10 years online... go me...

I opened my very first Bear site back on May 19th, 1999. It was called BearPress. I quit my Masters program in order to work on the site full time. The idea behind the site was simple: try and form an online network for those who identify with Bear culture. I posted Bear news, events, and ran some galleries. I did this until I moved over to Bear-Pics in 2001.

Bear-Pics was much like BearPress however I focused a lot more on the  Bearish men. I began taking my own pictures and videos with Bear models. I also continued posting news. I ran this site up until 2006.

In October 2006, I met up with an online buddy who changed my online life. He created PlanetBears, then TubeBear (which we opened in April 2007), and he and I have been working together ever since.

So May 19th is always an important date for me. Hugz to all those who remember BearPress and Bear-Pics.

One of the things I would love to be able to do is to bring all the archival news from the BearPress and Bear-Pics days over here to PlanetBears. I have thousands of HTML pages filled with news articles, and almost all the articles have a thumbnail photo accompanying it. I have so many logos and drawings from Bear groups and websites after 10 years of news, it feels like a shame that I don't have all of this stuff online. It almost feels like I have a touch of Bear history in my archives, something that should be made available to all to peruse. If anyone knows how to easily convert HTML into data, maybe this could be a reality. Email me if you're interested in assisting me in this project.

As I mentioned in the article above, I've moved over all of the BearPress and Bear-Pics Amateur Galleries over to the PlanetBears Galleries. However, there was one that gallery I didn't add. It's not like I forgot it, it's just that... well... it consisted of only 1 photo, this one, of the incredibly cuddly, furry, puppy-eyed Mark.

Now if you check out the BearPress galleries, you'll remark that the smallest galleries have at least 3 photos in them (remember... these photos were sent at a time before scanners and digital cameras were common toys men had at their disposal). And as I mentioned before in another article, the real reason why I put these BearPress galleries up is because they are meaningful (to me).

However, this one picture of Mark is probably the most meaningful of all (to me) because this was the very first picture someone sent to me for my 'then' non-existent Amateur Galleries. I had made a call in the news asking guys to send me in their photos, and Mark sent me just 1, but it was the one that started things off for me. This was before I was photographing men and had any material of my own, so... as you can see... it's got meaning quite a bit of meaning to me... and darn, Mark's just so frikkin' cute...! Too bad he didn't send me 3 dozen photos. I just thought I'd share that with ya.

This is another article in my series of 'where have the artists gone to...? Click here to see some drawings by Chris Taylor, a highly defined muscular, intelligent, witty and seriously hot looking Bear (pic #1 ~ pic #2).

The last I heard from him, Chris was doing was working on some comic books. This was back in '03, and I've sent him a couple of emails since but those emails have turned into cyberdust. A highly talented guy, gorgeous and menacing at the same time, because I met Chris Taylor way back in '00 (or '01) at this Bear Icons show. At the time, I was trying to get a 'Bear Mall' open with 2 other guys yet it fell thru, however Chris did some drawings (Bear Foot guy- and his boots). He also made me a BearPress guy (since the site I was running back then was called BearPress - pic #1 - pic #2). I hope all is well and I hope he's still drawing husky men because Chris sure had a knack for it.

If you look at the top of this page, you'll see 5 thumbnail photos of cute guys... and when you click on any of those photos, it will bring you a preview image of their gallery.

Well you might be seeing more and more with the tag 'Amateur Bear Pics'... those are photos that have been sent in to either BearPress/Bear-Pics and now to PlanetBears.

If you wish to have your photos show up here on PlanetBears, simply email me or use the contact form, and if you've got that Bearish goodness, I will give you a year's membership to the site, which allows you access to all the Galleries as well as Videos.

GAME: just checking to see if anyone is reading or not. Now if you look at those top 5 images, you might see 1 or 2... maybe even 3 that have the 'Amateur Bear Pics'... here's a game - refresh the page and see if you can get all 5 saying 'Amateur Bear Pics'... if you can do that, and take a snapshot of your desktop, send it to me and I'll give you a membership for a month. You gotta be 21 years of age and older. This isn't impossible because it happened to me - all 5 had 'Amateur Bear Pics'... see if you can hit the BearPot...!

In these past few months, I have been adding more and more photos from prior events I attended. Some of them used to be on BearPress, some on bear-pics and some I've never added before. I know I should get around to adding new pics from more recent events, but I just never seem to have the time to go to anything lately... in any account, most of you have never seen these pics so they are still fun to look at, in a retrospective kind of way.

These pics were taken back in June '04 at an event called Fuel. It was being held in Montreal at a bar called Parking. They asked me to come and take some photos so I did. I got to meet Bo who has since gone on to be somewhat popular as he's been doing a lot of adult movies. Bo was crowned Mr. Fuel '04 by the end of the evening. He's a really nice guy as well.

So, maybe one day PlanetBears might be an area in which all Bear groups can send in their pics from their past events and we can archive them here. Wouldn't that be a fun idea... thousands and thousands (and thousands) of pics from thousands of Bear events. Maybe one day.

Every time I go thru my older files and folders, I seem to unearth some photos that I seem to have forgotten existed. I then question whether I should re-post them, since part of me says that I should move ahead and there's no need to post older photos... while the other half of me said that these pics are surely going to be of an interest to someone, and it's always fun to reminisce a little... anyhow... as you can I decided to add them.

They are from an event I attended called Bear Fest '00 which took place in Washington DC, an event held by the Highwaymen TNT. Actually, a TV show called 'Dot Comedy' from Britain had contacted me, liked my site I was working on at the time (BearPress.com) and they wanted to feature me. I met up with their cameraman, had a great weekend, and then was expecting to see myself on British TV. Well seems the cameraman was a newbie and we didn't follow the script so they didn't use any of footage. Oh well, they at least paid for my weekend so it wasn't a complete loss.

Looking back at these pics, I realize just how often I do not go to events. This was the only Bear event I've ever been to in the States, and that was 8 years ago. My only true excuses are - I'm in Canada, I'm not rich and I have 2 very large Shepherds I have to take care of. I always want to go, especially since I'm always writing about Bear events... I still want to go, and I'm not dead yet.

Click here to check out the photos.

It was 9 year's today - May 19th 1999 - that I (Forrest - TubeBear profile) opened the my 1st Bear news site. At the time it was BearPress (does anyone remember...?). I worked on that beast for 2 years full time with nearly no pay.

Then in 2000, I opened bear-pics... because I decided to focus more on galleries than on the news, however I focused pretty much on both. I needed money, like everyone else on this green Earth, so that's why I decided to change the name. I took pics of some of the cutest guys ever for the next few years.

Then in 2006, I met Nikola (AdminBear - TubeBear profile) - and he made PlanetBears which is an incredible website. My sites were all html - his sites are all dynamic. In 2007, we opened TubeBear - and I forgot to mention - TubeBear turned 1 year on April 26th. I guess the reason I didn't mention that in the news is because my mind has always been fixed on May 19th. I've worked on a lot of sites in the past 9 years... however TubeBear's bday is important too.

Wow... 9 years (I say 'wow' every time May 19th comes around). I'm in my 10th year sitting in front of a computer all day, jerking my dick as I look at pics of good looking men. What a life...

Actually, I have been wanting to add all the archives I have online... but it's so much work... like adding current news... but I'll keep an eye out in my archive section and check out to see if there's anything word adding, like pics I've posted in the past but did not transplant them over to PlanetBears.

I can remember the evening I was sitting down at a bar with the prez of the now defunct Bears of Montreal... it was late November '98... and I decided then and there that I wanted to run a news site for Bears ~ however I didn't know the first thing about HTML. Well the prez referred me to another Bears of Montreal member, one who was running their site at the time. This is how I met François, aka Pugsley.

We started working together in Dec '98 on a site known as BearPress. Well, to make a long story short, we were just not compatible when it came to work. Pugsley was busy with a lot of projects, so we never got around to actually building that site together. In March,  we parted ways and I picked up a couple of HTML books and built BearPress on my own.

Altho we weren't able to work together, we were able to remain friends over the years. And in 2005, Pugsley was working on many different Bearish projects, one of them being the 1st ever Montreal Bear run. We took this opportunity to model him in and out of his t-shirts, and these photos are the result. I never posted these pics before... and for the life of me I don't know why, but never know matter, here they are. They are no nudes... and again I'm not sure why we didn't do any nudes because François has done nudes with others... but there are some light bondage pics so that kind of makes up for the lack of nudity.

What is Pugsley up to these days? To be honest, I'm not really sure. He was running several Bear sites but none of them are up at the present time. I'm sure he's working on something tho - François was never one to idle his time away.

For a preview - click here, and members go here to see the sets of photos in the gallery section.

There is so much going on over at TubeBear, I don't know where to start... ok I do know where to start - read this.

First off - make a regular profile (join), add tons of pictures (of yourself), a bit of description (who you are, what you like) and then you will be able to see everyone else's profile. We have now past 5000 profiles. You will also be able to see all the photos in everyone else's galleries.

I've had a few people emailing me about my blog site - for the record - PlanetBears is not a blog site... nor was bear-pics before that... nor was BearPress. I've always loosely considered these sites as news sites... but then again... I'm not a journalist.

Blogging has been around since the net has been around, but it truly became popular around '99 or so when LiveJournal opened it's doors. LJ opened in March '99, I opened BearPress in May '99, however my main focus was Bear news (yet I would write a bit about my life, or let loose in a section I called 'Deep Thoughts'... so I guess I was blogging). Blogger opened its doors in August 1999, and since then blogging is incredibly popular - everyone seems to be running a blog ("as of September 2007, blog search engine Technorati was tracking more than 106 million blogs" from Wiki). This being said, there are some blogs which are more popular than others... of course.

One big blog site to check out - if you're interested in gay porn - is Gay Porn Blog. Now you will definitely not find much info about Bears but there are some models which are furry - yet 99% of these furry guys are tanned and muscular as well. So if you're a Bear who digs muscles, then check out this highly active blog page. But if the only kind of man you like looking at has a size 40+ waist, then this is one blog site that was not meant for you.

Once in awhile I get a nice surprise in my email box. Soundchaser (website - TubeBear profile) who's been running a chubby website since 1994 - before most of us even knew what the internet was - has opened up a new section to his webpage. It's called Heroes and he's been featuring  "Photographers whose work (he) loves and who has had an influence on the creation of his Gallery Peculiar". Well, his August Hero is me, Forrest (TubeBear profile).

Yes, this is like me tooting my own horn, but it's an honour to get something like this from the likes of Soundchaser since it's guys like him who got me all hot and bothered about the internet and had me wanting to open up my site.

This is what Soundchaser said about me (yes, yes, I'm gloating): "Another exceptional artist with a fine taste in men is Forrest creator and maintaining of one of the most influential sites on the Bearish web.

Starting out many years ago with his BearPress website, Forrest was a pioneer - blogging the many joys of the Word Wide Woof long before blogging was invented. Then came bear-pics.com where his photography took centre stage, capturing iconic images of Bear legends like Eito (I shed a tear when I heard he'd gone).

These days he's combined the two previous sites into PlanetBears - the best Bear news and some incredibly gorgeous men brilliantly photographed".

Ah... ok, I'll stop glowing. Thanks a bunch, Soundchaser, for the kind recognition. Visit the PlanetBears galleries.

It's hard to believe I've known Phil aka Advice Bear for 8 years now. Although I've never actually met him in person, we've been 'in and out of touch' ever since June '99 when he used to write an advice column for the site I was working on back then ~ anyone remember BearPress.com?

Once BearPress was no more (back in '00), well Phil's advice column was no more either, and wow do the years fly by. It's hard to believe that so many years have gone by since then, however the good news is that Phil and I have been emailing each other lately and it looks like he is quite interested in having his advice column back up again.

Now the only way this is going to work is if you guys show your interest. Phil is definitely a very wise soul and I remember the advice he used to give back in the BearPress days was sound, sane and highly thoughtful. Not only is he very cute but he is very sweet as well and this cute Bear would not lead a single soul astray. He might not be Dr. Phil but that's actually a very very good thing, in my opinion. Advice Bear has his best interest in giving you guys sobering advice.

So if you have a question or if you need some advice in respect to your life, then how about emailing Phil and we'll get the ball rolling so as to get the Advice Bear column back up and running once again.

Click here to see a few pics of Phil and here to visit his sweet 'lil homepage where you can learn a bit more about him.

Altho I have been doing Bear news forever it seems like (since May '99), all the archives from the BearPress and bear-pics days have been offline since I've been working on PlanetBears, and I'm not sure whether I'll put them back up again. It is, after all, just news of yore, yet it is always fun if not just nostalgic to just scan through past news articles to see what has happened in our Bear world over the past years.

However, since we've opened the doors to PlanetBears back in October '06, we have kept all the articles online, so if you've got some extra time on your hands, click about the following months and I'm sure you'll find an article or 4 that you are sure to enjoy: Oct '06 - Nov '06 - Dec '06 - Jan '07 - Feb '07 - Mar '07 - Apr '07 - May '07.

Way back on May 19th 1999 (it was a Wednesday), I opened BearPress. It was a Bear news site, much like this one. I was green, had no clue how to HTML but I knew that this is what I wanted to do ~ work on the web and chat with Bears. I discovered the Bear world when I was in university back in 1994 and I knew then that I found what I loved - good looking husky men who love men. There was nothing better than it.

Well BearPress was pretty popular for its day (I'm tooting my own horn) but it wasn't bringing in any money... so in the cold cold month of January 2001, at the turn of the millennia (I'm getting dramatic), I opened bear-pics. I was still doing news but I began to focus more on men by taking more and more (and more) pics of the good looking men.

Well, I was doing that for years, and I realized that ~ altho I love men to bits, I'm just not a great photographer. I'm not a journalist either so writing news is not really my thing either... I'm really... well... nothing (ack...! existentialism hits me in the face)... I guess I'm a webmaster... but I've always been a writer... type type type.

Then last year while I was making my little ACTV movies, a cute and cuddly European by the name of NikoBear contacted me and said he could help me by making bear-pics a bit more... erm... modern. A bit more...? The guy is a genius. He completely redid the site by making it 100% more interactive. I figured that since he's so talented when it comes to creating websites, that we should try something new, so he built PlanetBears, the site you're on now... and wow, the guy is a genius... I know I already said that but it needs repeating.

And once again, we're moving onward. Soon PlanetBears will be merged with TubeBear. I have other plans for PlanetBears, but come June or so, when you type in PlanetBears it will bring you to TubeBear. The news is already being posted there, there's just a few things that need to be altered and we'll be working on TubeBear 100% full time.

So wow... I've been doing online Bear stuff for 8 years... someone open up a bottle of Champagne for me since I quit drinking, or light up a joint since I quit smoking. Shit, I'm getting old as well - gonna be 40 in October - so I'm doing my best to take care of myself.

Here's to another 8 years online...

Music... as St Valentine's Day approacheth... yes music is that most essential ingredient to any beautiful evening, to dine by your kitchen lights, just you and him, and something is in the background. Now understand - taste in music truly does vary. I love stuff from Doors to NiN to White Stripes... 'n stuff... but right now I'm going to introduce you to something a little different. Their voices in unity might make you get up from your seat and say - wow, that's a new kind of powerful.

They are called the Turtle Creek Chorale and I'm hoping one day to head on out to Texas to hear them live. It's also kind of nice to know that a lot of these incredible voices are in tuned with some very good looking men. What more can a music lover need than a voice and a winning smile all for you for an evening...

Here - shh - it's one of their songs from a sold out CD. I have a copy of it, sent by a cute singer when I used to run BearPress many moons ago. He ok'ed it with the choir to run a contest so we gave away like 3 or 4 copies and they told me I could keep one, which I did (thanks btw :).

The song is called - I shall Miss Loving You. You don't weep listening to this at some point in your life, then I dunno... but wow, like I said, some kind of powerful.

Try to listen with a Bear's eye... and ear... and you just might hopefully hear this no matter what your taste in music might be.