Cliff and I were in Vancouver for New Year’s Eve and had been at Five Sixty then. That night, it was packed to the gills, including a 45 minute wait at coast check. (And the line just got longer as midnight approached.) Yeah: got there at 10:30, had time for one drink before midnight (with a 20+ minute wait in that line). And then there would be the same wait to pick a coat up later. But since this wasn’t a mixed event and wasn’t on a Saturday or a holiday, we knew that wouldn’t be the case.
Five Sixty has three levels. The main level is a large dance floor and a stage. Upstairs from that is a lounge area overlooking the dance floor. Downstairs is a long, narrow space with a partition down the middle — bathrooms on one side, bar and lounge alcoves on the other, plus coat check at the far end. For HARD, the lounge alcoves became the dungeon space, with a fuck bench and dark corner in one, a sling in the second, and a couple crosses in the third.
We got a room at the Ramada less than two blocks away (good deal at $70, too), which was convenient. One of the members of Seattle Men in Leather had won free passes but couldn’t attend, so we got to take a couple of the tickets. (Thanks, Paka!) The event was scheduled to start at 8:00, but I had been told no one shows up until 10:00, so we planned to leave the hotel after 9:30.
Until Cliff decided to go on Wednesday, I had been planning to ride all the way. The weather promised to be dry, buy pretty cold. It would be my last long distance ride chance of the year, to be sure. Since he was going, though, I just rode to his place in Stanwood (about an hour’s ride north of Seattle; an hour and a half when you’re talking 4 pm Friday traffic, of course). As expected, cold ride, but standable. (If I had ridden all the way myself, I would have stopped in Mt. Vernon anyway to warm up.) We took his truck the rest of the way, an uneventful ride.
It turned out that our preconceptions of the event were a bit off. As described above, there were only 3 or 4 play spaces — which would be enough, of course, if anyone actually played. Neither of us have gone to enough “leather dance parties”, or we could have predicted that the attendance — which had a leather/fetish dress code, allegedly no street clothes allowed, although I didn’t see any enforcement of that, but neither did I see flagrant violations — would be primarily hunky muscleboys in the one harness they own (yes, I know I’m looking down my nose at the type), plus a decent dose of the regular PumpJack/VML leather crowd. (Several of our Vancouver friends attended — Mitch and Brian, Darryl and Josh, Jacques, Ian — although several did not.)
In the end, the playspaces were pretty underutilized. in the 10:00-11:00 hour, there was some bondage and violet wand use, and one assplay session later (the bottom was inexperienced, so not full-on fisting), but most of the play beyond that was nipples and dick sucking. In retrospect, that’s perhaps not surprising. Combine Friday night (when guys often aren’t horned up yet), plus a crowd leaning toward S&M (stand-and-model), and the eternal case of “What will it do to my reputation to have sex play where my buddies might see?” — hon, it will create your reputation, if you do it right! — and it’s no surprise that most play is furtive cocksucking.
We didn&rasuo;t realize that there was an after-party scheduled for Steamworks, or we might have gone. Heck, almost certainly would have bugged out of HARD around midnight and gone to get some harder play in.
As Northwest LeatherSIR, British Columbia is no longer in my “region” (it is part of the Western Canada region), so although I wore my title vest, I wasn’t there in any official capacity. I likely would have gone up even without the title, but that certainly gave the added incentive. I’m not sure how many guys saw the vest or identified the title, though, since no one commented on it. Vancouver has struggled to have any leather title consistency for the past decade and more, so I’m not sure how much cognizance most of the locals (stand-and-model or otherwise) have of leather titles, whether it was just a fancy patch to them.
Still, I’ll keep my eye out for HARD 4. The difference between Friday and Sunday might change the makeup of things, and might change the desire to play (last chance for the weekend, you know). Warmer weather in the spring and summer might make it better, too. (As would me knowing what to expect, of course.)
Added poster on November 22, 2011
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