Chicago!!!

Chicago was absolutely amazing! We got lucky and got into town just hours after all of the big storms ripped through the city. Bobby was able to get us a hotel just south of downtown on the 28th floor. Check out the view from our window.

Saturday was mainly spent wandering around downtown looking at all the cool buildings everywhere. Chicago has phenomenal amounts of cool buildings – unlike any other city I’ve been in. Even cooler – lots of them are residential! We also happened to run into David R. from Lifelong while shopping. It was great to have him spend some time exploring the city with us.

Here are a few of my favorite buildings from our wanderings and the boat ride.

This wall was cool - with bricks from all over-

Sunday we had a chance to go to the top of the Hancock center for brunch. I highly recommend having a meal or drink there. The view from 96 stories up is amazing. It’s said that you can see to Wisconsin from up there.

After Hancock – we had a chance to go into this great little church across the street. You can tell Bobby was having fun:

Finally – we had a chance to check out Millennium Park on the southside of downtown. Let me tell you… this park is friggen cool! They had this awesome chrome bean. I loved taking pictures of people taking pictures. Below are various pictures of the park.

This was a fountain - with video behind it. It even spits!

Click on the picture of Bobby below to see the rest of the pictures!

Anacortes Cabin 2.0

Anacortes Cabin trip 2.0 was a raging success! Thanks to Matt for organizing it and to everyone else for making it a good time. Here’s a brief synopsis of the trip through pictures.

The clouds were stunning


Blake and Jon fenced


Blake had a sock with a fluffy ball on it?


Barry threatened to beat me up


I slept


Doc Rocked it on the guitar


Alex posed for his new album cover


Kellan got drunk



We all stood on a log

More pics are available here

Also, Brian had a birthday last week - and I promised him I wouldn't post any pictures online...

Vancouver, BC Pride

This weekend was pride up in Vancouver. Of course, ever the photog, I had to attend to take some photos!

We headed up pretty early on Saturday morning and arrived in Vancouver just prior to noon. We managed to check into our hotel and discovered that we had a nice large room on the 21st floor! The addition of a balcony was fantastic and afforded great views of the city and of the fireworks (it was the international fireworks competition, after all.) Here’s a sampling of the photos I was able to take from our balcony:

The rest of the day was spent shopping, exploring and just enjoying Vancouver. It’s a very walkable, pretty city. The Harbour Centre is one of my favorite buildings as it is so similar to the space needle. I still haven’t had a chance to go up in it for drinks. Maybe sometime soon.

After we enjoyed some pre-funking with a bunch of people in our suite we went over to Celebrities for their annual pride party. The cover was $30 and Westbrook had been nice enough to grab them on Friday for us. Sadly, the music was not so hot at the club on this night. On the bright side… there were tons of people there! By 1:30am I was fast asleep (and from what I hear snoring LOUDLY!) Sorry Brian/Dorian. Oops.

Obviously my snoring kept Brian Kerr awake for far too long:

Sunday we had some food stuffs and then headed down to the parade route to stake out our spot. We had a nice spot in the shade right towards the end of the parade. The parade was good, not quite as good as SF… but still pretty darn good. Very few gaps – gotta love that! Several of my favorite pictures are below – click on any of them to see the rest!

Drag queens, bowling and night shots - oh my!

It’s been a fun few days! Saturday night was Lily’s monthly show at the Rendezvous. Here’s a pic of Lily.

NOW – here’s a pic of special guest Jon! Fun times! Click on either pic for more of the show.

Yesterday my whole team at work went to the Garage for bowling, billiards and of course some drink stuff. I think it was a fun time and got people out of their element. Here’s a couple of my favorite pics – again, click on any of them to see the rest!

Finally – We surprised Bobby for his B-Day last night – you can see the look of shock on his face!

After a few of us went around to the pretty night areas of Seattle. We had to convince Alex’s friend Bruce that he needs to move to Seattle! Always a good time!

Happy 4th of July!

What a great 4th of July. Danny invited me out on a boat with some of his friends. So we were in the middle of Lake Washington for the festivities. There were five boats of gay guys all moored together… so it was a nice large group of people. At one point I saw one pair of guys from our set of boats out on a kayak. Next thing I saw was them tipped over in the middle of the boat. Even worse… the cops were pulling em out of the water! Of course I got pictures of it all!

The lake was totally crazy – just tons of boats!



There were even hot boys in spider man inner tubes on the lake!



Danny stayed totally sober… I swear:



And the fireworks were superb!



Check out the rest of my pics by clicking on the fireworks!

SF Pride '07

Pride this year was fantastic... and tiring. oh - and I look like Rudolf thanks to the relentless sun in SF. I was thrilled to have my camera with me - and had a press pass in hand so I could hop the baricades and shoot the parade from the middle of the parade! SF had this fantastic Cheer squad - "Cheer SF"



They did some pretty fantastic aerial maneuvers!

The parade was, of course, fabulous. Instead of going into detail though... why don't you check out the pictures yourself? Just click on the balloon guy below!



Enjoy!

Weekend in SF

This weekend was tons of fun. Dorian and I headed to SF for a whirlwind trip doing lots of the touristy things in SF. We arrived at the airport at an ungodly hour on Friday (5am). We landed in Oakland by 8am and were on our way to the city to have some fun. After checking in at the hotel we wandered around Castro for a bit, checked out Fisherman’s Wharf and then picked up our Go Car from the location near the wharf. You may be asking… what’s a go car?

It’s this little bitty 2 seater with a 50cc engine and a GPS navi system. The engine was so tiny that on a few hills we had to stick our legs out and help the little car along. As you drive it around the city it tells you interesting facts about where you are and tells you where to turn to keep on the tour route. We took it to tons of places like:

The Beach:

Golden Gate Bridge:

Legion of Honor:

Golden Gate Park:

And tons of other places!

Next up was the night time tour of Alcatraz. As you can see – fog was beginning to engulf the city as we departed for the island.

The island itself was pretty cool and included an audio tour of the entire facility. Dorian got a bit out of hand though and was locked up.

The next morning we met up with my friend Mark to bike the bridge. Strangely enough his neighbor had some free stuff sitting in his driveway for anyone to take. Just to be clear… it’s not me that was free… it was this item. Seriously!

Biking across the Golden gate was a total blast. I highly recommend it if you ever have a few hours to spare in SF.

That was pretty much then end of our whirlwind trip. We got back to Seattle at 9pm and then raced to Belltown to see Lily Armani’s show. (Which was hilarious I might add)

Click on the photo with the water (Palace of fine arts) to see more pics of SF –or- click on the picture of Lily to see some pics from her show!

Next up… SF Pride this Friday – flying down again. Look for some fun pictures next week!