Pride, Porn and Jestertunes

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Justin Scott

I got an email from Paul from Jestertunes.com saying he wanted to meet up at Pride. He has been a long time reader of my blog and I thought it would be totally fun to meet a reader.

I listened to Keith and the Girl (KATG) as I walked the walk from our hotel to the Bart and from the station to the Civic Center where all of the festivities were going on. For the longest time I was lost in the KATG episode instead of pride and it wasn’t until Paul called me that it really kicked in where I was haha.

Down there I bumped into a classmate from Santa Rosa Junior College who I met through an old friend, Chris. He’s another porn star (Turk Melrose) (wow, I know a lot of porn stars) and probably the best looking one I know, wink wink.

One thing I have noticed about the porn stars I know, they are all so nice. Like, the sweetest people you would ever meet. He was signing autographs and looking all sorts of busy so I didn’t hang around too much.

But while I was at his booth waiting for him to get a free moment, I found a couple of DVD’s of an old flame (haha) and a flier for their company, Pornteam.com, which used the same stock photography I purchased for the Megaplex site I made. I found that pretty funny.

Then off to another booth. I was approached a few times for kisses and handed condoms and lube from a few people… Oh Pride how I love you.

Met Paul and his crew at the Smirnoff booth. What fun people these guys were! We shamelessly judged and drooled over guys and had just a gay ‘ol time.

Then there was of course, the weird (even more weird than the above Gay Zombie)

After a while we decided to make a bee line for some dinner. Every year they get Thai food after the festivities.

On the way to Thai we bumped into Nick Starr. Fun guy. He propositioned me a few more times (hehe) and we took a few pictures together, Paul, Nick and Justin: Internet Whores.

I just had a cup of really yummy soup at Zen Yai Thai since I was waiting to eat my real meal with Ryan.

We bumped into some more porn stars (damn, lucky us) and haggled them on a DVD. Went from $25 to $10 to $5 to $7 + and ass grab. It was fun, he was cute (on the left).

We hung out there for a good long time, before I went back to the hotel where, despite our plans for authentic Thai, we ended up crashing the rest of the night. Still, it was a lot of fun, and meeting some readers was awesome too.

On a Mission (in the Mission)

Posted on June 30, 2008 by Justin Scott

Our last day in San Francisco was a busy day. Ryan had a lot of paperwork to get processed and needed a few LiveScans for a job application and ambulance license so we marched down Powell to the Bart station.

Wow, I guess I forgot all about the Pride Parade. Thousands of people met us at the Bart station, completely hiding it from our field of vision. We hung out, watched a few floats go by, reveled in the fun, friendly good times and took a few pictures.

As with any gay event, not everyone there was there to celebrate equality. Some religious zealots where protesting the parade, the weekend, the gay marriages in California and just whatever popped into their heads.

They blamed the fires on the gays. They blamed the terrorist attacks in 2001 on the gays. They blamed the salmonella on the gays. They blamed the storms on the gays. Apparently it’s our fault. Sorry guys. Our bad.

[flv:Religious_Zealots.flv 500 375]

The kicker was when he said, “If you guys are such a loving, kind and friendly people, why do you need all of these police officers? It’s because you cause hate and destruction that they are here” and then went onto something about paying good Californian’s tax dollars for us to celebrate our heresy…

I guess what he was missing was this. The police are there not to protect us from ourselves but from people like him. Pride is about as safest I have ever felt in a city, day or night. The only thing one gay guy wants to do to another gay guy is fuck him (excuse my vulgarity and obvious exaggeration).

Well anyway, we finally made it to the UPS Store for Ryan’s LiveScan only to find it had closed for Pride. Haha, a UPS closed for Pride, how awesome. We took a seat at Squat & Gobble for lunch while we figured out a Plan B.

Squat & Gobble is the perfect little brunch place. I always think of Landon when I go there. I’m pretty sure you would love it Landon, reminds me of The Café in Washington DC only… better. It was delicious. While there we found another LiveScan place, hopped on a bus and back to the Mission we go.

LiveScan went easy enough, then back to the hotel. I’m leaving Ryan here to go to Pride for a bit. Catch you guys later!

Pride + Ninah = Shopalicious

Posted on June 29, 2008 by Justin Scott

Pride went much differently this year. Instead of the long nights full of drinking, dancing and partying, it was long days full of running around San Francisco with friends, shopping and eating out.

Ninah came into the city today to hang out with Ryan and I. We met at Dósa, a mostly vegetarian, restaurant specializing in Southern Indian cuisine. Think the namesake (Dósa) and samosas and the like.

We found the restaurant on Yelp!, as we find most of the places we dine when out on the town and not in Columbia. Yelp!, if you don’t know, is a social network built upon user reviews of restaurants, hotels, bars, doctors and pretty much anything service oriented. It really should be your first stop, if not one stop shop, for getting around a new city.

The food was fantastic, if not a little spicier than we had anticipated. I don’t see how any even mildly affluent person in India could possibly be dehydrated. I think I drank half a gallon of water. But oh, it was worth it. If you’re vegetarian, there were at least two other vegetarian restaurants just next door or down a block from Dosa in the Mission.

After Dósa we headed to the second largest shopping centre in America. We hit all the usual spots, picked up a few things at Express, at H&M, Fredrick’s of Hollywood and a few others, then headed to the Apple store to have my laptop looked at. The battery has been giving me trouble (turns out it was user error). While I played at Apple, Ninah and Ryan went to Armani Exchange and then we headed to the hotel for a well deserved rest.

We found a sushi joint that looked good and headed up to the Tenderloin. Ninah and I shared a few sushi dishes while Ryan went totally vegetarian. Once again our meal was a little spicier than we had expected so much so that I couldn’t handle the seaweed salad sushi.