The premiere leather bar in NYC was the Lure, definitely not the oldest, but surly the one with the most character. Some of you can probably guess why it is no longer with us. Its safe little nook in the Meat Packing District had become eclipsed with boutiques sporting the wares of Stella McCartney and trendy little French restaurants with one-word names. I missed the closing of this old haunt because I was in Orlando on business - but to celebrate in my own special way I did go to the Mister Central Florida Bear Contest at the Full Moon Saloon. Not the same�yet not too far away.

I think I have always had mixed feelings about the whole "leather" scene - or what I know of it.

Don't get me wrong - the idea/image of a big leather daddy is a fine thing, but for some reason there are never enough bare chested 20/30 somethings to make up for the fat senior tit sagged trolls who try and pass themselves off as "leather".

Since I go to leather bars so infrequently I have this illusion that this time it will be different�it will be the "leather" I see in movies�it never is - I walk in and even the butchest of the bunch is singing along with Bette, Barbara or Gloria. Why can't it all just be like it is in porn? The background music to a circle jerk in a public bathroom at a leather bar should not be Cher.

"Irving was not at heart a nasty man. He thought this as he strutted in his leather gear before his mirror. The boots with three-inch heels and cross-over bucklings at the ankle. The chaps tight around his thighs and hips and holding in his stomach firmly while revealing his still too generous cheeks. The shirt with stringed crosshatchings to display his hairy chest but disguise his sagging tits. But, for all his studies at the Universities�he could never fully, completely, understand the subliminalities of his attraction to leather. For let his cock touch leather and it instantly staticized, erected unto magnitudes unknown in tweed or cotton, and brought to his already forceful personality a surging, throbbing stature that oozed around him like a contagion he thought could render victims to his feet in droves�" - Faggots, Larry Kramer, 1978