Putting Out the Welcome Mat (of Fur)

As I mentioned before, this long weekend is International Bear Rendezvous weekend, and the Castro is all dressed up to welcome the bears.  I've been joking about this, but seriously, walking around, there are almost as many bear-themed windows and decorations as there were Christmas decorations back in December.  Here's a selection:

Many of the bars have banners specifically welcoming IBR bears which include photos of porn actors.  Here is the one from The Mix on 18th:

Here's the banner in front of The Midnight Sun:

The Edge's poster is particularly bear-y:

Upstairs at The Metro on Market (a repeat of The Mix's poster):

And in the window of Harvey's:

The HRC Store played nicely into stereotypes with a "Wizard of Oz" reference:

Here, In-Jean-ious selected some bear-relevant t-shirts for their regular display.

One interesting thing to note in the picture above is the "Bears welcome" sign in the lower left.  Here's a close-up of one in another window:

These signs remind me of when my partner and I took an Atlantis (gay) cruise through the Caribbean.  At a couple of the ports, some of the local merchants put signs in their windows which included rainbow flags or messages like "Welcome Atlantis Guests!"  It was nice to feel welcomed, even if just for our money, but it also created a slightly odd feeling with the stores who didn't sport these signs.  Did they intentionally not welcome us?  Were they anti-gay?  Or did they just not know about the signs?  Or maybe they considered the signs a little kitschy and ridiculous?

Here in the Castro, many stores have these "Bears welcome" signs and many stores don't.  But the idea that any store in the Castro wouldn't be welcoming to bears is a little nutty.  Bear visitors are a big part of our tourist economy, but also we have quite a large bear population year-round.

Although now that I think about it, Badlands didn't put up a bear welcome sign, and they've been investigated by our Human Rights Commission ....  Suspicious!