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Santiagodc wrote an epic, three-part account of the 2019 prepandemic scene in Athens. His posts were my guidebook, but of course a lot has changed. Here is my update: Theaters Sadly, the wild, astonishing places that Santiagodc vividly described were shuttered. You’d think the guys who sold themselves there would have moved to nearby Omnia Square, but not the case. Omnia Square Nothing like the cruising nirvana that Santiagodc saw. Usually no more than a couple of guys, if any, were waiting by each metro escalator. And most of them were neither attractive nor making any eye contact. Usually, only one or two guys, if any, in the whole Omnia area were signaling availability. Overall, there was neither the quantity or quality that I’d expected. I erroneously thought the pandemic would bring out more immigrants needing cash. One reason may have been a police crackdown. Police were everywhere around Omnia, especially on the weekend. I nodded to one good-looking young man who followed me around the corner where I discovered he was selling grass only. He refused to consider sex even with a generous offer. Omnia side streets A few guys were hustling on the side streets that Santiagodc had identified. But again, few were good choices. Around here I found only three (during a week) worth taking to the short-term hotel one block over. €5 rooms Santiogodc’s tips on the €5 short-term hotel rooms and how it all works were spot on. Rooms were surprisingly clean too. Parks Same pattern. Not nearly as many guys hustling as I’d expected – only a few, day or night. Fees Santiogodc’s summary of expected payments was higher than I paid. I always said, as if not open for debate: €20. None ever hesitated and they all smiled. But these were for short action in €5 hotel rooms or bar washrooms or park thickets, not for longer sessions. (Santiagodc took some guys back to his hotel room.) Multinational As Santiogodc described in detail, you do see a variety of the Balkans through to Central Asia. I personally promoted international relations with Albania, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Iraq, Kurdistan, and often Persia. Bars Many of the bars were closed and a few were just beginning to open back up. One place that was open had a number of healthy-looking, nearly middle-class, easy-going, G-for-P, Persian guys was Sami's. Bonus Eye Candy Among the many Greek policemen in their 20s or 30s, quite a few were hot and, as their tight uniforms revealed, have toned bodies and nice bulges. In every group of four or five, invariably one was extra, jaw-droppingly sexy. Tourist tip Get the Acropolis at 8am when it opens and be rewarded with having the Parthenon all to yourself. Then go to the new Acropolis Museum nearby and have breakfast with a view on the upstairs terrace. Of course, “your mileage may vary.” But, if you want to visit Athens anytime soon, you can have fun, but I’d caution against expecting the full, grand scene with wild theaters that Santiagodc recounted from years past.

we wept told by a very knowledgeable source that the popular guys make $8,000 to 10,000./no. at johnson’s most if not all tax free! which is why some get big attitude with their big “muscles!” and they know who are the guys with the big pockets in the audience! i am not in the condo market i have always bought houses and have done pretty good but i have been lucky buying when the market was low and sellling when it was high. this home in Florida is just under 3,009 da ft with.a good size lot so i will be happy if the deal works out! i should know by Weds! if it doesn’t there will be others!

I just finished the series finale. It was spectacular. The last few episodes really allowed for every actor to shine in different ways. This was truly moving and beautiful. If you didn't watch it when it was out, binge it. It will be worth it.

"a friend who had too much, of course it didn't allow it. Went to a counter and through it went with no issue, no fee" Yep you're right there Anddy and that also was my own experience too. We have all at some point i'm sure carried out the inadvertent ( or intentional) turning up at the desk with one or two ( or 10 ! ) Kilos "over" and either turned up early in the hope of sweet talking the check in operator, hoping that as it was the start of the check in that they were feeling lenient or just didn't care. Or perhaps knowingly timing it so that we were verging on "late" and so knew the staff would be busy just trying to get everyone checked in and ON the plane and so we knew / or hoped they wouldn't stop / charge us anything - or it has even been known for people to slid a foot under the weighing scales to save a few kilos even ( not me, I read about it in a magazine once just Im sure :-). For me I can say that such rouses worked probably about 75% of the time or more even perhaps. Now however, with the advent of the introduction of these infernal machines this means that there's ZERO tolerance for even just a one Kilo over AND as Anddy had said all payments MUST now be made at the machine with your credit card BEFORE a boarding card will be spat out at you. This then results in ridiculously long queues forming of people either totally disgruntled at being charged at all, or for whatever reason perhaps finding themselves unable (or unwilling) to pay the ( granted ridiculously high) "over at the desk" charges! Either way these machines are not a good thing and we should all rise up and take a wrecking screw driver to each and every one of them we find before they become "the norm" ! :-) This is one machine that the luddites may have had a point about !!! :-( And yes, before anyone says it 'yes of COURSE we could all just turn up with the correct baggage limits, all correctly weighed and pre-checked" - but a) sometimes that's hardly that it sounds when returning from holiday at least and mainly.......sure where would be the fun in THAT !

It should read "Charges for exceeding weight allowances MUST also be paid on the spot" (or else your won't go through). Machines are unforgiving, whereas check in staff can and very often does waive any excess fees, often not even taking notice of the weight (maybe because it's a bureaucratic hassle for them? No idea, just guessing). I've tried to use such a machine (I think it was in Singapore) when travelling with a friend who had too much, of course it didn't allow it. Went to a counter and through it went with no issue, no fee, no nothing. I'm with @NIrishGuy here, nobody will like such machines for the reasons he gave....

These first two week, specially this one, I am still heavily supporting my school from distance, and my movements are highly restricted, as at 8pm local restrictions mandate to stay home. I just went for a walk in between zooms and got still more in love with the neighborhood. Yesterday not only was Sunday, but also the last day of a strict weekend quarantine. Most places were close. Today bars and restaurants were open and, as it was still morning, starting to set up their tables outdoors. Definitely, they seem to be tailored to welcome USA and UK visitors, both countries right now banned from entering. Just a sample: I chose that picture not because it is exceptional, but rather the opposite. Most places have bilingual menus and signing. By the way, remember that here it is Fall. I was concerned when I realized I did not bring any viagra pills, considering the activity I am about to start today (Y is coming this early afternoon). So I stopped by a local pharmacy to check whether or not they would sell me sildenafil without a prescription. The regulation here is unclear, and some places will demand a recipe, some will not. I was lucky and hit bingo in my first try. 20 pillas of 50mg, $AR 3600. If I had paid with my CC, the bill would have been U$S 37. As I used cash, I actually paid 23 bucks. My Grindr keeps driving me crazy, Scruff so far has been a disappointment. I am saving the most interesting hits after a quick chat to confirm we are a match, I will probably start meeting them this coming weekend. My favorite one:

I seem to recall that was the drug AZT. Although it was a breakthrough of sorts, didn't it have to be taken in a strict regimen every few hours, often along with some other drugs because like all viruses HIV was mutating? It was a Taiwanese-American, Dr. David Ho, who discovered the first real protease inhibitor treatment in the early 1990s that made life for HIV patients far more bearable. I remember only because he was on the cover of TIME magazine! I am sure @Ruthriestonis far better informed. I still consider the account of the early history of the AIDS crisis by Randy Shilts 'And The Band Played On' the near definitive book that everyone should read. Vastly better than the TV series packed with stars of the same name. Its one major error was in propagating the "Patient Zero" myth. When the doctors in NYC and LA noticed they were dealing with clusters of cases among young gay men, they eventually realised there almost certainly had to be a common link. Their research led them to a Canadian airline steward named Gaetan Dugas. All at one time had had sex with him. His work had taken him to Africa where it was then discovered there had been a major outbreak of AIDS in the 1920s in and around Kinshasa. We now know it had jumped the species barrier from chimpanzees to humans. Dugas was located. After being tested, he was found to be positive and informed about his passing HIV to others. He was asked to stop having sex with other men. Allegedly, he said he would not. Someone had given him the virus and he saw no reason why he should cease his activities since he was not responsible for his being infected. While that part of the tale may be true, by the end of the century it had become obvious that Dugas, who had by then died, was not Patient Zero and had been much maligned by being so named. However, later research suggested HIV had ben present in the USA much earlier. In 1968 a 15 year old teenager named Robert Rayford from Missouri entered hospital suffering from a variety of ailments. Doctors were baffled. On questioning, they suspected that Rayford was gay and had perhaps been either seriously molested or he was a male prostitute. None of the treatments seemed to work. As his condition worsened he soon developed a pneumonia-like illness and his immune system was discovered to be dysfunctional. He died in May 1969. The autopsy found rare purplish lesions on his left thigh, unheard of in black teenagers. The odd thing about the case was that Rayford had never travelled outside his home state and never received a blood transfusion. The only later connection thrown up was that he lived close to TWA's airline hub of St. Louis. Tissue samples were kept for later analysis. It was found that antibodies against all nine detectable HIV proteins were present in the blood samples. This was published in a medical journal in 1988 but only ever once again referred to, at a Conference in 1999 in Australia. Unfortunately the last known samples of Rayford were destroyed during Hurricane Katrina. Dr. Anthony Fauci was one who was both curious and baffled. “It certainly could be true, and may even be likely that it’s true,” Fauci said, “but the absolute nailed-down proof isn’t there.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/05/15/mystery-illness-killed-boy-years-later-doctors-learned-what-it-was-aids/

"It is with great joy that Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, welcome their daughter, Lilibet 'Lili' Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, to the world," the statement said. "Lili was born on Friday, June 4 at 11:40 a.m. in the trusted care of the doctors and staff at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital," it said, adding that the new arrival weighed in at 7 pounds, 11 ounces (3.49 kilos) and that "both mother and child are healthy and well, and settling in at home." "Lili is named after her great-grandmother, Her Majesty The Queen, whose family nickname is Lilibet. Her middle name, Diana, was chosen to honor her beloved late grandmother, The Princess of Wales," the statement added.

It was 1976 when I met a young man whose radiant smile I could not get out of my head. We soon became fast friends and for 11 years he was the most important person in my life until he was taken in 1987. The cure began to emerge that year but too late for Billy. I did not have another relationship like that for 29 years. This time it was in November of 2016 when another young man, standing at Soi 4 and Silom rd., smiled at me. Although I didn’t know it at the time, he, too, was to change my life and continues to do so to this day. Those of us who lived through and survived AIDS all have our own stories. But the one thing we all have in common is that as we still await a vaccine for that horror. Visitors and volunteers walk on the 21,000-panel AIDS Memorial Quilt on October 10, 1992 in Washington. (CNN)

"Charges for exceeding weight allowances can also be paid on the spot via the interface" In my experience ^ THIS is more about why airports are installing self check in baggage machines - and each and every airport I've seen them in I've also seen queues of furious people wanting to argue with airline staff and an equal number of airline staff wanting to try to avoid the passengers as they too know that the machines are there solely to generate income for the airlines - whilst putting a load of their colleagues out of work at the same time !

This year 2021 marks 20 years of going to Brazil, usually 4 times a year, sometimes 5. I wanted to write about some of the friends i have made. this is about “boys” i have met that are now men in successful careers! i have stayed in touch with them . 1) A.F. was a guy who at 19 ended up in Rio from the small town a 100 miles from São Paulo. He is gay and became the boyfriend of one of the sauna owners and a year after that ended, worked in the sauna as a “boy” for about a year and then moved to Paris to be a gogo boy with 2 other sauna guys. about a year after arriving in Paris he could speak conversational French and enrolled in college and 1 year ago graduated with a accounting degree, and looks physically like a beautiful muscle god! 2) in 2013 the manager of Mezziniu sauna in Porto Alegre approached me and asked if i would be interested in a friend of his that was Not a sauna guy but needed to make some extra money that weekend? i told him no that usually guys doing it the first tine are not that good or that much fun! then he said why don’t you just talk to him? He is sitting at the bar in street clothes! He was handsome 21 and attending law school the following year! i saw him every trip i made to Porto Alegre! He became a lawyer 2 years ago, i saw him last a year ago, i remember it well because we were drinking and we had sex 4 times that night, the most ever with one guy in one night! 3) 12 years ago i was in Rio and met who i thought was one of the most handsome guys i had met, he was in his early 20’s and told me he was in college and going to go to med school. It turns out he didn’t go to med school but Dental school and is now a dentist in Rio! Dentists are allowed to give Botox in Brazil and when i was there 3 weeks ago he did a session on me and i have to say he did a great job! I met what was and still is one f the nicest guys ever! a year later he joined the French Foreign legion. At the time he was already a black belt in Brazilian JuJitsu and has been living in the FFL base in Corsica and traveling the world with them! he messaged me yesterday messages me that he has put his 4 years in and is getting out finishing his degree in 1-1/2 years and opening a Brazilian JuJitsu school in France! He is going to a international competition in Mexico next year! there are more stories but these mare my top 4 who i have kept in contact with! here are non face photos of the 4