TRAVELING LEATHER BAR
Here's the idea: Once a month, we head off to a non-leather bar and gather together for some fun… Drink specials, snacks, music and cruising. The difference is that the bar in question (say, Flicks, Richs, Eden, Kickers, The Hole, Pecs, Numbers, wherever) has had a chance to publicize the event beforehand for at least a month… posters inside the bar, sending the news out via their email list and Facebook, maybe even ads in the local gay papers, the whole thing. We've also told the hundreds and hundreds of our regular fetishmen, and everybody arrives in a big, happy crowd.
The men who will be showing up will know quite well what to expect, and they'll be there specifically to find out more about our group, or plans and our Tribal brotherhood. There will be drink specials, snacks, and fun ideas that will be unique to each location. We will be welcomed with gladness.
This idea accomplishes several things:
It's always great to have an excuse to get together. We're a jolly crew, and we know how to have fun.
It also attracts a crowd that we don't normally have access to, PARTICULARLY newbies who have been waiting to be invited to give in to their secret fantasies. When we did the earlier version of this concept at The Hole five days ago, we got 36 new members, and precious few of them have had extensive experience inside the scene. This is how we build our Tribe, by investing in the future of our community.
We're doing an upgraded version of the concept later this month:
Saturday, February 26th, 7PM: Cowboys and Kinksters at Kickers, hosted by San Diego Gay Rodeo (GSGRA) and FetishMenSanDiego. Dance lessons, competitive games with fun prizes for contestant, and a crowd jammed with leathermen and cowboys.
We will continue to follow along with the usual places and ways, and, once a month, we can also reach out and welcome our newest brothers to join us for better days together. Think of it as a combination of Membership Drive and recruiting for new talent!
The bars that I have approached have been INCREDIBLY receptive to the idea, much more so than anybody expected on either side of the negotiations.
So far, this is just the bare-bones, beginning version of the idea, but I am very emphatically convinced that it's a winner. The most-important point to make is, if we continue to do this, we will need EVERY single one of us to be Julie the Cruise Director, reaching out to the newbies and possible new fetishmen all around us. No shy clusterings of leathermen surrounded by people who don't know how to break through. The friendlier, the more authentic and the more welcoming we are, the more we stand out in stark contrast to the usual "Internet Flake" standard of behavior we're all drowning in as a culture.
The payoff of doing the heavy recruiting we've done in the last seven months has been an enormous amount of new leaders, volunteers, events and ideas that benefit us all. FMSD has been attracting and KEEPING more and more young men who want to be respected as equals among us. This has not been the pattern for a lot of leathermen's clubs worldwide. Now, we can take our brotherhood out on the road and be the jolly men we love to be!
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