Dogpatch Press

Fluff Pieces Every Week

Category: Subculture

May 5, 2014

John Waters, Furries and “Plushies”- how valid is the term?

by Patch O'Furr

johnwatersJohn Waters is a great character and his interviews always make me laugh. He has a place in San Francisco. He says his movie Pink Flamingos paid for it. He hangs at a certain dive bar here, and rides a certain bus line. My buddy who lives across from Yoshi’s knows which one. We went there to see him perform This Filthy World. (“His one-man show concerning his origins in the trash genre and his successful career navigating Hollywood.”)

Despite the content of John’s movies, the crowd was quite unfabulously dressed for good taste. My buddy’s Clownface drag outfit stood out like we were at a square dance.

At the end, John took a few questions from the stage. Thanks to the outfit, he couldn’t avoid noticing my hand up. I yelled out to the theater: “When are you going to come hang with the furries?”
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April 17, 2014

BLFC’s little snags and big success

by Patch O'Furr

Part 3 of 3

Reno, NV used to be the Wild West. It reminds me of bison, cowboys, cattlemen and sheepmen. Freedom had a lot to do with animals and boundary fights.

On frontiers of culture, furries have a colorful little corner where lines are pushed between normal and weird.

(Pic by PictureNV)

(Pic by PictureNV)

When I started to write about BLFC, I felt sorry about including some gossip in my last year’s con report. I’d love to balance it with pure positivity. It mostly related to locals from Reno, and the way they looked at the con. It was mild conflict between grey conservatism, and colorful, younger, wilder furries.

Unfortunately I saw reminders of the same issues this year. Oh well, let’s be honest, and talk about security. But don’t worry. The con was wonderful.
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April 15, 2014

More from Reno – Biggest Little Fireside Chat

by Patch O'Furr

Part 2 of 3

(Pic from Hahul.)

(Pic from Hahul.)

You’re at a smarty-pants club that smells of leather bound books and rich mahogany. The wisest animals are here. On a perch, Archimedes Owl thinks egghead thoughts. In a corner, The Great Mouse Detective gives him an eyeball and orates about the rat race. By the bar, a beatnik goat sips espresso and beardily strokes his beard. A sniffy elephant waiter serves a snifter of spirits. Your armchair is waiting. Bring your favorite tweed jacket, and rest your elbow-pads and paw-pads. Have a chess game by the fire and let’s converse.

Now switch the scene to a con hotel room. There’s cartoons everywhere, fursuiters chugging Monster energy drinks, and party music thumping thru the wall. Ooontz oontz oontz. Shove some stuff off the bed, play video games and hang out.

There wasn’t actual fire in the hotel, but when you hang out with furries… you never know…
After Part 1, here’s how smarty-pants it got with Dane, a fur con newcomer.
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April 15, 2014

Biggest Little Fur Con brings new wave of furs for a second record-breaking year

by Patch O'Furr

(Pic: EmptySetArt and Trip Collie.)

(Pic: EmptySetArt and Trip Collie.)

Part 1 of 3

On March 28-30, 2014, fur met hair band style, for the radical 1980’s-themed Biggest Little Fur Con.

In 2013, I really enjoyed attending the first BLFC in Reno, NV. It had a healthy attendance of 704. At the second BLFC, attendance shot up to 1442 (including 465 costumers in the parade). It broke the 2nd, 3rd, AND 4th year furry convention attendance record. With 105% growth, it became the 7th largest con by attendance at this time. Whoah, dude!

This is a sign of burgeoning subculture. It was a super positive experience. I loved dancing with the 80’s theme, representing it in costume, and playing retro video games in a nicely hooked up game room. (I heard high praise from another con’s game room organizer.) My favorite part was fursuiters on go-karts.

I’d love to give a well-rounded review about the programming, the hard work of the organizers, and charity benefit results. But I didn’t actually DO a lot more than bounce around like an escapee from the Bubble Bobble machine. So… What was your favorite part, fuzzies?
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May 29, 2013

Santa Ana gallery’s ‘Art of Furry Fandom’ connects public with Furry past and future

by Patch O'Furr

Repost from Flayrah news, 5/29/2013:

Mark Merlino and his friend Rod O’Riley might be called “first wave” furries from original geek culture, when that meant underground comics, fanzines and pen-pals. They held the first parties that turned into conventions, and WikiFur calls them “founding members of organized furry fandom.” Mark owns The Prancing Skiltaire.

furRod’s most recent accomplishment is The Art of Furry Fandom, at Avantgarden art gallery in Santa Ana, CA. It opens concurrently with this year’s Califur, this weekend. In his journal, Mark calls it a dream he’s had for over 30 years.

According to the gallery:

AVANTGARDEN is proud to present “Women Desperately Seeking Escape…a Series” photographically captured on film and digitally by ELLEN SEEFELDT. We also welcome JAY RIGGIO‘S hand cut pasted collage work, SHARLYNORA WILKINSON‘s paintings, and The Art of Furry Fandom, curated by RODNEY STANSFIELD. This exhibit runs June 1–29, opening reception June 1, 7–10pm.

Mark reminded me of a similar show in 2012 in San Jose during Further Confusion, with “more artists, more art, same kind of independent gallery”. Actually, there were two: a Slave Labor Graphics show, and “People-Shaped Animals” at Kaleid Gallery.

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May 3, 2013

Opinion: Street fursuiting is the most fun furry experience

by Patch O'Furr

Repost from Flayrah, 5/3/2013:

San Francisco hosted the 14th annual How Weird Street Faire last weekend, with the theme “WEIRDI GRAS: Carnival of Peace.” An informal fursuiter outing was organized through Meetup.com and its active Bay Area Furries group (independent from the mailing list), which runs many local events each month. I offered changing space at a nearby apartment, and scored a pair of “Disco Pants” for costuming, direct from the office of local web-based fashion startup company Betabrand. Afterwards, Betabrand was cool enough to post photos of modeling the pants on their “Model Citizen” section. (There’s more photos on Reddit.)

2013-4-28-howweird3_0-288
Left to right: Kitten, Meerk, Patch. Background: Ty Cougar.

Any news media story that covers furries is likely to focus heavily on fursuiters, and their striking visual appeal and fuzzy glamor. Fursuiters can’t represent the whole of furry fandom, when “furry” is a vague and broadly defined umbrella over anything related to anthropomorphic animals- but I think it’s OK to consider fursuiters the expressive, theatrical soul of furrydom. There is an element of “ambassador” role to their hobby. Without the 15-20% of furries who wear fursuits and costumes for role-playing, you’d just have regular unglamorous nerds saying “meow! I’m a cat”. That’s what crazy people do.

Of course, I’m kidding: Call me the most crazy of all, but I prefer the term fabulous. I like to put on silver disco pants and a Husky partial, and get on the subway to go dance and hug random people, under the influence of blasting techno music and magical substances in the air. They get so entranced by a giant sparkly talking dog, that they hand over their babies for photos. That actually happened several times this weekend at the How Weird Street Faire. I didn’t know where those babies had been, but I let them touch my paws anyways, even more carefully than when I pick up my chihuahua (who gets super confused and never knows whether to trust me when I dress up.) As far as I can tell, everyone loved the experience, even the astonished babies. Those photos might provoke some interesting questions when they grow up.

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November 2, 2012

Raccoons after dark: their haters, and their lovers

by Patch O'Furr

Flayrah News: 11/2/12

Urban raccoons are known as cute, smart, yet sometimes destructive pests that cause headaches for homeowners. Their mischief can range from raiding trash, to sensational headlines about terrorized neighborhoods that call for traps and controls.

According to the PBS nature show Raccoon Nation:

In an effort to outwit raccoons, we may be pushing their brain development and perhaps even sending them down a new evolutionary path. One biologist who has been studying raccoons for 25 years believes the city life is in fact cultivating “über-raccoons,” ready to take over the world.

While PBS jokes about “über-raccoons”, Germany has somber, no-nonsense, bedenklich news about their Nazi raccoon occupation.
Cooners
Some people worry about repelling them, but other people have a much more welcoming point of view… although they might keep their unsavory interests on the down-low. Mauricio Baiocchi, a distinguished San Francisco Bay area animator with credits from Industrial Light and Magic, lets us in on their sordid secrets in his 2011 short film, Cooners.
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October 23, 2012

Opinion: Why the furry experience hits home so deeply

by Patch O'Furr

Flayrah news: 10/23/12

Originally posted to BAF and reposted with permission, here is a nice short piece by Spottacus.

The furry experience addresses a nearly universal desire to be seen as you feel you are

Whether you are a fur (who feels a species identity different than your human skin shows), a transgender (who feels a gender different than your birth body shows), or just differently colored, shaped, or pigmented than those around you, probably all furries and their kin were likely acutely aware at an age as young age as 4-8 years old that how people saw and treated them was very different than what they felt they were like inside.

This is true for all humans, in fact, who are instantly judged at some level based on impressions: blonde, female, Mexican, Asian, African, and so on, which also have nothing to do with who you are inside. Where furs step off this path of false impressions is that we, nearly uniquely, create a fursona that we own (we feel it, we made it, it was not set a birth), and then we project and interact based upon that character.
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September 28, 2012

Controverisal SF rapper plans nightmarish gay goth animal S&M music video

by Patch O'Furr

Flayrah news, 9/28/12

MC Crumbsnatcher‘s recently released first music video is set to be followed by a second video shoot on October 15, timed to benefit from Halloween season. The video is themed “S&M gay bar in hell”, and is meant to cross over with leather/animal costuming popular among a subset of the San Francisco furry community. It will feature a story about witches who abduct Crumbsnatcher’s love interest, a penguin.

A series of videos are set to follow, including a shoot in Las Vegas for a wedding scene of a unique nature.
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September 2, 2012

San Francisco rapper MC Crumbsnatcher’s furry music video

by Patch O'Furr

Flayrah news, 9/2/12

As a club-goer most likely to get down to goth/industrial/EBM, I’m not qualified to say much about hip hop/rap. However, I know that MC Crumbsnatcher is a secret goth too, and that’s my fursuited ass he’s humping at 4:00 in the video, so let’s do this.

The San Francisco Bay area hosts many subculture scenes. They bring people together who often stay separate in less busy places. MC Crumbsnatcher’s ties might be tagged as spoken word/slam poetry, indie rap, electro, Nerdcore and Homocore. His Facebook page also lists Poo Joke Teller, ruiner of childhoods, and being a trained psychic. Let’s add Furry to the list.

Content warning: Video contains super dirty words and sexy dancing.

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