
“He’s Just a Cub”
I first found out what Bears were about 5 years ago when I was working at a coffee shop in Southwest Minneapolis. Every Wednesday evening something like 30 or 40 husky men with beards would show up, order themselves some 20 oz. blended frappés, then hang out and give back rubs. All of them were super nice guys, and good tippers, so everyone at the coffee shop loved working on “Bear Night”.
Some of the regular non-Bear customers would swing through on Wednesdays and sort of freak out from what they were seeing. I remember one concerned regular asking me “what is going on here?” to which i replied, “What are you talking about? You mean all these big bearded guys drinking coffee? I think you can figure it out.”
I mean, it’s sort of weird or funny because we live in a world that views fat hairy guys as something undesirable, but there are so many of them (especially in the U.S.) that it only makes sense for there to be a fetish based around it.
Whenever I was scheduled for one of the Bear nights, I would make sure not to shave, and I’d throw on my old Cubs hat, just hoping that some of the guys might find it “cute” or something, and throw me a $20 tip. It worked, but I’m pretty sure those dudes knew I was just playing with them, at least that’s what I assume since I never felt like any of them ever hit on me.
Anyway, aside from working at the coffee shop, I have also come in contact with a number of Bears (or maybe just men with Beard fetishes) through starting up a Flickr account and adding pictures of myself growing out my beard. I was in a 5 month long beard growing contest with a co-worker, so I thought I should post pictures of development. And even though it wasn’t my intention, I started getting all these comments from guys with beard fan screen names, and once I realized what was going on, it sorta took away my picture posting innocence. After that, I would post just a regular picture of myself with just a little scruff and guys would leave comments like, “ohh, I hope this is the start of something good!”. I pretty much gave up on Flickr after that.
Read the rest of this entry »