From: rdonahue@spdcc.com (Bob Donahue)
Subject: Re: Ugly
Organization: insert anything here
Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1992 16:04:59 GMT

Furr@cup.portal.com (George Dalton Madison) writes:
>Max Rochlin writes:
>>Face it, George, bears are uninteresting to mainstream gay media.
>>Only one mag and two  or three 'zines focus on bears.  What little
>>market there is for such publications doesn't generate enough profits
>>to be interesting to mainstream gay press.

>This simply isn't true.  _HONCHO_ has done a couple of "bear"
>oriented issues [Oct. 1990 and Jul. 1992], and even in Twinkie
>Central West Hollywood, those issues sold out noticeably faster
>than average -- this from one of the managers of Circus of Books I
>happened to chat with one day.  

	I can't speak for the 7/92 issue but the 10/90 issue
was more "faux-bear" than bear... The models had all the parts
but just didn't "have it"...

	A few months earlier, Mandate had a really cute bear 
who also was in another mag (that someone STOLE from my house!)
who was about the best bear since the "Fur Trapper" spread in 1984
(GDM - don't forget they had this guy AGAIN in 1985 in a really
awful spread that had his CLOTHES on most of the time to hide
his fur....).

	The mainstream mags have pretty much dropped anything
that resembles "classic" bears/clones since the mid-80's.  I've
realized for a long time that if I pick up a mag (Honcho,Numbers,
Blueboy,etc.) from pre-1985 I'm very likely to see someone I find
physically hot.  Conversely, after 1985 it's a completely different
story.

	Now one CAN argue that the gay-porn industry took off
around then and instead of making N mags with a balanced clientele,
they all went in homogeneous directions.  So, the longer-lived
mags (the three mentioned above) went mostly for the clean-shaven
moussed look (shiny hair), but other mags came around to address
the "needs" of other people.  While there was a period of time
from 1985-1990 or so that it was very hard for me to find anything
I really liked in porn, after that it hasn't been so hard...

	I subscribe to _Daddy_ and buy Bulk Male regularly.
I usedf to get Bear but they got away from what I would call the
"Classic" bear and more into the biker-bear look pretty much 
exclusively.  That's OK because the other two more than make
up for the difference...  And I don't even get things like
"Husky", "the Big Ad", "Bear Fax", "Chasse D'Ours", etc.
And biker-bear/leather-bear/fringe-bear lovers need their space
too --- my only regret is that Bear tends to be seen as one of the 
centers of  the bear culture and I don't think it really represents it.
Right now I don't think there is a nexus, and of course the concept
of a nexus might be ridiculous (is there a nexus for the GBLO*-community
as a whole?  No.)

	If you were to count the # of bear models in all of the
mags out, I think you'd find there are more models than ever.
If you were to look at the %age of bears et alia in the gay porn
industry it might be the same or less (or more?) --- who knows.
In terms of porn, I certainly get all I need...  :-)

	Now, in the gay mainstream things are a different
story (i.e. non-porn images).  I think there is where we
need to claim space and demand more visibility.

>One just wonders why they don't
>"get the clue" from that kind of result.  Or, there's the matter
>of the infamous "Fur Trapper" layout _Honcho_ ran a number of
>years ago; they admitted on the letters page they were *buried*
>in mail asking to see more of him [this being in 1984, before
>_BEAR MAGAZINE_ came along].

>So it's obvious that there IS a sizable market for this kind of
>thing, aside from the simple proof of _BEAR_'s circulation
>figures.  I don't expect any of the "mainstream" gay skin rags
>to go "all Bear", but one would expect to see a noticeably
>greater frequency of fur.

	Careful - I have it that Bear's scripts have *dropped* in
the last year...

	I think the frequency is OK - it's just all concentrated in
a few places.  That doesn't make the bears there taste any less "sweet".
When I start seeing GBLO*-bears on the cover of the Advocate in any
regular frequency or in other mainstream GBLO*-things I'll be more
happy...

BBC
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