Foreign visitors lapped up Bear Week After a hugely successful second year which many attendees are still recovering from, Get It On! Bear New Zealand Week will be back and bigger than ever in 2012. This year's event ended at the weekend with the Tri-Nations dance party on the weekend. Organiser Alan Granville says they have tentatively set aside the dates for next year's event - February 12-19. "I think we had the best springboard to our event by following the Big Gay Out. We know of some of our Australian visitors have already booked their hotel rooms for next year which is just astounding to me. Even more incredibly one of our visitors got the Bear NZ logo tattooed on his arm!” Granville says sold-out events and a huge increase in the number of overseas tourists were just a couple of the features of this year's furry festival. Other highlights included the infamous Bear Drag and Bear Drag Race and a victory for Christchurch's Arthur as Mr URGE NZ Bear 2011. "There were a few stresses over the week, but overall it was just a fantastically supported event. We feel we have really created a successful base for future events and put Auckland on the bear map."
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 23rd February 2011 - 2:22pm