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Renegade Fursuiting, A Retrospective
11 years ago
I just got done with another amazing night fursuiting publicly around San Francisco. Almost all of my most enjoyable memories of fursuting come from that context.
Normally, I'd just tweet about what happened, but there's enough good stories from this one that I wanted to write a journal. There are pictures to come, too, which I can't wait to see. I'll post a couple when they arrive. In the meantime, here's links to some quick pics of my journey there and an angled shot of the group that went.
So let me set some context to start off with. This was a coordinated event, a "fursuit crawl" where we walked through the heart of downtown SF on a Friday night, right at one of the city's busiest social times, to visit an art gallery that was debuting an exhibition of fursuit photographs, posed alongside one-liners the fursuiters had written themselves. One-liners were things like "I never even enrolled in obedience school", and "The only thing domestic about me is that I live in a house."
Let that sink in for a moment. SF has an art gallery with an exhibition on fursuit photos. Pretty great time.
To get to the event, I decided to take transit (a bus) - I'd taken a subway in suit before, and it was a pretty great reaction then. Last time I even got some lady's twitter handle.
The first thing the bus driver says when I get on the bus is "Hey man, what are you doing all dressed up as a sexy alligator?" Yes, he used the word sexy. Good times. We had a good quick chat about what was going on, and he even made sure to call out to me "Hey alligator man! This is your stop!" when we got to where I was going. It was a pretty great way to start the experience.
On the bus, there were definitely plenty of semi-clandestine photos being taken. One lady asked me whether I was a croc or an alligator, and when I tried pantomiming, she wasn't really playing along. Finally I gave up and said out loud, and she playfully goes "oh...I see. I guess I should have known; crocodiles are the ones that can talk!" And there was definitely a guy who got on the bus while looking at his phone, started to walk toward me and suddenly realized there was a crocodile on the bus...and did a huge double take and jumped back at first. Fortunately, I was able to convince him I wasn't going to eat him with some disarming friendly gestures.
Then there was the half-mile speedwalk from the bus to the meetup location. This to me brought the best single moment / comment of the whole night. Various people said things like "Great suit" and "man, you are really rocking it!" and "I want to go where he's going!" as I walked past, but there was this one guy, who followed that up with "Man...I love the city."
That reaction just elates me. Those of you who know me well will know I'm really deeply in love with SF and its culture. That I could be that element of harmless, fun, happy weirdness, that thing that represents the heart of what makes the city such a stimulating and crazy and fantastic environment to be in...that just absolutely means the world to me.
As they say in Portland and Austin, we have to keep SF weird!
Finally I get to the apartment and join the others, and we all head out in a big group to walk another mile or so in downtown to get to the gallery. We had our fair share of cars stopping, horns honking, thumbs ups, and even some people stopping us for pictures with them along the way.
When we got there, there were definitely more non-furs than I was expecting, and they quickly got pretty excited about the 17 (or so?) fursuiters that were now there in person. Milling about with them was definitely a good time as well. More pictures with people, answering some questions, my first time drinking wine in suit, and a nice big group picture tied it all together.
Somehow the lady serving the snacks/cheese/wine (classy furmeet, right?) even seemed to know Spottacus's reputation, remarking "Oh, that's Spottacus? He didn't even try to hump my leg!" The fact that feline dynamo managed to spread his reputation to even non-furs is impressive.
After spending a while there, the gallery was ready to close, and we headed on back, enjoying very similar reactions to before. I do have to say a special thanks to the handlers here, as there are some black, low planters in SF that would have been all too easy to really bang up our legs on, with our limited vision and it being nighttime.
I did not hear the word furry, or any sort of negative comment even once. Just all positives, being embraced. It was really rewarding. And we were the center of attention all night long. It's every fursuiter's dream, isn't it?
This follows less than a week after all of the positive happenings at my good friends' Tojo and sabur's wedding on halloween. It was a costumed wedding, and I was the only one there in fursuit. The fact it was a fursuit didn't really matter to anyone there; they just saw it as a badass croc costume. It's not always popular with children, nor was it at all designed to be, but it clicked with the kids at the aquarium and I would up with a whole bunch of kids all yanking and shouting and playing and etc. with me all at once. Honestly I was almost getting overpowered with all of them! XD. I had a great time chasing and being chased and entertaining them.
When I was done playing our group headed out, and the parents and friends' all had nice things to say about how I interacted with them. A couple of them agreed I must want 15 kids of my own! (uh...meep! ^^' no thanks to that many...) I was just having fun, trying to play up the character and have a good time and help some kids have some fun. I always feel really flattered about stuff like that; I'm just glad I could share the fun. It is definitely confidence inspiring to get compliments on what I'm striving for, though. Gives me a few extra smiles at the end of the night.
So yeah! Two weeks, two renegade fursuiting events. Yet again, public suiting, thumbs up. I highly, highly recommend it if you can do it in a city where you can feel comfortable doing that. I'll be honest; I never quite felt like furries were welcomed enough in Seattle to try it myself there, but I could be wrong. I've done it in Portland and SF, and it's more than welcome. I keep hearing stores about people doing it other places that I never would have expected it. It seems like any city or environment where people have open minds and embrace new and unfamiliar things, instead of judging them, you'll get a lot of positive reactions like I have, and it will be a great time. But I will say SF's culture feels drastically more this way as compared to anywhere else I've ever been.
The biggest challenge for me has always just been getting up the nerve to convince myself to do it. Once I'm actually doing it, it is just a total blast, and it seems to really positively affect everyone else's day, too.
When writing this, a few of my other favorite public-suiting memories came to mind that I think may also be worth sharing, since I don't discuss them super often.
- Getting my croc fursuit's picture in the liner of one of my favorite band's albums
- Having said band argue over which of them got to be in the picture with me that made it in the album
- Getting invited to said band's afterparty and staying there until 4AM :)
- Getting a clothed lap dance from their keyboardist...
- Getting free beers and dancing with cougars at a redneck bar near Riverside (near LA)
- Scaring the crap out of a random guy in the car next to us while riding in a taxi
Anyway. I've rambled more than enough! Time for me to take this natural endorphins/adrenaline high and go to bed.
Normally, I'd just tweet about what happened, but there's enough good stories from this one that I wanted to write a journal. There are pictures to come, too, which I can't wait to see. I'll post a couple when they arrive. In the meantime, here's links to some quick pics of my journey there and an angled shot of the group that went.
So let me set some context to start off with. This was a coordinated event, a "fursuit crawl" where we walked through the heart of downtown SF on a Friday night, right at one of the city's busiest social times, to visit an art gallery that was debuting an exhibition of fursuit photographs, posed alongside one-liners the fursuiters had written themselves. One-liners were things like "I never even enrolled in obedience school", and "The only thing domestic about me is that I live in a house."
Let that sink in for a moment. SF has an art gallery with an exhibition on fursuit photos. Pretty great time.
To get to the event, I decided to take transit (a bus) - I'd taken a subway in suit before, and it was a pretty great reaction then. Last time I even got some lady's twitter handle.
The first thing the bus driver says when I get on the bus is "Hey man, what are you doing all dressed up as a sexy alligator?" Yes, he used the word sexy. Good times. We had a good quick chat about what was going on, and he even made sure to call out to me "Hey alligator man! This is your stop!" when we got to where I was going. It was a pretty great way to start the experience.
On the bus, there were definitely plenty of semi-clandestine photos being taken. One lady asked me whether I was a croc or an alligator, and when I tried pantomiming, she wasn't really playing along. Finally I gave up and said out loud, and she playfully goes "oh...I see. I guess I should have known; crocodiles are the ones that can talk!" And there was definitely a guy who got on the bus while looking at his phone, started to walk toward me and suddenly realized there was a crocodile on the bus...and did a huge double take and jumped back at first. Fortunately, I was able to convince him I wasn't going to eat him with some disarming friendly gestures.
Then there was the half-mile speedwalk from the bus to the meetup location. This to me brought the best single moment / comment of the whole night. Various people said things like "Great suit" and "man, you are really rocking it!" and "I want to go where he's going!" as I walked past, but there was this one guy, who followed that up with "Man...I love the city."
That reaction just elates me. Those of you who know me well will know I'm really deeply in love with SF and its culture. That I could be that element of harmless, fun, happy weirdness, that thing that represents the heart of what makes the city such a stimulating and crazy and fantastic environment to be in...that just absolutely means the world to me.
As they say in Portland and Austin, we have to keep SF weird!
Finally I get to the apartment and join the others, and we all head out in a big group to walk another mile or so in downtown to get to the gallery. We had our fair share of cars stopping, horns honking, thumbs ups, and even some people stopping us for pictures with them along the way.
When we got there, there were definitely more non-furs than I was expecting, and they quickly got pretty excited about the 17 (or so?) fursuiters that were now there in person. Milling about with them was definitely a good time as well. More pictures with people, answering some questions, my first time drinking wine in suit, and a nice big group picture tied it all together.
Somehow the lady serving the snacks/cheese/wine (classy furmeet, right?) even seemed to know Spottacus's reputation, remarking "Oh, that's Spottacus? He didn't even try to hump my leg!" The fact that feline dynamo managed to spread his reputation to even non-furs is impressive.
After spending a while there, the gallery was ready to close, and we headed on back, enjoying very similar reactions to before. I do have to say a special thanks to the handlers here, as there are some black, low planters in SF that would have been all too easy to really bang up our legs on, with our limited vision and it being nighttime.
I did not hear the word furry, or any sort of negative comment even once. Just all positives, being embraced. It was really rewarding. And we were the center of attention all night long. It's every fursuiter's dream, isn't it?
This follows less than a week after all of the positive happenings at my good friends' Tojo and sabur's wedding on halloween. It was a costumed wedding, and I was the only one there in fursuit. The fact it was a fursuit didn't really matter to anyone there; they just saw it as a badass croc costume. It's not always popular with children, nor was it at all designed to be, but it clicked with the kids at the aquarium and I would up with a whole bunch of kids all yanking and shouting and playing and etc. with me all at once. Honestly I was almost getting overpowered with all of them! XD. I had a great time chasing and being chased and entertaining them.
When I was done playing our group headed out, and the parents and friends' all had nice things to say about how I interacted with them. A couple of them agreed I must want 15 kids of my own! (uh...meep! ^^' no thanks to that many...) I was just having fun, trying to play up the character and have a good time and help some kids have some fun. I always feel really flattered about stuff like that; I'm just glad I could share the fun. It is definitely confidence inspiring to get compliments on what I'm striving for, though. Gives me a few extra smiles at the end of the night.
So yeah! Two weeks, two renegade fursuiting events. Yet again, public suiting, thumbs up. I highly, highly recommend it if you can do it in a city where you can feel comfortable doing that. I'll be honest; I never quite felt like furries were welcomed enough in Seattle to try it myself there, but I could be wrong. I've done it in Portland and SF, and it's more than welcome. I keep hearing stores about people doing it other places that I never would have expected it. It seems like any city or environment where people have open minds and embrace new and unfamiliar things, instead of judging them, you'll get a lot of positive reactions like I have, and it will be a great time. But I will say SF's culture feels drastically more this way as compared to anywhere else I've ever been.
The biggest challenge for me has always just been getting up the nerve to convince myself to do it. Once I'm actually doing it, it is just a total blast, and it seems to really positively affect everyone else's day, too.
When writing this, a few of my other favorite public-suiting memories came to mind that I think may also be worth sharing, since I don't discuss them super often.
- Getting my croc fursuit's picture in the liner of one of my favorite band's albums
- Having said band argue over which of them got to be in the picture with me that made it in the album
- Getting invited to said band's afterparty and staying there until 4AM :)
- Getting a clothed lap dance from their keyboardist...
- Getting free beers and dancing with cougars at a redneck bar near Riverside (near LA)
- Scaring the crap out of a random guy in the car next to us while riding in a taxi
Anyway. I've rambled more than enough! Time for me to take this natural endorphins/adrenaline high and go to bed.
The gallery was pretty small, but I was glad to have gotten to talk to some of the people who showed up. I usually try hard not to break character but the desire to answer questions and stuff was too much to resist.
Didn't get all the fun public interaction that you obviously did, but it was still a cool deal. Public suiting is where it's at.
I'm curious, where all are you gonna share it? :)
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