't know whether that's gonna work or
Phil James: you know. But anyway.
Phil James: you seem to be purposely avoiding, you know, hardcore organization of it
Phil James: at that time.
Les Wright: It. It could easily be a flash mob
Les Wright: knowing what was gonna happen.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Mel Baker: Well, but to you, if you're gonna have a protest of a large enough size, it's a political show of force. Then you have to have the permits, and you have to the Porta Potties, and you have to. If you have 10,000 people in DC. Nobody fucking cares, you know. There's there's a product protest with 10,000 people every day there.
Mel Baker: It's got to be into the hundreds of thousands you've got to scare that you've got to shake the city to make people
Mel Baker: take it seriously. Yeah.
Mel Baker: So anyway, it'd be interesting to see. Maybe the Washington Blade might have
Mel Baker: keep an eye on the Washington Blade and see if that they've mentioned anything about the event. If the events changing, it's possible other people are trying to organize something.
Mel Baker: Yeah.
Phil James: Yeah.
Phil James: okay. Let's see, we talked about.
Phil James: we talked about email, we talked about interviews.
Phil James: just.
Phil James: you know, les. And I have done
Phil James: most of the recent interviews.
Phil James: I know you did one of the 1st ones, Mel
Phil James: and
Phil James: Mark. If you're interested in interviewing people, especially if
Phil James: either you know people who
Phil James: they would do it if you were involved and not otherwise.
Phil James: Or if you know people who would do it if they knew you weren't the one doing the interviewing. And yeah, they do it like, I'm trying to get my boy to do one, and I think he's not going to do it if I'm going to be the one interviewing. So like, Okay, somebody else can ask you about
Phil James: your daddy. That's fine. But if you know people who would like to be interviewed, or if you'd like to do some interviewing
Phil James: Les, and I do not have the market market cornered on
Phil James: doing them. We certainly want people to
Phil James: try to test out the the Script
Phil James: universe. I'm I'm just thrilled with this AI version of just getting some work done. It's really got some good workflow to it, so I need to explore it some more. They have office hours, a couple of days a week, and I always miss the timing. But I want to ask them a bunch of questions. But
Phil James: I mean, Zoom works. Okay. So we've got that going for us, so
Phil James: I'll go back. I'll circle back to Jeffrey. Jeffrey's the one that mentioned it
Phil James: last meeting that, you know. Can other people do interviewing? Certainly.
Mel Baker: By the way, speaking of interviewing.
Mel Baker: if anybody wants to local interviews, you can use my studios for the San Francisco public press and our little radio station. They're at basically market in Van Ness.
Mel Baker: Arrange time, and you can literally sit there and I'll do a
Mel Baker: we'll have pro and mics, and it will be really clean Larry Rivera.
Mel Baker: some of you may know, was one of the founders. Larry was temporarily hospitalized.
Mel Baker: we need to get Larry's story.
Mel Baker: Taking care of he his health. He's gonna be. He's gonna bounce back. I'm gonna call him today and see how he's doing. But
Mel Baker: But we need to get Larry's story.
Les Wright: Yeah, yeah.
Phil James: Bear.
Les Wright: I I reached out to him a couple of times and and never heard back. So yeah.
Mel Baker: This is probably because he had some health issues. I went with him to a male burlesque show over the holidays. He paid, I mean? Not the holidays one, was it?
Mel Baker: Just a couple months ago he paid for
Mel Baker: tickets for a bunch of us to go, so he's doing fine. He just we should get his story down.
Mel Baker: Yeah, Larry's a really great guy. I I know him so well. I think I'd rather have somebody that
Mel Baker: doesn't know him as well.
Mel Baker: Yes.
Phil James: I'd like to say I don't know him from the new sex parties, but
Phil James: I know him from the new sex parties.
Phil James: They're on 14th Street. The infamous.
Mel Baker: Oh, yes, the basement, the 14th Street basement, the bear hug parties. Yes.
Phil James: Clark. You're a CEO.
Phil James: You don't know how decadent it used to be.
Mel Baker: It was so fun!
Phil James: I mean.
Mel Baker: Remember scandalizing the
Mel Baker: scandalizing. Some of the vanilla bears.
Phil James: I remember
Mel Baker: Lurch as well, yeah.
Phil James: I remember being there waiting to get in.
Phil James: and you know you kind of got to be quiet because it's a suburban neighborhood, and I saw a friend of mine across the street, and I just started screaming, Dick! Dick, my friends are like just calm down.
Les Wright: You can get.
Phil James: In a minute.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Mel Baker: It was near the.
Phil James: Isn't it? That church? There was a church kind of.
Les Wright: There's an ebony.
Mel Baker: There was a fundamentalist black church right next door. Yes, 14th Street, yeah. And the guy. It wasn't just bear parties. There were a lot of parties there. The guy who owned the place like to hang out in the cage in the basement
Mel Baker: but that Victorian long since been sold off to some tech lords.
Phil James: Yeah. Yeah. A bunch of us used to come up from the South Bay.
Phil James: and then we go to heidi's pies.
Phil James: They're on El Camino Real. Then the next day we'd have to do the Venn diagram of like, I don't feel well.
Phil James: Did you have the rhubarb pie? And did you have the guy from Texas. Okay, you had the guy from Texas, but not the rhubarb pie. Maybe there was a lemon meringue. Maybe it was the.
Mel Baker: I went to a couple of 15 parties there, and it was just like it was. The 15 were. The 15 were total, pure Sm people. And it was so unsexual it was just so like ritualized and like, you know, the uniforms and the boots and things. And I'm like, is anybody gonna get nicked? When they took the sling down it to tie somebody up, I thought, Okay, I guess I'm not. This is not my place.
Phil James: I have a friend who's 1 of the original.
Mel Baker: Doing.
Phil James: Of the 15, and he said he, and he's kind of tongue in cheek about it, he said, well, I'm like, where's the 15 come from? He said. Well, we thought we were the 15 hottest men in San Francisco, and he's looked at him like, are you kidding me? You're not one of the 15 hottest men in this room. But you know.
Phil James: wow!
Phil James: But you know
Phil James: I'm not a total bitch. Okay, I I kind of am okay.
Mel Baker: The world the world before before apps the world before, apps.
Phil James: Yeah.
Les Wright: You're not one in real life. You just play one on television.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Phil James: That's right.
Phil James: We talked about fiscal year. We talked about Iml. We talked about bear pride in DC.
Phil James: Oh,
Phil James: Next meeting
Phil James: I have a calendar. I'm capable.
Phil James: So I'll set the next meeting, for
Phil James: we're getting dangerously into the Christmas time era. But
Phil James: okay, the second Saturday in December is the 14.th
Phil James: So I'll set the meeting for them. Okay.
Phil James: okay.
Phil James: les anything else from you.
Les Wright: Yeah, a a few quick things.
Les Wright: hang on a second. I'm making a note about the the December meeting. Okay? No, just a few things.
Les Wright: I I have on file.
Les Wright: 35 completed interviews.
Les Wright: I have
Les Wright: 48 waiting to hear back from people. And what I'm doing now is every 2 weeks I'm taking 10 people.
Les Wright: And the and I just sent out this last week, the the 3, rd the 3rd list of 10 people of you know, knocking on the door again.
Phil James: Right.
Les Wright: And I'm not hearing back from very many people. So, anyway. So that's ongoing.
Les Wright: Yesterday Hunter Olson moderated a discussion between
Les Wright: Benjamin Cole and myself about
Les Wright: issues.
Les Wright: in the gay, in the bear community for his
Les Wright: podcast barely.
Phil James: Notice.
Les Wright: Barely noted, barely notice. That's what it's called. Okay.
Les Wright: and he will have that up, probably in another week or so.
Les Wright: I I think I sent through the Bhpi.
Les Wright: That kind that that kind of called to to the troops called
Les Wright: bear joy is an act of resistance.
Les Wright: and Bear World Magazine is going to publish that on Monday.
Les Wright: And
Les Wright: it's kind of more, I guess you know. Kind of on a back Channel vein. If it seems like. I finally reached kind of a critical mass, and networking
Les Wright: with with
Les Wright: bear folk, and
Les Wright: really starting to to connect with people outside of our U.S.A. bubble and
Les Wright: learning very interesting things.
Les Wright: that I was not aware of.
Les Wright: And and couldn't you know, I mean
Les Wright: I don't have the economic privilege that a lot of folks do. So I don't know what they've been doing.
Les Wright: and just a couple of things to mention in, in brief, is
Les Wright: you know, I kind of saw muscle bears had
Les Wright: gone extinct.
Les Wright: but they're they're alive and well. On on the International party circuit and
Les Wright: they are really destroying their culture at this point.
Les Wright: because because they come in with.
Les Wright: you know, a superior attitude. They're they're heavily involved with drugs and blah blah blah. So a lot of the
Les Wright: the things
Les Wright: a lot of the events are being destroyed because of their
Les Wright: the way they behave when they come.
Phil James: We really have heard that with several of our interviews about
Phil James: speeches and
Phil James: just events in general.
Phil James: that was really revealing about the other hunter is talking to Hunter Harden.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Phil James: You know, King of the Google bears.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Phil James: And just the sweetest guy. But he said, you know, people just think he's a big dumb bear, and
Phil James: he's 1 of he was very intellectually interesting. And
Phil James: he said, yeah, muscle bears come in all shapes and sizes, just like other bears.
Phil James: Yeah.
Les Wright: Well, yeah. And and another thing.
Les Wright: well, 2 things. One I've
Les Wright: hunter Harden is the only muscle self-identifying muscle bear who's been willing
Les Wright: to talk to us
Les Wright: so far.
Les Wright: and and and you and I had that experience with the
Les Wright: Scott Broussard who runs the Asbury Park event, who thought
Les Wright: our basic questions were too personal.
Phil James: Right.
Les Wright: Are you kidding me?
Les Wright: anyways? And
Les Wright: and he is in another category of.
Les Wright: And this was something that
Les Wright: Benjamin and I, you know, discussed yesterday.
Les Wright: you know, a a lot of beer. Events are organized by.
Les Wright: you know, former or informal groups, and they're all volunteer, and they all fundraise for
Les Wright: groups in need. But there's also the category of
Les Wright: gay capitalists who own the events
Les Wright: and run them for personal profit. And
Les Wright: there is, you know, and and they're not even like totally clear on the concept of what bears are about.
Les Wright: And those are the also the people I'm finding unwilling to talk to me.
Phil James: Yeah.
Les Wright: So
Les Wright: so
Les Wright: I was, gonna say, you know, kind of by, you know, as my network is growing.
Les Wright: yeah, I'm I'm finding people who can kind of, you know.
Les Wright: get around that to some degree, and a lot, you know.
Les Wright: Allow me to access some of some of those kinds of folks that my direct approaches is is
Les Wright: turning them off.
Les Wright: So, anyway. So I mean, kind of, you know, in the spirit of letting everyone speak for themselves. You know, I really don't want
Les Wright: the people who are self excluding themselves to
Les Wright: you know, keep themselves out of the public record anyways. Yeah.
Phil James: Well, I think that.
Phil James: Go ahead, Mel.
Mel Baker: I think it's.
Mel Baker: I think, bear culture initially emerged in a weird era where the aesthetic was smooth and muscular. Yeah.
Mel Baker: and no facial hair, and that had
Mel Baker: more from the clone look, which was at least somewhat
Mel Baker: bearish, except not full beards.
Mel Baker: So when bears emerged in the in the early eighties in the mid eighties. That was
Mel Baker: why it was like that. And now
Mel Baker: the
Mel Baker: hyper masculine aesthetic is with facial hair and is with body. Body. Hair is okay. So it's not too surprising that
Mel Baker: that muscular culture that's, you know.
Mel Baker: middle class people or people willing to run up their credit cards and party party is
Mel Baker: kind of commodifying the movement. So I so it's interesting. It'll be interesting to track that and see how that goes that could flip on a dime it could. All of a sudden the fashion could change, and all of a sudden the fashion is to be smooth
Mel Baker: shaven again, and then those people go away. They they just, you know, instantly.
Mel Baker: So calling them muscle bears. You know what is a bear.
Mel Baker: If the bare aesthetic is being kind, and
Mel Baker: and whatever, rather than it's just, you know.
Mel Baker: trying to look like wolverine.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Mel Baker: Yeah.
Phil James: Not. There's anything wrong with that.
Mel Baker: Not that there's anything wrong with ogling wolverine. But the point is that, yeah, it's, you know.
Les Wright: Well, then, if everybody looked like that, you know
Les Wright: there is such a thing as as too much, you know.
Phil James: Yeah.
Mel Baker: Yeah, well, and and for a lot of people to maintain that requires that you do lots of steroids and lots of you know your your life and your aesthetic. Is
Mel Baker: you really, really, really have to like
Mel Baker: be investing a tremendous amount of of your life into that. And you're also
Mel Baker: we're also going to reject older, older, gay men.
Mel Baker: Yeah. But it's it's it's all of it's all of the neuroses of our community that are well known. So it's interesting that
Mel Baker: the bear community can also archiving. That information will be interesting for researchers to look at and see.
Les Wright: Yeah, yeah.
Phil James: I was just gonna say, that's kind of
Phil James: this was part of my impetus behind.
Phil James: you know less, and I largely are the only ones who can see well and Clark a little bit. We can see the
Phil James: tapestry of all the people we've interviewed so far.
Phil James: and you know we're gathering it, but nobody can see it yet. So that was
Phil James: one of my thoughts behind. Just getting these highlight reels out is just to give people a little tease of
Phil James: how, how, what the variety of our, you know there are some commonalities, but there's also a lot of variety there. So.
Les Wright: Good luck!
Phil James: I'm gonna keep putting those out there. So
Phil James: no.
Mel Baker: I also think the pressure to move away from these being just capitalist events. For Bar, you know, for entrepreneurs that are just holding big events, and, and, you know, making large profit off of
Mel Baker: their high entry fees and the big party scene
Mel Baker: we could see that shift away. Remember, I mean here in the whole bear rendezvous started because we were fucking pissed off at Ben with bear expo, because Ben was pocketing money.
Mel Baker: Yeah. And we and we were like, no, we're raising this money for the community, for Aids, charities and whatever. And so I think, as we go through this really dark political period people are going to want to be
Mel Baker: making sure their money is being isn't going to just
Mel Baker: pay for somebody's vacation home. It's gonna be there to
Mel Baker: help the community and shore up the community
Mel Baker: so well, you know.
Mel Baker: Possibly good things.
Les Wright: How am I ever going to be able to afford the purchase of my next yacht? Oh, my God!
Phil James: I thought you were gonna get a sugar, Daddy.
Les Wright: Yeah, I'm still looking for. I'm still hunting in the 95 to 120 crowd right now.
Mel Baker: Look for a sugar sugar. Look for a sugar sugar.
Phil James: Baby.
Les Wright: Cub. Yes.
Les Wright: Have to find a trust fund. Cub. Yeah.
Phil James: Yeah. No. Account.
Mel Baker: Writes Code, a company, writes Code. That's you know. That's.
Phil James: Got it.
Mel Baker: Just out of college with the newest code, writing abilities.
Phil James: AI, cub.
Les Wright: Yeah. Well, I just wanted to backtrack a minute on the
Les Wright: what you were just talking about. Mel. The
Les Wright: As I mentioned the the Provincetown bears.
Les Wright: You know our our volunteer, and they fundraise and
Les Wright: their event, you know, that draws the biggest crowd to Provincetown
Les Wright: and P-town has become insanely expensive
Les Wright: overall.
Les Wright: But the local merchants all, you know, Jack, prices up.
Les Wright: you know, the highest
Les Wright: of all when the bears come to town, so they're really.
Les Wright: you know, exploiting
Les Wright: the bare event, and
Les Wright: the P-town bears are, you know.
Les Wright: looking at you know what how to proceed, you know, from this point forward, although next summer is the 25th anniversary. So
Les Wright: they're definitely gonna continue it next year. But yeah.
Mel Baker: That sounds like a great article for
Mel Baker: American Bear for the magazine, the Bear Magazine you write for. Yeah.
Mel Baker: seeing if you can get some actual quotes, and find out if there's actual numbers about how much
Mel Baker: the rates go up and create a scandal and
Mel Baker: hold those merchants to account.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Mel Baker: You know some actual journalism.
Mel Baker: Maybe they won't like try to gouge everybody as bad.
Phil James: I'm sure that'll do it.
Mel Baker: Well.
Mel Baker: sometimes sometimes shame works really well. If you're you know.
Mel Baker: it's saying you go. You stick a you know, you stick a mic in a merchant's mouth and say, why are why prices 20% higher on these weekends? And aren't you exploiting this particular group? And isn't that discriminatory? And why don't you write? Why are these prices this high for this weekend or that weekend.
Phil James: Yeah.
Les Wright: Yeah. Well, thank you for Lighting that fire. Yeah, I will.
Phil James: Email, you're here.
Mel Baker: You don't want. You don't want to. Yeah, like, like, I'm doing any work at all for anybody else.
Mel Baker: or just over just doing too much.
Mel Baker: so
Mel Baker: yeah, that would be a
Mel Baker: that might be a great freelance story. If you know a freelance bear, that's a journalist.
Mel Baker: because you don't want the pro. The the local organizers don't want to do that. They don't want to piss off the the community. It's got to be. Somebody comes coming in from outside.
Mel Baker: That puts the pressure on. And maybe you get that written up in the local newspaper there or into the State. One of the State newspapers
Mel Baker: and saying, Are you discriminating against this group? And yeah, yeah.
Phil James: And that that bear group, because Les and I've done several of the I've never been to P-town Bear Weekend, but less, and I have done several interviews, and
Phil James: they're extremely minimally organized.
Phil James: you know. I don't want to minimize the work that they do. But they do that weekend. That is all that organization does. So there's no
Phil James: ongoing underlying.
Phil James: You know. They do a lot of work. And it's I'm sure it's a huge amount of work. And it's it's, you know, 1110 months of the year, 11 months of the year.
Phil James: But they don't have.
Phil James: You know, other people who are working on other things for the rest of the community. You know they don't have somebody who's going to Kiwanis and blah blah.
Les Wright: Yeah, it's.
Phil James: Just that weekend. So yeah, they're not gonna.
Mel Baker: That's that's what happened to boss of bears of San Francisco, you know. I mean putting on rendezvous was like a 11 month project. It was.
Mel Baker: you know. It was a lot of work, and I think it made it. There were fewer and fewer events that weren't geared toward I toward rendezvous, and, as I understand it, after I left.
Mel Baker: a lot of the bears just were burnt out. They didn't want to do bear rendezvous more. Yeah.
Mel Baker: yeah.
Phil James: Okay, I wrote down very. I mean, our transcript will be our transcript. I just wrote down muscle bears having a big impact on bear culture
Phil James: and Petetown bears, does it right? But local merchants really make hey? Good news article, that's all they put in a
Phil James: in our note.
Mel Baker: Unless you might approach something like the Advocate. I don't. I'm not really plugged into which are the big.
Mel Baker: gay publications these days, but you might. If you think you can, write that story about the muscle bears if you think you've got enough quotes.
Mel Baker: and you've got enough insight into it.
Mel Baker: I would
Mel Baker: pitch trying to get an article that you wrote.
Mel Baker: As you know, Mr. Bear, history, that you could do that you could get in one of the big publications
Mel Baker: outside of the you know, outside of the bear community. That might be a real interesting place to go.
Mel Baker: I don't know what the
Mel Baker: I don't know what the Lgbtq
Mel Baker: magazine ecosystem is anymore. I still see the Advocate occasionally, but I don't. You know.
Les Wright: Well, yeah. And and that is a challenge. Because, to my knowledge.
Les Wright: there aren't any career publications that do
Les Wright: you know, investigative journalism, that it's mostly, you know, selling products. Yeah.
Phil James: We're going big.
Mel Baker: That's always that's always been the thing, but usually that a lot of those, even then a lot will have like an article that's an investigative piece.
Mel Baker: and you can sell it to them if you're willing to do it. I would do it more for the
Mel Baker: awareness about your work. And is this as a branding thing for you, and
Mel Baker: secondarily for us? And you know, take whatever their rate is
Mel Baker: to do it. You know you have the chops where, and you also can show some of your clip, your recent clips, and
Mel Baker: the fact that you've written the book and things should give you the entree to do that. I just I just don't know what the.
Mel Baker: But the ecosystem for that is anymore.
Mel Baker: Yeah, yeah.
Phil James: The I think the Advocate has.
Phil James: I think they're co-publishing now with
Phil James: out magazine.
Phil James: So they publish one issue a month.
Les Wright: Hmm.
Phil James: Back to back. So you're flipping through the Advocate, and you get to like page 40. And all of a sudden all the pages are upside down, because out magazine is published on the back.
Les Wright: Oh, okay.
Phil James: So I think they went into. At least I think it's out magazine. I can't find it.
Phil James: I heard you.
Mel Baker: People are publishing an actual magazine magazine. It's mostly
Mel Baker: you know, it's mostly digital. But.
Les Wright: Yeah.
Mel Baker: But there's lots of image, you know. It's a it's a good magazine story, lots of visuals. It's you can do a lot of visuals. You can. It's kind of a scoldy sort of thing that
Mel Baker: it talks a little bit about the history of the community. And you know it's it's it's got that. It's got appeal for a good 5,000 word article.
Mel Baker: Okay? Yeah.
Les Wright: And well, and I mean it makes sense as a
Les Wright: as a kind of a pitch pitch, as
Les Wright: hey? You know, the bear community exists, and
Les Wright: this is who we are.
Mel Baker: Yeah, this is, this is how we emerge. This is what it was. This is, you know, has has has the headline, could be something like, you know, has the bear community been
Mel Baker: subsumed by
Mel Baker: circuit culture party circuit?
Mel Baker: By the circuit culture, you know.
Les Wright: So, yeah, yeah.
Mel Baker: Yeah.
Phil James: Cool. Okay. Anything else? Les.
Les Wright: No.
Phil James: Anything, Mel.
Mel Baker: No, Mel always has great ideas for other people to do work. So thank you for letting me always do that without actually producing any work.
Phil James: To me on the highway at this time.
Mel Baker: Yeah, I I'm sorry, and I'm sorry I have been so
Mel Baker: unproductive in in assisting with with the work.
Mel Baker: because of just
Mel Baker: building up to the election and things. And and now we're now we're really trying to refocus the San Francisco public press and figure it. Now, where the fuck. Do we go?
Mel Baker: You know, investigating corruption in City Hall? It's kind of like.
Mel Baker: okay, yeah. Well, the Federal Government's turning into, you know, fascism. And we're gonna be focusing on the minor corruption at City Hall make a lot of sense.
Mel Baker: So.
Phil James: Well, that's part of why we haven't a whole organization, right? Because.
Phil James: you know, we have new blood, like people like Clark who come in and do this amazing piece of work that is, both in his wheelhouse
Phil James: and something that the rest of us are not doing for a variety of reasons.
Phil James: and you know we'll make use of that. So that's part of what makes it an organization. So
Phil James: you help with the you help. You helped light the original fire, Mel. So don't.
Mel Baker: I will say this, that I think that
Mel Baker: doing this sort of archiving work is really important, because the thing that's going to be really important, is strengthening
Mel Baker: small communities and organizations, and that archiving this period, no matter what happens over the next decade.
Mel Baker: it's going to be really important for people in the future to be able to look back and and see what was here. And
Mel Baker: you know, it's it's just.
Mel Baker: It's critically important that these these things don't get lost.
Mel Baker: Yeah.
Phil James: Great. Okay, Clark. Anything
Phil James: specific from you? No, nothing from Clark
Phil James: Clack. Why, the map on your wall is that viewpoint to like? Where is that it's United States and just Australia. That's why I'm confused.
Clark Geiling: I used to work for the National Archives. I did an internship there. I was there. The Coast Guard emailed us and asked if we could like, give them a vintage poster to put in their office in Louisiana, and I was able to find this, which is a vintage poster
Clark Geiling: from, I think, like the early 19 hundreds that someone had hand drawn. That's very geographically inaccurate. But it's an advertisement for the Coast Guard. So they made a print of it, because they thought it was a cool find.
Clark Geiling: That'd be great.
Les Wright: Very cool.
Mel Baker: Where are you? Where are you working now?
Clark Geiling: I'm working at Boston College. I'm a librarian there now.
Mel Baker: Cool.
Les Wright: And where are you living.
Clark Geiling: I'm in Brookline, Massachusetts, which is like right outside of Boston.
Les Wright: Yeah, yeah, I I lived in Brookline at 1 point. Yeah.
Les Wright: So yeah, kind of a privacy. I'm I'm going to Boston.
Les Wright: soon the weekend before
Les Wright: Thanksgiving to to visit a bear friend
Les Wright: he lives in, I think Medford.
Clark Geiling: Oh, wow!
Les Wright: It would be great if if we could meet in person while I'm there. If you're in town.
Clark Geiling: I probably will be in town. There's a chance. So my partner's parents live in Vermont, and we're organizing Thanksgiving with them. So we're trying to choose which weekend we want to do that, but probably it will be the weekend of thanksgiving. So just like, send me a message, and then we can set something up.
Les Wright: Alrighty will do.
Clark Geiling: No, I'd love to meet you in person.
Les Wright: Same here as well, very cool.
Mel Baker: Yeah.
Clark Geiling: Also, I think I'm gonna try to go to Provincetown Bear weekend this year. We have, like a group of friends we're trying to organize to go with. So I might see you there also.
Les Wright: Okay. Yeah.
Phil James: Alright. Great! Alright thanks, folks.
Phil James: good meeting, despite being small. But I think we've
Phil James: work through some stuff, and
Phil James: I'll reach out to our friend Mike about Iml and see if we can get some details there.
Phil James: Okay.
Les Wright: Alrighty!
Mel Baker: Take care!