Lou MC Yelps a Lot

Bear tubing is an on-of-a-kind event for gay bears and admirers. For those of you not familiar with "bears", according to Wikipedia, bear is a man who is fat, hairy, or both in the gay culture. I had a pleasure to participate and help planning with the Houston Bears ( HoustonBears.org ). Hacienda del Rio was the Bear Tubing host hotel The venue was held in the city of New Braunfels, which is about 30 minutes northeast of San Antonio. To start off the 4-day event, Houston Bears hosted a Welcome Party at Our Lady Bar & Patio  on Thursday. It was such a treat to the entertainment of the evening provided by DJ Easton from Houston. I had a wonderful time meeting the locals and those who were visiting to participate at this Bear Tubing event, including Ben Zook from Los Angeles CA. ( Here  is my experience at Our Lady Bar & Patio. Watch the Welcome Speech on YouTube.) Friday was a relaxing day to get acquainted with the guests from everywhere. At the host hotel Hacienda de...

I love to try new things, especially supporting my community. I haven't been to an LGBT Pride festival since C0V!D, I was anxious to go out and be myself in the crowd. I heard about an event on June 22 from the  Houston Bears . I became very curious and I wanted to check out the Houston's New Faces of Pride Festival and Parade .  I came early to mingle with people I knew there would be hassle to buy admission at the door. So, I bought mine online. I thought $3 was very reasonable plus service fee $2.04. I wouldn't mind paying $5-10 for it. I arrived at 12:30pm as the event started at noon. I got my early-bird trinkets from HP and other well-known companies. I checked the main entrance every hour on the hour. I saw steady amount of people came in. Not too busy. I got a chance to mingle with the food trucks and patronize them without lines.  Timeline during New Faces of Pride Festival 2024 As the festival went on, more people showed up. I began to notice larger crowd starte...

People often ask me how many UYE I have hosted. Well, before I lose track of things. I need a blog to keep me in order. lol. Lunar New Year Community Celebrations: 2014 Hot Pot @ Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot |  Reviews | Event Page |  2015 Year of the Sheep UYE @ San Dong Noodle House | Reviews | Event Page | 2016 Year of the Monkey UYE @ Jinya Ramen | Reviews | Event Page | 2017 Hotpot Year of the Rooster UYE @ 75 Yummy Kitchen | Reviews | Event Page | 2018 Year of the Dog UYE @ 75+85 ChinatownCrawl | Reviews | Event Page | 2019 Hotpot Year Of The Pig #ChinatownCrawl UYE | Reviews | Event Page | 2020 Year of the Rat with Go Panda Go UYE | Reviews | Event Page | 2021 Virtual UYE - Dumpling Party on Zoom | Video | Event Page | 2022 Year of the Tiger Chinatown Crawl UYE | Reviews | Event Page | 2024 Year of the Dragon @ 75+85 Chinatown Crawl UYE | Reviews | Event Page | Scan to see where my next UYE will be Asian Heritage Month Community Meetup...

The Asiatown Bingo Crawl was based on 3 featured restaurants on the Bingo Game piece asiatowntourhtx.com/bingo. This crawl event was a way to promote the bingo game created by Houston Asiatown Tours. The event was held on Sunday, December 17, 2023. [ Event Page ] Asiatown Tours' Bingo Card 3rd Quarter 2023 The goal was to generate exposures for Asiatown Tours and create engagement with the foodies at the restaurants. I think it was due to the date was so close to end of year and people having overbooked holiday gatherings, my event had a low turn out. I didn't mind because it is usual for the month of December.  Walking around to see where we could go at next crawl I originally chose Mala Sichuan because it is on the bingo card and with an easy vertical line with The Bunny Tea and Linda's Tropical Fruits. Due to low attendance, we changed to Yin Tang instead. It was just next door at Metropole Center. There was the same spicy Sichuan flavored malatang as if we were at Mala ...

Thanks to my Yelp friend Sara I. helping me to host the Foodie Adventure on Sunday, November 12, 2023. It happened to be on Diwali. So, we chose to be in the Diwali theme. [ Event Page ] We dined at Kathmandu Curry during Diwali UYE I have been rebranding Chinatown Crawl Meetup events to Foodie Adventures because the events are outside of Houston Chinatown. There is no exception to this one. But the meetup style remained in progressive dinner as Chinatown Crawl, we dine, shop and dessert in 3 hours.  Customized Name Tags for Diwali UYE  We featured Kathmandu Curry as our dining restaurant. The timing was right on point. There were not many people during lunch on that Diwali Sunday. We believe the customers were still at the temples. Service was just okay. We ordered a few dishes to share. Sara introduced Nepalese Momo and Pani Puri as their signature dishes. Momo was a Nepali style dumpling served with tomato chutney. Pani Puri was a round, hollow puri, crisp and filled ...

Ever since my coworker Chang Shu from Northeast Division said she was interested to learn about how I host Chinatown Crawl events, I began to show her how I host these types of foodie events. But explaining in emails is very limited. I decided to do it in person. On October 29, 2023, I took a group of coworkers to a Foodie Adventure in Squirrel Hill Pittsburg Pennsylvania.  Finally meeting everyone in person as we planned virtual events during Covid Back in May, me and my foodie friend, Nahun booked our airfare to visit Pittsburgh. After chatting with Chang, I learned Squirrel Hill as the area of interest. I started to plot my plan on which restaurants to feature.  Few months later, I created a Google Map with restaurants that I thought might be a good fit for this progressive-dinner event. She started to share the event with her teammates and contacts. Meanwhile, I started to read the restaurants reviews on Yelp and get familiar with the area. For the ease of RSVP to th...