This coming weekend's BEARATHON! Are you up for the Challenge?

I challenge you to a weekend BEARATHON! Are you man enough to handle it? 

Bears and their admirers who are in town for the upcoming Labor Day Weekend are in for a rare bear treat! This is the first time as far as I can remember when all four of the major bear parties will be hosting a party on the same weekend. I've only been to two of them myself since I have been sticking to safe sex parties as of late, but I may make an exception this weekend as I always love a good challenge and it could be fun to see if I can have make it through four bear parties in three days!

The weekend starts off on Friday night with the BEEF HOTEL PARTY, which bills itself as "Manhattan's only Safe-Sex Party for Bears, Cubs, Otters, and the guys who love to fuck around with them." Imagine, if you will, a hotel suite in Midtown full of about 40 guys, most of them of the manly bearish variety, sucking and fucking up a storm. I've been to quite a few of these myself and they just seem to get hotter and hotter. The crowd is quite the interracial mix with Latinos usually in the majority but also a good number of White and Black guys and a few Asian and Middle Eastern men as well. So you can think of this as the Bear Melting Pot as it were. The crowd also tends to be younger than other bear parties with the majority of the crowd in it's 20s and early 30s (men up to age 59 are admitted). You'll need to sign up and be approved as a BEEF member before you will get invited, so make sure that you apply at least a few days in advanced at assactionparties.com. The party starts at 8pm and is usually in full swing by 8:30 or so. The door closes at 10pm and the party tends to go on past Midnight (sometimes WELL past Midnight, depending on who and how many are still there and how insatiable their sexual appetites are). Donation is $20.


Then on Saturday afternoon is the other major safe-sex bear party in the city, BRUIN BUDDIES. Although it's not in Manhattan, it is easily accessible by a short subway ride to Park Slope in Brooklyn. This one is what I would consider a more "traditional" bear party then BEEF. When I think of a bear party, this is the type of crowd and party that usually comes to mind. You'll find many of the classic bear types here, "truckers," "daddies" and "mountain-men" with the long bushy beards and mustaches and leather suspenders over huge bellies in a red-lit dungeon-type setting complete with a sling, booths, and a glory hole maze. It has that seedy 70s-porn urban underground feel that personally gets my juices flowing. The crowd when I've attended has been around 30 men (it may be more for Labor Day Weekend) and tends to be predominantly white and older (most in their 40s-60s). This is also a group of men that know what they want and don't waste any time getting it, so if you arrive an hour after the party starts, you'll likely find some already finishing up and heading out, so you'll want to arrive in the first half hour or so as to not miss anyone or anything. The party starts at 3pm and goes until 7pm with the door closing at 6pm. Donation is $25 plus $1 for clothes check. And don't forget to give the clothes attendant a tip as well. It is well deserved.

On Sunday afternoon, we have the two non-safe-sex bear parties, both happening in Midtown. These are "mixed" parties, meaning that attendees are allowed to fuck either with condoms or "raw." Although condoms are provided at both, there is usually a good amount of barebacking going on so these parties are considered to be more risky than the first two due to the increased chances of STDs being passed around through fucking bareback or, especially in the case of those who are not fucking bareback, via blowjobs with the ones who are. So if you are adverse to getting STDs, limit your play at these parties to jacking, and fucking with a condom (or sucking with a condom if you can find someone willing).     

The first one to begin on Sunday is THE BEAR PARTY. I haven't attended this one myself (perhaps this will be the weekend that I check it out) but I am told that this party is somewhere in-between BEEF and BRUIN BUDDIES as far as crowd and vibe. Like BRUIN BUDDIES, it takes place in a dungeon-type setting with a sling and other S&M items, but the atmosphere feels less intense and more casual than the basement in Park Slope. Like BEEF, the crowd is a mix of guys of all different races. The age range is somewhere in between with young, middle age, and older gents all in attendance (anyone over 18 is admitted). Like the other two parties, the action tends to happen early, so arriving in the first 1/2 hour or so is recommended. The size of the crowd is usually between 40 and 50 but should be even more for this holiday weekend. If you are in NYC the Wednesday before or the Wednesday after Labor Day Weekend, THE BEAR PARTY also has a weekly Wednesday party in a loft in Midtown that draws a sizeable crowd and has a more "lounge-y" vibe akin to the BEEF Hotel parties. The Wednesday parties are 7pm to 11pm with the door closing at 10pm. The Sunday parties are 1:30pm to 5:30pm with the door closing at 4:30pm. Donation for both is $25

Last stop on the Bearathon run would be BEARCAVE which is hosted every Sunday at The Gramercy Duplex. As with THE BEAR PARTY, I haven't attended this one myself since it is not a safe-sex party, but I am familiar with the space and am told the crowd mix is similar to the one at THE BEAR PARTY. The space is a two-level carpeted duplex, so the overall atmosphere here could be similar to the BEEF hotel parties with one major difference which is the size of the space. This venue is quite large with two wide-open spaces (one on each level). As a result, the men in attendance are often spread out with clumps of men huddled here and there and in corners. At THE BEAR PARTY I'm told the men tend to congregate together in smaller rooms or spaces, and at the BEEF hotel party, everyone is more or less in the same room where you can't step more than a few feet in any direction without running into cock, mouth and/or ass. But at The Gramercy Duplex you can have an equal number of men here as the other parties (about 30 to 50 which I'm told is typical for BEARCAVE), and yet the party can feel a bit empty compared to the others. So the general consensus seems to be, perhaps due to the lack of proximity, that the amount of sex at this party isn't at the same level as, say, THE BEAR PARTY which is going on across town at more or less the same time. That might actually make BEARCAVE a nice "cool-down" for your Bearathon. I'll see if I can make it that far!

I would love to hear in the comments if anyone else takes up the challenge and manages to make it to the finish line.

Adrian