 Without further ado, I'm going to introduce a gentleman who really needs no introduction, but Mr. Vern Stewart, who is also a Claude Virgin. Thank you. Me, a Virgin, isn't that something? I do have to apologize if we have no microphones, so we'll try to get as good of an audio as we can for this. I'll try to... Annunciate. Project. Yeah, right, okay. Starting at the beginning, we share a very interesting footnote in Leather Contest history. Would you please tell us what was said at the 2004 Mr. Selblok Contest in Chicago? Well, there are a few of us here that were there that night. I see out in the audience whose mouths fell open that night, mine being one of them. It was the Mr. Selblok Contest, and I had been invited to be a judge, along with who I believe is going to be one of the emcees at IML this year, John Tindall. And it was the step down of who lives in Europe now, with that particular contestant. Anyway, as a judge, you generally, before your interviews are over, they'll ask you, producer or somebody, to write out a question, which can be asked later on during the contest, and we all did. And one of the questions, and unfortunately it had to be me who wrote that question, I had said, you know, with Chicago being the first city that it is, and with so many ethnic backgrounds there, and there weren't a lot of people of color that were entering IML contests and things like that. My question was, what could you do to bring more people of color into the leather community and into IML? And this one contestant stood up there and said, when he was asked the question by Frank Mawiki, he said, well, guess I'll have to go to some colored bars and find them. Well, Frank is generally never speechless, but his mouth kind of fell open. And he's standing there holding the microphone. And I'm sitting next to John Tindall at the table, and John Tindall, I thought he was going to break my rib. Did you hear what he said? Did you hear what he said? Yes, John, I heard what he said. And the outgoing title holder looked at me and said, no, he didn't say that. I turned around and looked back, and there was Mufasa and a few other, quite a few other Onyx members. And their mouths just kind of... No, he didn't say that. And I could hear, I was screeching, Mary Elizabeth, did you hear that she was way in the back? And you could hear her all the way around. Frank finally pulled himself together and tried to compose himself and said, oh, I see. Which is my line, generally. And nobody...this man was a contestant. But they were all in the back, so they didn't hear the answer. But when they came out on stage, they just saw all the audience, and the audience would steal a... If they had said something wrong, did something wrong. And they found out later on. And that story, I think, has circled the globe. I've had people from Europe that said, oh, I understand you had a very interesting interview at a contest in Chicago. It went round the world. And of course I was going to ask the person once it was over, and I can't even remember his name now. I was going to ask the person, well, just wear these colored bombers and I need to go, too. But the last we saw of him was the heels of his shoes hitting the front door of the cell block. Never to be seen or heard from again. So that was the story of... And they know some of the people here that I'm not making it up because they were there and heard it. So it was like, some people just need to close their mouths and think before they open and insert a shoe in mouth. It was something, and I don't think people have ever forgotten that. I see people now. I'm like, oh yeah, I remember you. What made it say that? I wrote the question. That's how that all went down. And I didn't know, I couldn't remember who won that contest. I mean, sure, I couldn't remember, but the next day, a little on that. But when he contacted me about doing this, he says, you know, we've met. And I said, oh, have we now? And I said, yes. I was at a particular contest before I knew you. I've been to 40, 50, 60 contests or more. And he said it was in Chicago and it was at the cell block. I said, uh-oh. There's another guy that I met here yesterday in that tent out there. And he was taking pictures. And he said, oh yes, I remember you. I was doing photos for some publication or something, and he was down in the front. And he said when the guys gave his answer, he said his camera went up like this, because he was standing on this platform. He says, I forgot to snap the picture. So anyway, that's that. And I won that year. That's where we're going. As an information, yes. So as a joke, I got very sick a couple of months ago. So as a joke, Vern sent me an email and said, oh, did you have your operation at one of the colored hospitals? We've got a lot of mileage out of that. But please tell us a little bit about growing up, a little bit about your family. Well, I'm a California kid west coast. My mother, oddly enough, was born here. I can see why she fled. And out to California, and I think during that era, World War II, just ending, you know, FDR was doing his fireside chats and all of that. And they came out there to do a better life. And my father was an architect and a contractor. So he was looking for something, and he did find employment out there. And we moved to Berkeley. And Berkeley in those days was, you see Berkeley is there, college town, et cetera, et cetera, and all of that. And when they went to look for a house, they did find a house on the upper side of Berkeley, the north side. There was a South Berkeley and North Berkeley. North Berkeley is closer up to UC. Found a house there. They liked it, set it to buy it. They put the money down and blah, blah, blah, and done all these things that you do when you're purchasing a house and all of that. Then they found out that they had what was known, and maybe some of you are not familiar with it, but towns had them, and some towns still have covenants, building covenants, living covenants. And what a covenant was at that point, they didn't want any people other than wasps, white, Anglo-Saxons, you know? And it wasn't just no blacks or no this or no that. And of course, you must remember at that time, Japanese were in tournament camps out in Livermore, California, Camp Parks and all of that. So they weren't highly thought of either, you know? And they were told that they could not move into that neighborhood. Of course, my father thought, what do you mean? Well, they had this covenant. They were the first people, first family, to take it to court. We were talking about 1945, 1946. And it went to court. They got a, I think his boss, my dad's boss, turned him over to this, recommended an attorney who thought it was outrageous. And of course, the attorney was of Jewish persuasion. So you know how they felt about all the business they had gone on across the pond. And he said, I'm going to take this. And he did. And of course, he put his staff and everything to work. And they went to various houses and were asking and investigating what this, what do you think about that? And for the most part, the neighbors that were German on one side, and I don't know what the others were on the other side, but they asked all the people on our block, our side, what they thought. None of them had any problems with anybody living there. People on the back block and two blocks away, they were complaining about it. You know, we never even knew anything about it. But anyway, they went to court. It was broken. And you get the newspapers and the Berkley-Bezette and the Oakland Tribune and all of that, that we were the first black family that moved into that neighborhood. And we were the only black family in that neighborhood for probably eight or nine years. But I, you know, I knew the kids there. And across the street was the Salvo Naval Project housing for guys that were in the Navy with their families and what have you. And so constantly going to school, grammar school there, you were always meeting new kids. There weren't, oddly enough, any black kids that lived in that project. Well, as you know, there weren't many blacks that were in the service. It wasn't until Harry Truman came along and said, oh, nay, nay, we've got to change this, you know, but it's hard. So anyway, that's how, that's where I grew up. I never had any problems. There was no such thing as, oh, no, they lived there. And those people and this, that and the other. It was, there were people in the community that California was very, it was a type of city where you had college, you had a lot of people there. But they didn't do anything open. I mean, like in the south, it was like a nigger, this, that, the other, and blah, blah, blah. I didn't hear any of that there. They were much more, it's a date about that, you know. Step aside or look at your funny and things like that for some. But I never had that problem in grammar school. I never had it in junior high or anything like that. I didn't go through that. So it was kind of like reading about all of these things that were happening in the south. And I was like blown away that there were still segregated schools in Virginia in 1960, you know. And I'm trying to deal with this in my head. Of course, we were just kind of like blown away that this was going on. Not denying that it wasn't going on, but it wasn't going on there in that area. So I didn't really have any problems like that. Some years later, I was going through some papers and dealing with some stuff from my mom, my grandmother. They had opened up and taken out a insurance policy. And in those days, your insurance man came to your house and collected. You didn't have all this email and send and list that and the other. Insurance man would come. And I happened to be at Metropolitan Life some years later and looking through the files and the application that he had taken out and then the application to say, oh, they should be insured. Oh, these are a very, they're a very nice colored family. I read it. Nice colored family. And they should not be denied, you know. Of course, you had another insurance company called Golden State. And Golden State Insurance was black owned. And so they'd come to your door and you'd pay $1.95 or whatever it was, you know, for your insurance for that week. And they came weekly just about. A couple of them came monthly, but that one was weekly. And when he found out that folks had another insurance with Metropolitan, which is basically a totally white insurance company, and it was fairly big, and it still is, I assume, he said, how did you all get into that? How did they let you in? Let us in, you know. But they didn't know what he had written down there. That's a colored family. So, and I showed that I asked for a copy of it. I showed it to my folks some years later. I won't even repeat what my grandmother said. But anyway, we grew up there. Went to school there. UC Berkeley was, of course, a well-known school, but it was always known as a, there was always problems there. Crazy people went to UC Berkeley. And they were, you know, I mean, during the years coming up, they had the free speech movement. Younger guys here probably are not even aware of that, but it was a school that always had something going on there, you know. Free speech movement. You had Mario Savio, Appdecker, you name it. They were there. And that's how I kind of like got involved with it because you were around it. And they lived, I mean, they didn't live in fancy neighborhoods. Berkeley was a pretty general neighborhood. So you always saw and heard these things, and Berkeley Gazette and the college paper always had all of this information in there and things were going on and this, that, and the other. And of course you had a governor, a governor who governed Goodwin J. Knight, Goody Knight. He didn't know what to do. You had Clark Kerr, who was the president of UC Berkeley. He was trying to deal with things that were to keep everybody happy. Well, you couldn't keep everybody happy. And of course you had Katherine Hearst of the Hearst dynasty, William Randolph's and all of that. She sat on the Board of Regents and of course she didn't really want to be bothered with any colored issues, but we moved from colored to negro at that point. We stepped up. So there were those things that brought all of that along. And of course when the free speech movement started, they just were horrified. We've got to get rid of these people. We can't have this. It's blemishing the name of the University of California, blah, blah, blah, blah, this, that, and the other. And of course while all that was going on, then you had Huey Newton, who suddenly jumped into the fray from the deep south and his family had moved to Oakland. And Huey Newton was just, he was a nice person as I got to know him later on, but he started out, I mean, like he even said, he financed his education by robbing people up in the Berkeley Hills in Oakland and Tiedmont and this, that, and the other. He did that. And he didn't mind telling somebody that. I met him, Stokely Carmichael, all those things were going along at that time. They were at Merritt College. And in between the police chasing them and beating them and shooting at them and arresting them, of course, as you well know, if any of you are familiar with history, how that all played out. Along came Angela Davis. We all remember Angela Davis. And she had bought some guns. They had some things going on. They had arrested some of the people. Some of them had been sent to San Quentin, which was just across the Bay of there in Marin County. And they escaped. And Judge Haley was shot in his courtroom up there in the Marin County Courthouse. Oh, it was living in Oakland, Berkeley at that time and being a black person or a person of color was hell at times because the Oakland police were like, you just thought they were Nazis. They stopped you for anything. Back your eyes wrong. You were pulled over. I had that happen to me any number of times. And God forbid if you had a decent looking car and there was a white person in there, what you doing in this neighborhood, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, just to harass you. And harassment got really very big. There was a time though that one or two of the free speech movement people decided to run for mayor. One even ran for governor. And of course, Angela Davis was on the Communist Party and she ran. And of course, good old Ronnie Reagan was the governor. And oh, no, no. We can't have that. He did everything he could to make sure that she was removed from the staff of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Yes, where she was teaching at that point. He put that into effect so she could not get a job. And things like that. So I mean, there was that era. The 60s was like something. But I, you know, survived it. And it was a learning experience, meeting and knowing these people. And they were pretty down-to-earth people. I never saw the parts of them, gunfire and shootings and all of that. We'd certainly read about and see it in the news and everything else. But most of that happened in West Oakland. Well, Homie didn't go to West Oakland. It was kind of like, you know, okay, you folks are over there. We stayed in our side town. And of course, my parents would not have had me involved in any of that. Although I did go to demonstrations. When I thought it was something that I believed in and it was wrong in the way of, especially police treatment and et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, I was active in that. And only hoping as I look around, make sure Channel 4 or Channel 7 wasn't there with the cameras. And if they were there with the camera, I would pull my cap down over my head because I didn't want to hear my folks saying, nigger, please, what are you doing down there? And so it was like I learned, I grew from that. And it was a learning experience which I will never regret at all. It was part of the 60s, the terrible 60s. You know, they said they were the sexy 60s. No, there wasn't much sexy about that at all. And of course, needless to say, it was going on there. I think California received more coverage than a lot of other places. In the South, you heard coverage about somebody being maybe strung up to a tree or drug down to a tree or beaten, but you didn't hear much about any equal rights and civil rights thing until Martin Luther King came along. And then people started becoming involved in California, UC Berkeley. They had folks that went down there during the voter registration time. And I remember my mother saying, you don't need to go down there because they're killing people, this, that, and the other, and all of that. I did go once. You had to go in a group. If you went across the street to the store, you went as a group with somebody looking over the shoulder. You marched back over to your motel where you were staying or whatever. It was something because those days they would think nothing of pulling a gun and blowing you away right in the middle of the street. And it was scary. It really was scary. But when you're young and you're full of piss and vinegar, fuck those people. And you're going to go. I was lucky. A couple of guys weren't as lucky. And it taught me a lesson about how much hatred there really was, you know, and in those areas. So from that, you know, I mean that was one portion of my life. And of course, at one point we moved out to Hayward, California, which is Southern Alameda County. And a nice little neighborhood and everything. Little did I know that there was one of the guys, Sonny Barger. Sonny Barger was the president of Hell's Angels. We'd all heard about Hell's Angels. And that's when I kind of... And he wasn't that type of a person, at least not to the neighbors. Everybody liked him. And he was okay. Had a lot of women and lots of whites and bikes and this and that. And that's when I saw all the leather business. And... And they had their leather jackets and this and the other and tattoos and all of that. And I got to talking to them. And there was a couple of bars in San Leandro, Oakland and Hayward that they hung out. Well, knowing him, I went to a couple of the bars and walked in there and bigging the beard and down on the hair and that's that and the other. And I talked to him and, you know, I was like, oh, this little kid over here, he wants to get involved and all of that. And when I bought a motorcycle, the first one I thought my mother was going to absolutely drown me. I thought she was going to fall over and die. Because I didn't even tell her I bought it and I kept it at somebody else's house. Wouldn't dare bring it home, you know. And of course, black families, I don't care how grown you are, your grandparents, your mother, your father, they're going to talk about beating your black ass all up and down the street and don't be embarrassing us, you know. And so, you know, I was like, hmm, hmm. So I tell my grandmother, boy, what's wrong with you? Why would you, white folks? And I said, no, I just want to know. And when I got to bite you, and when I got to bite you finally, they saw it for the first time. I remember. And in those days, they didn't have, the law hadn't been passed about the helmets. So you didn't have to have one. But my mother said, well, if this fool child is going to be on a motorcycle, well, let me buy him a helmet so that they will be able to recognize the body by his facial structure when it gets run over by something. Yeah, you know. So she was keen on that, you know. I want to be able to recognize you, but the rest of you scattered all over the house. You know. So I got involved with that. Then, of course, after those clubs that I had attended, then I stepped on across the bridge to San Francisco. Well, I didn't know at first that there was, you know, the straight clubs. I saw motorcycles parked out in front. There was this bar called The Tool. There was an old tool for the whole bike sitting out there in front. And I stepped on it. And I was not a kid that was afraid to go. I was nosy. I always wanted to find out, well, what is this? You know, what's this all about? And I went into the tool bar and it was on Folsom and fifth, I believe. Anyway, I went to the other guys with their chapsons and their leather pants and this, that, the other. Ordered a drink. Nobody said anything to me about what you do in here or anything like that. And I stood there and listened to various conversations. And I didn't know what I expected that they were going to be talking about, but what I didn't expect was that they were going to be talking about, oh, so and so is at the opera house this weekend. And such and such. Did you see Julia and that wonderful recipe she did about Keesh? And I thought, no. And come to find out when I was in there closing hours two o'clock in San Francisco, California for the bars. But I'd go outside and I'd see these people getting on their bikes. But the rest of them in all this leather taxi, taxi. And I thought, oh, well not all these people have bikes. They're just coming down there and dressing the part. And that was decased, you know. And then when I started talking to people I met some very nice people and the surprising part about it was they might have had leather on at night but they were in near Brooks Brothers during daytime down in Montgomery Street which is the financial district of San Francisco. And they lived pretty normal lives. No, they didn't live in hovels. They had very nice apartments, very nice homes, lovely artwork and all of that. No, no, no, no, no. That's kind of like how I met people and got involved with all of this. That was it. Well, IML is coming up again and you attended first IML. Please tell us a bit about that. IML, the first IML was 1979. Just a mere child. And the reason that I wound up going really was in those days IML was not this Memorial Day weekend. Oh, no, no, no, it was always Mother's Day weekend and my folks had since moved to Chicago. So you have to go see Mama on Mother's Day, you know, on Mother's Day weekend and that's when I found out of this leather I knew about, I knew about the Gold Coast and I knew about several other bars there. So I went and, of course, they were putting together this contest. And if you read, if any of you have read Chuck Renslow's latest book, the one that came out last year, he tells you pretty much the way it was those first couple of years and they held the first contest at the Raddison, which was down, not too far from Gold Coast, which was on Clark Street then. And, of course, there was another bar right across the street, not on Clark, but on the side street, which was owned by, it was the Redoubt and the guy that owned it also owned the baton. And they kind of had a, between Chuck and, God, what's... Jim Flynn? Felicia Flynn. Oh, ho, ho, ho. Felicia Flynn, yeah. So Felicia Flynn had a bar and she had the baton and that and all that stuff. So they were kind of running against each other and all of that. And his bar was kind of nice and we used to run back and forth across the street to the other one and all that. And Jim Flynn was doing very well with the baton. It became one of those bars kind of like there was a place in San Francisco called Fenokios where the drag queens and all that went. And it became one of these places where the tour buses pulled up there and all the straight folks got out and marched in and from Iowa and Wyoming and all these places to see these men in women's clothing, you know? And so he was doing quite well with that. Plus Jim Flynn was also very big into the sports and athletics he had. He sponsored a number of softball teams and this, that, and anything that was big into that. So we had those things. So between the two bars and Clark Street along that area had a couple of the bulk stores and this, that, and the other all that was going on. So you'd see people stepping on off into the bookstores, the reading rooms, or as several folks used to call and Marcus included, the library. Oh, I'm on my way to the library. Now read this. So it was kind of like okay, Pat Batt, Patrick Batt who's a very good friend of mine lives in California now. He was his first manager and if you looked in that book you saw pictures of Pat at the Gold Coast and what have you and all of that and he and a couple of others said we ought to do something about having a leather contest other than just a Mr. Chicago leather and let's open it up to other cities, other states, all that kind of stuff. And they did. And that first year, I think there were three or four from San Francisco that besides the winter. And if you hear, I think there was maybe a total of, I'm not even sure if there was 20 people, I don't think there were. I think it was like maybe 10 or 12 people or something in local that entered that contest, you know. And it went over kind of well because it was something new and it gave people something to go to and to look forward to do it and they could dress up in all their finery, you see, and I mean that became a, that was known as a high cow event, you know. I wonder what it was like right now, you know. And so you folks, and leather stores were starting to open up. There was a male hide leather in Chicago and he said, oh, let's get in on this. Get some cow hide here and dress these boys up. So they had that and there were several other people who were getting involved in it. So it became a thing. Well, once David Hoff became IML and back to San Francisco, well, he pushed a lot of people. And the bar that he was connected with, which was called the Arena, and in those days he worked there and the folks started coming in and they didn't know exactly what to buy. But, you know, first of all, you know, get yourself a coat. You know, you need a coat. You need San Francisco weather, you know. And then get yourself a pair of boots. You don't have to worry about all those vests and this and that and da, da, da, da, da. Because in those days, compared to now, leather was inexpensive compared to, but it was still hot because we weren't making that much money, you know. And so you had to pick and choose. So you got your boots and you got your jacket. Well, hell, you could get away with wearing some Levi's and black Levi's boots and jacket. That was cool. He pushed it and the next year, a few more people came out of curiosity, not because they were going to enter the contest, but they wanted to see, well, oh, there's some others look like us. Oh, okay. And they came. And those two, those first two years, it was a kind of a family thing. You knew all the bartenders at the Gold Coast and they were very friendly. You had a good time, but you connected with people, people in Chicago and a few other places that they had come from. And that's kind of like how it really got started in Chicago for people there. I know that Chuck had many times said, well, why don't you have it in such and such and why don't you move it around? He said, no, it's going to stay right here and stay right there. It did. And that's where it still is and will always be. He said it would have been too much of a hassle to try to move a contest of this and that. And we've seen how that's gone with ABW. You know, I mean like, oh, yeah, they moved it from when I started with it and was one of the producers and all that. Able Productions, we did it in Washington, D.C. It seemed to be a perfect time of year. The weather was decent and everything else. Now, of course, the first two years that we did it, it was in Boston. I was with Mike up there in Boston to get the things started. Then it moved down to D.C. Well, after all that, they thought, okay, you had that there. Then when it was sold, we turned it over. Dean Ogren decided to move it to, of all places, New Orleans. Now, what person in your right mind do you know that's going to pack a suitcase full of leather in the middle of July and go to New Orleans? Hello? It was hot and it's sticky. And it was horrible. And they've tried that. They tried it with international leather, sir. When it was drummer, it was always held in San Francisco. That's where Tony DeBlois was. That's where the owner of Publisher of Drummer way back when. It's always been there. The magazine was there. So it made good sense to have that. Plus, they had the advertising of the magazine. And in those days, everybody was buying drummer. It was the magazine. And so it's never changed. And let's face it, Renzlo hasn't gone to the poor house behind having an IML. I mean, he hasn't had to pick up any food stamps to survive. I'll tell you that. So he's done well. And it seems to be okay. But it's changed over the years. It has changed drastically. And I can't say that I'm all that pleased with the direction that it has taken. It's become more of a social gathering. And for a while there, it was almost like, oh, let's go there and get high. And it lost its initial reason for being. You look at the guys from 79, 80, 81, and all the people that were IML. People respected them and they said, this is my representative as the years have gone on. It's kind of like a whole hum. And that's not to say that everybody hasn't had some kind of agenda, but it's kind of gone down. Certain years, it's almost seemed like it's a costume party. Oh, well, no, you have this confused with Halloween. This is not the way it's supposed to be. But I think, you know, they're trying, and I would like to try to make sure that the guys that are entering these contests now know something about the contest, know something about history. Why are you up here? Are you just standing here at the S&M stand and model? And with your little size across and what have you? Because it developed into that for a few years. It's like, oh, her. Well, it's like, I hope that it's going back to the way it kind of initially was. And in my heart, I do believe that Rinslow won't say anything now, but I know he would like to see it the way it started, I believe, and continue in that area. Well, in coming full circle, you judged IML last time. So what are your thoughts on judging? Well, I will say this, you know, having gone to all these IMLs, 32 of them, whatever, I have watched and I have dealt with these and observing. I used to love to go and just sit back and watch. Between my oldest sister Marcus and I, we used to sit there and we had them down and I usually had it down to who the top ten were and narrowed down sometimes even more so than that. You knew who IML was going to be, just by the way he behaved, by the way he acted, by the way things went. But what has happened is that people are taking it more as just, oh, I just wanted to end it for fun. Well, I don't want international Mr. Fun, love. He's representing me. Well, then I want to see something more than fun. And I think that it's why it's so important to me that people know their history or something about it. And I'll tell you, last year I was never so disappointed with so many of the class of 2012 that could not even made three former IMLs and five or six of them were right there at IML last year. Well, what does that tell me? What does that say to me? Okay, you don't even know the person that was here before you or two years before or you don't have anybody that maybe might have been a role model in IML? Well, then why did you bother to enter? What's going on here, you know? And when I saw that last year and people and one said, oh, well, I'm just so bad with memories. I just can't remember. Well, Missy, then you need to be sitting at home somewhere reading a book rather than representing the entire leather community. And you're not just representing the men. You got the leather women also. We can't forget them. They came along a little bit later, I mean, from Judy Tarwing McCarthy on up, you know? They've put their two cents worth in. And not to say that they haven't had problems and what have you, but they're still doing it, you know? It started a little bit later. It's 87 as opposed to 79. But, you know, they're doing okay. I was disappointed last year with the lack of knowledge that so many of the contestants had. There was one that came, he had an IML from his area. He didn't even know. I mentioned his name as well. He didn't know nothing about men. And he was the only IML from that particular country ever. You think, okay, what are the reasons that you really want to enter this contest? Because your friends said, oh, that's a cute little outfit over there. Get that. You'll look good in that. I don't want international, Mr. Cute Little Outfit, representing me. I want somebody who's got something up here that can lead us, speak up when necessary, and even when not necessary, and support the leather community, be it black, be it white. I have certainly said over the years that we've only had two people of color. The first one, Ron Moore, was real. Worked for a phone company when he was climbing poles, and he was as funny as the day was long. Called me on a Sunday and, what you doing? He said, well, I just put my hair up in curly. I got on my fuzzy slipper. But he was real, and they mistreated him when he was IML. They didn't do the same for him as they did for white IMLs, some of them. He used to have a company in LA that always took the current IML and used him as a model for their chaps. That company was the first company that started making chaps with the zipper on the outside. Every year, IML, when it came time to hear from him, never saw a picture of him at all. Little crap like that. Went to San Francisco. San Francisco was always your first exposure to your IML community for the parade in June. Well, the year that he won, they decided to float the owner of the bar. Well, no, we're only going to have our runner up. Who was a runner up that year? And I'm on the float. It always had been IML, and if there was someone else, they always rode and waved and what have you. It didn't happen. I was fit to be tied. I went off. Has it so happened? The woman that owned a bar called Chaps in San Francisco, Chuck Slaton, he had just bought a brand new bus, a brand new truck. And his other half was the San Francisco police officer. Had a beautiful black Harley. He put that Harley in the back of the truck and put Ron Moore on there. It was like, as was seen going up and down. I mean, it was like gorgeous. And he got all, you know, it's crap like that, that we still have to work on. We still have to work on the problems of segregation and this, that, and the other. And there's some of it in the leather community. Oh yes, there is. They may cover it over a little bit. It's not as obvious as it used to be way back when. It's why I've been always a big pusher when Mufasa and all those started onyx. Maybe, you know, that would bring more people to the forefront and get them in. It hasn't been what I would hope that it would be. I'm not sure that it hasn't been spread out enough rather than people thinking, oh, well, you have to be part of onyx in order to enter the contest. No, you don't have to. Which is the case this year, you know, part of onyx. And I would like to see more people of color, Asians. How many Asians have they had at IML? Like three, you know, one of them was from, he wasn't even from here, he was from Canada, you know. But he did well, you know. And they've had a couple in LA, from LA and this, that, and the other things like that. So we'll see if there will be one this year. And I think that's great. Bert Stewart, thank you very much.