Aug 30, 2011

Sojourn to a gay bar

5 comments.

My previous post about the blog Lessons from Gay Bars in Manila reminded me of the first, and only, time that I went to a gay bar. This happened several years ago and I would have to say that the experience basically satisfied my curiosity. And my curiosity was very much satisfied since I never went back to another gay bar. I guess these types of venues are really not for me.

The gay bar trip happened because of a good friend of mine that I met back in college. Let’s call him A. A’s best friend, B, is a gay bar parokyano. It so happened that A had not been to a gay bar before either so one time he suggested that we tag along with B to such a venue. After making plans, we found ourselves one Saturday night driving around Pasay to look for the target establishment. I don’t anymore recall the name of the gay bar we went to but I can still remember that it was located along the northbound side of Taft Avenue near the Pasay Rotonda. Maybe one of the readers can supply the name since the bar has long closed down (or maybe moved locations)?

A gay bar scene from Walang Kawala

Anyway, we arrived at the place at around 9 pm and each of us paid the 250-peso entrance fee, which I think entitled us to one bottle of beer. We selected a table near the back facing the stage and noticed that the place wasn’t packed with customers, which I didn’t expect since it was a Saturday evening. I guess business was quite slow that night and the announcer even joked that the macho dancers should be the ones to table the customers since there were actually more dancers than there were people in the audience. Hehe.

The show itself was a mixed bag. We arrived while the macho dancers did their performance one at a time. I think there were about 12 dancers or so that we saw. There were several cute dancers and most of them actually had good toned bodies. Did they do it all the way? For some of them, yup! A few audience members even got to hold them when they did their area. How about us? Well, A and I weren’t prepared to shell out the dough needed to table the customers and B went along with us so we just contented ourselves with watching the show, which, despite the full monty performances, became quickly repetitive. If you’ve seen one Pinoy macho dancing, you would’ve seen them all.

The next part of the show, after the macho dancers’ individual performances, was actually the most interesting. They brought out a sofa onto the stage and four masked men wearing briefs entered and sat on and around the sofa like models in an underwear fashion shoot. As far as we could tell (given that these guys had masks on) none of the four were macho dancers from earlier. And when the music started playing, A and I were pleasantly surprised (and just a bit shocked) with what we saw! The guys, split off into two pairs, started kissing each other passionately. After several minutes of exchanging saliva, the briefs came off and the saliva were then administered to the guys’ erect tools. We thought that was it until the men then started entering each other! I didn’t know about A, but I was quite turned on with what I was witnessing, and was just a bit apprehensive since I was afraid that police might suddenly barge into the venue and conduct a raid or something. Nevertheless, no police came and we thoroughly appreciated the live show since it was the first time A and I witnessed live the sort of stuff you only got to see in porn videos. :-)

After that unexpected live show, the program continued with more macho dancing, but this time with the guys coming to the stage in small groups at a time. It was around midnight at that point and A and I thought that we’d already seen enough (the macho dances were really quite unimaginative) and so we decided to leave the gay bar. Since the night was just halfway done, A and I agreed to go clubbing in Malate. We said goodbye to B, who wasn’t into the clubbing scene and didn’t want to join us, and drove straight along Taft Avenue to go to BED Malate where we danced the night away.

So, that was my memorable gay bar experience. How about yours?

Aug 23, 2011

Featured blog: Lessons from Gay Bars in Manila

4 comments.

There are 4 major types of establishment that primarily cater to the gay segment of society. And these are:

  • Gay bathhouses aka gay saunas (such as Club Bath and Queeriosity Palace)
  • Gay massage parlors (such as Hilom and Spartacus)
  • Gay bars (such as Adonis and Planet Xanadu)
  • Gay clubs (such as BED and O-Bar)

If you’ve been reading Discreet Manila for a long time, you would recognize that I try to provide some information on bathhouses and gay clubs. Unfortunately, I don’t really patronize massage parlors and gay bars so I will rarely write about them. Fortunately, there are other blogs than can guide you to those other types of establishments. I’ve featured a couple of these blogs before. One is Manila Gay Guide (DM post), which aims to be a guide to the various massage parlors in the Metro. However, that blog has been inactive lately.

The other blog is Shamelessmack in Thailand (DM post) and this one features various massage parlors, and the occasional gay bar, all over Southeast Asia, mostly in Thailand. The problem with that is that the blogger obviously prefer Thai establishments and so his info on Manila venues will not be as comprehensive. Alas, that blog has gone private.

Well, there’s a relatively new local blog which started last December that talks about the gay bars in Metro Manila. This blog is Lessons from Gay Bars in Manila and is written by G.B. Goer (gay bar goer), a mid-to-late 20s gay guy. If you’re at all curious about the local gay bar scene, then this blog is by far the best I’ve seen. Some sample posts include:

Do visit and follow his blog. He writes very well and he makes sure that his articles are informative if not entertaining. Plus, he writes more often than I do so his blog is certainly a good place to visit while Discreet Manila has no new articles yet. *wink*

Aug 19, 2011

“Seriously?! It’s like you’re Photoshopped!”

3 comments.

I just watched Crazy, Stupid, Love, starring Steve Carell and Julianne Moore, last night and it was one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. I highly encourage you to go and see it. It’s a surprisingly intelligent movie for a romantic comedy and the story, acting, and dialogues were a notch over its peers.

But since this is a gay blog, there’s one icing to this cake of a movie: Ryan Gosling. Just go watch the last part of the film’s trailer below to see just one of many reasons to march to the cinema and ogle at this fine actor. :-)