rickps | Bears Exposed

Location: Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

Note: Time shift alert. This post and the ones that follow are not in any real time

Northern Exposure is one of Australia's major bear runs. Organized by Brisbears, the local club, this year was its 10th anniversary. Although I didn't hear a number, I'd guess the registration at about 300. Overall, the event was nicely configured with a good balance of bar-based and non-alcohol fueled fun. The Sportsman Hotel and it's downstairs Mineshaft Bar is the club's home and the event's base of operations. Brian, the club president, went out of his way to welcome every attendee and seemed to have done his homework

OK, I confess, I don't get much out of bar calls these days. But I also have to admit that I had fun at the Sportsman. Music was a decent mix of genres played at a volume that still permitted conversation. In particular, Sunday's party proved that Abba has magical powers. Scary magical powers with the ability to turn the butchest bear into a shirtless screaming dancing queen.

Spicing up the run was a visit to the Four X brewery (insert clever condom joke here). The tour was a bit commercial but our tour guide was fun. Watching some of the current Four X TV ads demonstrated that nothing is too sexist or too tasteless. It makes the US look very prudish in comparison.

A second outing at the Brisbane Planetarium turned out to be most entertaining. Yes, the special effects seemed dated when compared to today's sci fi genre. Our gray bearded narrator clearly enjoyed our tour group as much as we enjoyed his presentation. Funniest moment was during a demonstration of star rotation around the North Star (Polaris for those who need a bit of trivia) when our narrator attempted to rotate the star field as fast as possible crashing the operating system (Windows Vista??) and requiring a reboot. Hmm, maybe you had to be there.

What's it like to sit in on organized chaos? Listen to a Bears in the City podcast. John/

jottobear, Seumas/

beardoc, Clinton, and Craige along with the absent Dominic/

cuboz are the podcast regulars. A special guest at this 'cast was Julian, a BITC emeritus. If there's an agenda for these hour long shows, I suspect it gets shredded in the first five minutes. Listen, I think you might enjoy the boys in action. I know I do.

Next up... A 10 day sojourn to the land of hobbits, elves, and orks, New Zealand's South Island.