TetRefine

It's interesting, because the Starbucks where the whole thing happened is right in the middle of the most tony neighborhood in Philadelphia. Very wealthy, very exclusive area to live with lots of high-end shopping and dining, so it does not surprise me that they got jumpy when two black guys "dressed like black guys" came in. I cannot tell you the number of times I've used a Starbucks bathroom without buying anything. Whenever I'm in New York City and need to go to the bathroom, my first thought is "where is the nearest Starbucks?" Yet I'm young and white so they've literally never once bothered me doing it. The city took care of this issue in a heartbeat, and settled. If only they could be that efficient about solving the true problems this city faces. Another topic for another forum though...

I have a three-way bromance with two of my old roommates from college. One of them is bi, and the other one is the gayest straight man I've ever known. I also have a good friend of mine who is gay who, in the most accurate way, can only be described as my Saturday night soulmate. We go out to the clubs and parties a lot, and for some reason we just totally click. We actually are two very different types of people, but what we really bond over is our care-free, live it for the moment attitude that we fully embrace. I can tell him anything I've done, am doing, or want to do without any fear he will judge me or put me down, and he the same with me. We've gotten up to some wild things in the time we've been friends, but I know I can always trust him and count on him. We often get mistaken for boyfriends when we go out dancing together, because we dance so intimately with each other. To us, it's not necessarily intimate but rather just the level of comfort we feel around each other. It's never gotten sexual and it never will. Neither one of us wants that. Andrew Holleran once wrote that "The friend you danced with, when you had no lover, was the most important person in your life." While both of us have significant others, in certain ways we are the most important people in each other's gay lives. It's hard to describe the kind of bond we have over the lifestyle we live, but to me it is very much an intimate one in it's own unique way.

Congrats guys! Hopefully the next time I come your way or you come mine we can have dinner again.

Yessss!

Yeah its crazy that he had to retire from performing in 2016 because of health issues at only 26. Though knowing the EDM/club scene, I can definitely see how being totally immersed in that world non-stop can destroy your health.

He was so young, so talented, and was the artist who first got me interested in EDM. I have so many good memories of dancing long into the night to his songs. RIP my man.

This song is amazing.

The Church and the Tradesman sounds interesting! I will have to go check that one out.

I’ll have to try it! Thank you!

Hah, I've been to The Cock several times on my trips down that way, and it is still pretty raunchy, though obviously I don't know what it was like back in the day. There is a monthly party in New York called MEAT that has a heavy BDSM/leather theme to it, and a lot of what they portrayed in the bar scenes in Cruising happen at this party...very openly.

Yeah I actually saw it before I saw the movie itself. It was interesting when I first saw it, but forgot totally about it until a friend and I were talking about good gay movies over dinner and he brought it up. I went back and watched it, and while the plot was a bit choppy, it's a fascinating anthropological look into a bygone era of gay New York.

While Clancy wasn't necessarily the best writer (his characters were as flat as carbon paper), his scenarios and how he played them out were awesome. Red Storm Rising and The Cardinal of the Kremlin were my favorites. While I've seen the movie adaption of Patriot Games, I've never read that one surprisingly. Maybe I'll have to go do that sometime soon.

I just saw Cruising (1980) with Al Pacino for the first time. While the editing made the plot choppy and a bit confusing at times, it was a fascinating look into the hardcore leather/BDSM scene of New York in the 70s. That kind of stuff is rarely seen nowadays.

Nope. Again, he’s just another generic clone white boy that they plaster literally everywhere as the standard of “hot” or “attractive”. That is not my type at all.

I usually hate superhero movies. The last I saw was Batman vs. Superman, and it was so boring I fell asleep, and I vowed never again to waste money on going to see another one. Yet, I keep hearing how great Black Panther is, and how just about every movie theater in the city is selling out its weekend showings. I'm very tempted to give this one a try to see if it breaks the mold of the same generic crap that is just about every superhero movie in the last ten years. On a side note, the one superhero movie I did enjoy was The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises wasn't bad either. But Captain America, Avengers, Thor, Superman, Spider-Man, etc. have literally all been the exact same plot and scenes rehashed ad nauseam.

I once read a book that had a section of it set in Philadelphia. The first mistake they made was saying that numbered streets run east/west. Wrong, they run north/south in most of the city. Named streets run east/west. Secondly, it described the first neighborhood I ever lived in here as an ethnic-white, working class neighborhood run by the Mafia. While that neighborhood certainly used to be a Little Italy where the Mob controlled everything, that hasn't been true since the 80s, and the book was set in 2011. It's now a very desirable, diverse neighborhood where you can find people from just about every corner of the globe. Also, the Mafia hasn't controlled much of anything in Philadelphia since it murdered itself into oblivion decades ago. I was so annoyed at the lack of even basic research that I stopped reading after that.

Just about every train running into the city for the parade that day was already crammed to capacity after leaving the terminal station. Some people who had tickets couldn't even get on if they didn't go to the first station. It was absolutely crazy. I had friends from the suburbs come to stay with me Wednesday night for it, and some of them had to park 20-30 minute walk away from my place. I live very close to South Broad Street, and unfortunately my neighborhood got absolutely flooded with trash and people peeing in the street before/during/after the parade. All in all though it was a lot of fun.

Well I just got back from the parade. They estimated almost two million people lined Broad St and the Parkway for it, and I think that's a pretty damn good estimate. It was beyond packed for miles.

One good thing about the Eagles winning is that the entire school district is closing Thursday for the parade, so I get the day off. It is expected to literally shut down the city. Ironically, despite living through 10 major sports championships as a Boston fan, this will be my first ever championship parade.

Oh yes, the tired old trope of blaming millennials....

The reports of Philly fans have been way over exaggerated, and a few incidents have been used to paint all fans, which isn’t even close to the truth. Minnesota fans came into downtown Philly, started talking trash, covered the Rocky statue in purple and then took a giant group photo on the Art Museum. They purposely antagonized Philly fans, and then wondered why they weren’t welcomed with open arms. Sorry but that fake “Minnesota nice” crap doesn’t pass the smell test of the East Coast attitude.

Ehhhh, he's blonde, with a beard and generic white-guy "good looks". Not my type at all.

Funny enough, I wrote a letter to Kurt Warner when I was in 4th grade as part of a writing assignment (circa 2001). I got a hand-written letter and a signed football card of him back less then two weeks later, both of which I still have.

I'm a Patriots fan living in the beating heart of Eagles country. If the Eagles win, I'll never hear the end of it. If they lose, people are going to hate me even more.

The last couple of weeks, my gym here in the city has been under threat of closure. A few months ago, the building was bought by a New York real estate company that has a track record of demolishing older structures and building condos. The building sits right in the heart of the Gayborhood here in Philly, which in turn is located in the heart of Center City. There has been a huge influx of luxury apartments being built the last ten years, like any other big city in America. I guess it was only a matter of time before the Gayborhood succumbed to that. The gym has over 4,000 members, many of whom are gay with strong attachments to the Gayborhood. It serves as a gym, but also a gay social and community center. I've been a member here for the 3.5 years I've lived in the city, and it's been like a second home to me. In those three and a half years, apartments, jobs, boyfriends, fuck-buddies, and friends have all come and gone, but the gym stayed the same and was always there for me. I got to know a lot of people in the scene from this gym, and it's where I first hit on my boyfriend over two years ago (he was terrified of me at first, lol). The point it, it is more then just a gym to thousands of guys, and now it is closing next week for good. After being Philadelphia's gay gym for 3 decades, it's going to be gone forever. And that is genuinely depressing to me. Everyone at the gym is being forced to disperse to multiple other gyms, thus completely diluting the sense of community the place brought. Sigh. Unfortunately, the Gayborhood has been changing a lot since the first time I stepped foot it in in 2010. 3 gay bars have closed in those years, while only one new one has opened. The best gay club in the city, Woody's, has now been overrun with obnoxious straight people and mostly abandoned by the gay guys who made it such a great spot. Voyuer, the popular after hours club across the street, is starting to suffer the same fate, with more and more straight people invading and ruining the things that made it such an amazing place to dance until the wee hours of the morning. Unfortunately, the building that houses the gym also houses another gay bar, Tabu, and 18 other businesses with a strong LGBT focus and clientele. There is also a beautiful mural painted several years ago of Gloria Casarez, a well-known LGBT rights activist from Philadelphia who died several years ago (picture posted below). All of that will be demolished to make way for most likely another luxury high rise, and further water down one of the most fun, unique, and funky neighborhoods of this city. I guess this is a byproduct of gay rights and the gentrification of cities. As we become more mainstreamed, we begin to lose so much of what makes us unique from the generic, mostly bland and boring straight world. I'm not quite sure anymore if it's a price worth paying, because I don't want to become like my straight friends. It's such a pre-determined, mind-numbing path that ends in a suburban track home with 2.2 kids and a hour long commute to a job you hate. No, I want what I had in the beginning and what the older gay guys had back in the day. I don't want to be assimilated anymore. I'm okay with being part of a minority that is different and unique. We've lost so much of that, especially here in Philadelphia, and I'm not sure we'll ever get it back. It's time for me to start looking elsewhere in the world.