Events for January 2011

Saturday, January 2, 5-8PM: CIGARS, BOOTS & BEER at Redwing, hosted by California LeatherSir Miles B. First Sunday of each month.

Wednesday, January 5, 9PM: PUPPY NIGHT at the Eagle, hosted by Pup DragZ and San Diego Puppy Play (SDPP). First Wednesday of each month.

Friday, January 14, 9PM-1AM: DRESS IT UP/STRIP IT DOWN at the Eagle, hosted by Jerry A. This has become the biggest fetishmen's event in San Diego, and, due to popular demand, it's being held every month!  Second Friday of each month. Here are a few reviews, if you haven't been to one yet.

Thursday, January 20th, 6PM: LEADERSHIP SUMMIT DINNER on the patio at DiMille's, hosted by Papa Tony. Inviting all interested parties who want to share ideas on building community in San Diego by using new, social-network techniques.

Friday, January 21st, 8:30PM-1AM: FRIDAY NIGHT BEAT AND GREET, downtown, hosted by Bryan Teague - American Leatherboy 2010, tiger - Ms San Diego Leather 2010, caryl - San Diego's premier Sea Monkey Trainer, and Mike Underwood - San Diego's very own Curmudgeonly teddy bear. Third Friday of each month.

Sunday, January 23rd, 4PM-8PM: FETISHMEN DANCE at the Flame, hosted by Papa Tony. We'll be announcing this dance-party's monthly schedule for the rest of 2011 shortly - The end of the month doesn't work well in the long run, because of conflicts with San Diego Gay Pride, Dore Alley, Folsom Street Fair, Thanksgiving and Christmas! Here are some reviews for you to enjoy.

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FetishMen Dance at the Flame

Sunday, January 23rd, 4PM-8PM: hosted by Papa Tony.

LOCATION: The Flame, 3780 Park Boulevard, San Diego, CA 92103-3639

We'll be announcing the monthly dates for 2011 shortly - The end of the month doesn't work well in the long run, because of conflicts with San Diego Gay Pride, Dore Alley, Folsom Street Fair, Thanksgiving and Christmas!

Now that Bacchus House is closed, there aren't enough monthly dance parties targeted specifically at grownup males, so we're getting something new started that is NOT what everybody expects. Don't expect the standard, stiff-and-awkward sort of event.

These dance parties have a host, dedicated to making sure that everybody is relaxed, happy, welcome and having fun. It makes a crucial difference. By the time the party hits its peak, you'll be able to count the teeth on the super-diverse crowd on the dance floor... they'll be grinning from ear to ear because they'll be so happy. You deserve to be just as happy, so here's how it works:

- The nicer you are, the more fun you'll have. My events attract well-socialized adults. The druggies, the angry folks and the Attitude Queens tend to get really creeped out and leave. You have my personal word of honor that nobody will ever treat you shabbily at any of my parties. How can I make such a promise? Because the sort of people that come running to my events tend to be just as alert and unwilling to tolerate any harshing of the vibe as I am, and it sets a totally different, vibrantly happy tone.

- You don't have to bring a protective coating of friends, just to avoid feeling lonely.  You don't even have to wait for a dance-partner… Just throw your ass right in the middle of the dance-party, and DANCE. I promise you, everybody really, truly IS dancing with everyone else there, in brotherhood. It won't be the typical bunch of isolated individuals, feeling awkward and alone. The energy will spiral through the roof, and everybody will hit Diva Overload at the same time, over and over again.  It's an amazing endorphin-rush of happiness.

- You do NOT have to worry about fitting in. Nobody cares about how well you dance, or whether you resemble a porn model. If you're nice, and you love to dance without a care, you're in. Nothing else matters.

- DJ Rob is eager to build mutual affinity with our crowd, and he wants to please us as part of the same pleasurable vibe, month after month. Expect fun, playful music that is easy to dance to.

Bring the news to your friends that San Diego FINALLY has a regularly-scheduled, joyful and satisfying dance-party again.  We're long overdue, frankly.

DRESS IT UP/STRIP IT DOWN Monthly Party

The biggest fetishmen's event in San Diego, month after month!  Here are some reviews.
Repeats on the fourth Friday of every month.

9PM - 2AM

Eagle San Diego

3040 North Park Way, San Diego,  CA 92104-3626

(619) 295-8072

Presented by FetishMenSanDiego

Wear your hottest, sexiest gear - Leather, uniform, rubber, fetishwear. You know - the stuff that you can never find a good reason to wear in public, so that it normally gathers dust in your closet. It's time to shake the dust off!  If it makes your dick hard when you wear it, we want to see it.

Or, if you don't have any of that stuff, we want to see you with your shirt off.

We really, really do.

At this point, when I'm greeting a new guy at an event, and I tell him that, he gets all hung-up, worried that his body isn't "perfect enough". SCREW that. We're ALL worried about not being able to match up to the heavily-photoshopped porn that we see every day.  

Here's the good news - At FMSD events, you can be yourself... relaxed, happy and secure.  We want every age, every color, every body-syle, every experience-level. There's no "A-List" here. We are all on the same level, and we are all dying to relax and leave the concerns outside.  We're gay men in the modern internet age, and we all know what a dick looks like, so the sex part is handled already. 

Now, it's time to add in even more brotherhood.

At our events, everybody clusters together within about a foot of each other, leaving the rest of the bar empty. It is so very Tribal. New, shy guys forget to be shy, and just dive right in.

If it's brotherhood you've been wanting, then get your ass away from the computer - The Real Thing is here. We want you to be with us.  Just be a nice man, be proud of who you are, and you're in.

Leadership Summit Dinner at DiMille's

Please share this message with others who might be interested:

LEADERSHIP SUMMIT DINNER, hosted by Papa Tony

Inviting all folks who want to share ideas on building community in San Diego by using new, social-network techniques.

Thursday, January 20th, 2011, 6PM to 9PM.

RSVP required beforehand (see the bottom of this message for details)

DiMille's Italian Restaurant (we'll be meeting out on the patio)
3492 Adams Ave, San Diego CA 92116 (on the corner of 35th and Adams in Normal Heights)
(619) 283-3153

This is NOT a sales event. It's a way for us to learn from each other and to reinforce friendships between diverse groups in town.

Who is invited: Anyone in San Diego's community who wants to:

- Help somehow in building a better community

- Volunteer effectively

- Build a constituency that grows over time

- Shift their affinity-group into the next phase

We want ALL levels of experience, from complete newbies, to grizzled old-timers like me.  If you have a fire in your belly because you want to make a powerful difference in the world, you're in. We want Bears, Leathermen and Leatherwomen, Rodeo, Sisters, Imperial Court, Pups, Rubber, Pansexual, and more. The sort of people who are invited are what I call "The Golden Core": the ten percent of any club that achieve ninety percent of the results. People who do good works out of the goodness of their hearts. We have a lot in common.

In 1998, there were 26 affinity-groups dedicated to kink/leather/fetish. Now, very few are able to keep their heads above water because the Internet has vaporized our community. Our entire culture is becoming socially retarded because we are all losing our ability to connect with the larger community on more than a trivial ADHD level.  It's slowly killing off clubs of every kind.

That's the bad news.  

The good news is that we have new tools available to us online that allow us to grow our constituencies and build even better affinity-groups that offer what the Internet does NOT, and never will. I'll be sharing what I've been discovering in my work with FetishMenSanDiego (right around 670 followers as of mid-January 2011, up from zero in June 2010, with 58 new members in the last seven days). I also want to learn from others what my elderly brain has difficulty absorbing on its own. Let's all share new ideas, brainstorm together, and share friendship. New, wacky ideas will be greatly valued and encouraged. Young people with youthful ideas will be celebrated.

The folks at DiMille's are eager to host our crowd.  Please RSVP with papatony AT mac DOT com if you want to get on the list, so that the staff can plan for the proper number of attendees.

Al Saadia has volunteered to write up what has been discussed, on an ongoing basis, for the benefit of the people who can't attend due to constraints of distance or time.

Upcoming Events

There are some events coming up quite soon:

- Friday, December 3rd, 7-9PM:  Annual Winter Inter-Club Holiday Party. It'll be a hoot, and we will be very, VERY welcome there.

- Sunday, December 5th, 5-8PM:  Cigars, Boots & Beer at Redwing. I'll be celebrating my 55th birthday at this event!

- Friday, December 17th, 8:30PM-1AM; Friday Night Meet & Beat downtown San Diego.

The rest of December is going to be locked-up with holiday parties at the office and in your families, so let's enjoy some time off.

- We will NOT be holding the next FetishMen Dance three days after Christmas day.  The next one will be on January 30th, and we will be pushing hard to promote it as a big, splashy monthly event.

Things are going to get VERY INTERESTING after the first of the year:

- I'll be gathering together a team of dedicated men to make plans for 2011 and beyond. The key themes will be innovation and risk-taking, along with solidifying the best favorites of the recent past. I'll be making announcements on this topic in a few weeks.

- I plan to hand away the keys to successful events such as DRESS IT UP/STRIP IT DOWN and CIGARS, BOOTS & BEER,  empowering new leaders in our community to run them as monthly events. I see my role as the guy who kick-starts the engine on new, experimental events, and then hands them away to trusted, enthusiastic, and community-minded men, so that they can get their chance to shine, and build their credibility.`

- San Diego Leather Pride is coming up in early March. Let's all do our part to make it a big success. I can think of several extraordinary men who would be superb candidates for Mr. San Diego Leather 2011.

- If you're going to International Mr. Leather 2011 weekend in late May in Chicago, NOW would be a really good time to make sure that your travel and lodging plans are completed.

- New, highly-motivated leaders are rising in our midst who want to schedule regular play-parties, and to resurrect the Red Hankies group. Needless to say, let's all pitch in to help them achieve their dreams!  I'll have more news later on.

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Help Add New Members to FMSD in an Innovative Way

Hat-tip to the brilliant Jerry A. for the idea…

If your cell-phone has the ability to browse the web, please add this link to your favorites (instructions for the iPhone and Android are at the bottom of this message):

http://fetishmensandiego.org/Join-FMSD

Here's why:

Let's say you're at a bar, or a party, or on a date, and you're talking to a guy who is eager to get connected with a local, supportive network of trustworthy, kinky men. Rather than try to dig out a grimy card from the depths of your wallet (IF you have one), just open the page on your phone, hand it to him so that he can type in his email and maybe a note of introduction, verify that it's accurately entered, and hit "Submit"... The invisible "Dominate" button only becomes visible if the phone senses that it's appropriate for the guy holding the phone :-)

The page is optimized for mobile web, and allows people to easily and securely add their emails to our ever-growing mailing list.  It also "recycles" back to the beginning, so that you can easily keep adding more and more people as the evening continues.

I've been enticing people into joining the group, but I've found that old-style enrollment methods don't work well:

- If the enthusiastic men of our group hand out 250 highly-professional-looking cards, only one new member shows up on the list. That's a terrible rate of return. Those cards aren't cheap, either.

- If I bring a clipboard with a sign-up sheet to an event and tell folks what is newly available in San Diego's Tribe, men will gladly hand over their email addresses, and less than one percent will un-subscribe later on.  This works really well in comparison to all other methods. There are several problems, though - No matter how carefully people sign up, there are at least 20 percent that are never added because their emails are unclearly written due to darkness, lack of reading-glasses, poor penmanship due to dependence on keyboards for the last few decades, or whatever. Plus, there is only one guy with a clipboard, IF I remember to bring it.

- Don't even get me started on flyers, mailers, handouts, posters or postcards.  It's not 1982 any more.

Our new, mobile-optimized link multiplies the effectiveness because:

- The phone has a built-in light for data-entry in a dark environment.  If we ask the guy filling out the form to enter and then verify the data, there is zero likelihood that later re-entry will be inaccurate. You MIGHT want to hand over your reading-glasses if he forgot to bring his, or hand the phone to a younger guy with better eyes!

- It increases the network of willing advocates for the group, and empowers YOU to influence how things go in the future.  If the good-hearted men that I've met at every single one of our events are ready for better days, then I know that you'll  be happy to share your experience by helping to add more men to the mix.  Think of it as an investment in decades of joyful brotherhood for us all!

IPHONE INSTRUCTIONS:

Open the link at the top of this message, using your iPhone. Tap the icon at the bottom center of the screen, and choose "Add to Home Screen", then tap "Add". This will add a nice "FMSD" icon to the end of your iPhone's final home page, ready to tap when you meet an enthusiastic and sociable man who would thrive in our environment of joyful acceptance..

ANDROID INSTRUCTIONS:


Open the link at the top of this message, using your Android phone.  Hit the menu button, tap Add to Bookmarks, add it, and then hold down your finger on that new bookmark, and then "Add Shortcut to Home'.

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