Wedding Bells and Bears

It was quite a day yesterday.

Gay folks in relationships here in San Francisco are all racing to City Hall to get their marriage license before it gets nullified. A restraining order could be in place as early as Tuesday, so in the meantime the License Bureau is staying open all weekend to get as many processed as possible. Use this link for an eye witness account with photos: http://www.authenti-city.com/friday.htm

To celebrate this history-making event, the guys from Guerilla Queer Bar brought a DJ to throw a spontaneous party in the Castro last night. With such short notice, nobody knew about it and it kinda flopped. On top of that, the old fogeys in the neighborhood complained about the noise.

It did give me a chance to hang with 3 couples that got hitched that day. They had all done “committment ceremonies” at home and even did the “faux wedding” at City Hall with Willie Brown. Each said this one was “different” and felt more real. They came down to the Castro right after their wedding dinner (“Our reception cost $50 a plate! We even ordered dessert wine!”), and talked about getting the Honeymoon Suite at Steamworks.

Another reason that the Castro was a ghost town was because everyone was South of Market for Bear Rendevous. I wandered down to the Eagle to check it. It was a festive crowd, but I always feel out of place there lately if I go alone, so I didn’t stay long. Naturally, the hottest guys were not bears. Standing in front of me in the drink line were two skinny alternative boys in a lip lock. Certainly not bears, but WOOF, they were hot, and attracted a lot of attention from the bears.

Over the years I’ve discovered the sad fact that most bears aren’t really into other bears. Most bears are attracted to the same type of men that every other gay man is attracted to. AS proof of my theory, look at the flyer below. Do you see guys like Carl Hardwick running around at bear events, or is it just wishful thinking? (I think he’s straight, too.) Creating a “community” for bears is a step in the right direction for eroticizing another alternative look, but there is still a long way to go to make larger, hairy guys more widely accepted as sexy.

I picked up this flyer at the Eagle, and although it’s the first I’ve heard of it, it sounds great. Mark you calendar for Sunday, August 15 for the first Bear Street Fair.