Gaybutton

Same-Sex Marriage Trial to be Shown on YouTube January 7, 2010 (CNN) -- A California judge ruled Wednesday to allow cameras in a federal courtroom to document a challenge to Proposition 8, a measure banning same-sex marriage. The courtroom footage will not be streamed live, but will be uploaded on the Web site YouTube daily, CNN affiliate KGO reported. Proposition 8 passed with about 52.5 percent of the vote in November 2008. A lesbian couple and a gay couple who were banned from marrying filed a suit challenging the constitutionality of the new measure, the affiliate reported. The nonjury trial is to begin on January 11 in federal court in San Francisco. The rare decision to allow cameras in a federal courtroom was influenced by intense media attention, court officials said. The legal battle over Proposition 8 has prompted passionate debate and in the past has spurred protests outside courtrooms. Opponents of the ban say it improperly altered the state's Constitution to restrict a fundamental right guaranteed in the state charter. Ban supporters say Californians long have had the right to change their state Constitution through ballot initiatives.

Knowing the way things work in Pattaya, they'll probably just blare recorded opera from the sound trucks - likely about 7:15am.

I'm adding that to my "I Don't Get It" list too. Personally I think the performers are the ones who most like it. I might like it too if the people singing, even the elderly entertainers, actually would sing instead of this lip synching. Lip synching is also on my "I Don't Get It" list. What on earth is entertaining about watching anybody lip synch? Why not just hire real singers? There are plenty of talented singers around who would love to have a job. But from my point of view, who needs lip synch? If I want to listen to Ethel Merman, I'll buy a CD. Somehow, watching someone in his mid 70's, dressed in drag and looking absolutely ridiculous, who is lip synching is not exactly my idea of the manner by which I want to be entertained. But it is my idea of a very good reason to walk out. And people keep asking me why I don't go to bar shows.

I don't think any of us can tell you specifically which bars in either city are going to have the boys you like. What I can tell you is there are a hell of a lot more bars in Pattaya than in Chiang Mai and most are within walking easy distance of the gay hotels. Based on what you are saying, I would think the Sunee Plaza bars in Pattaya is your best bet. Between the open-air beer bars and the go-go bars, you're bound to easily find what you're looking for. As for accommodations, I would suggest Howard's Guesthouse ( http://www.howards-pattaya.net ) or Two Guys Guesthouse ( http://www.twoguysguesthouse.info ). Both are gay accommodations, inexpensive, popular, and less than a two minute walk to Sunee Plaza. Since boys seems to be what you are looking for, then there's no question. You want to come to Pattaya. You can even find all the boys you want without setting foot in the bars at all. There are plenty of freelancers around the Sunee Plaza area. There are also plenty at the gay beach area. You might also want to look at our threads about the gay personals sites (Gay Romeo seems to be the most popular): http://www.gaythailand.com/forums/index.php?/topic/4184-how-does-gay-romeo-work http://www.gaythailand.com/forums/index.php?/topic/4540-gayromeo-vs-the-other-sites http://www.gaythailand.com/forums/index.php?/topic/4985-boys-bangkok-drinks-now-300-baht If you want some help if you decide upon Pattaya as your destination, I am always very happy to take people around personally if I am in town and available. If you want to meet me and have me do that, all you have to do is send me an Email and let me know when you're coming. My Email is gaybutton@gmail.com

Toshiba Unveils TV that Converts 2-D to 3-D By Brandon Griggs, CNN January 7, 2010 Las Vegas, Nevada (CNN) -- Toshiba on Wednesday unveiled a "smart" TV the company claims will convert 2-D signals into high-resolution 3-D programming. The ZX900 Series Cell TV models, available with 55-inch and 65-inch screens, will go on sale in the United States later this year. Pricing was not announced. Toshiba says the LED TV will have the capability to take any 2-D content, including sports broadcasts, movies and video games, and convert it into 3-D in real time. "It's unlike anything that's out there," said vice president of marketing Scott Ramirez during Toshiba's press event at the 2010 International Consumer Electronics Show. "This is the new 'it' TV. It's the one everyone is going to be talking about." The TV's biggest strength is a multimedia processing chip previously used in advanced PCs and high-end gaming consoles. Toshiba claims its Cell TVs will have 143 times the processing power available in current TV models, although that boast was hard to immediately verify. With many manufacturers unveiling 3-D and "connected" TVs at CES this week, Toshiba will have stiff competition for the "it" TV title. But its ambitious Cell TV tries hard to offer something for everyone: Like many new or next-generation televisions, Cell TV will allow you to transfer media files from your PC onto the TV's hard drive so that you can display photos and home videos on its screen. The TV's Internet connection will offer access to streaming content from such partners as Netflix and Pandora. Finally, Cell TV will also work as a video phone, but with much higher picture quality than most simple webcams. "You're going to look crystal clear at 55 inches," said Ramirez. In other TV news from CES Wednesday, Sharp unveiled something it called "quad pixel" technology that it claims will change the way TV consumers see color. Sharp's new Aquos LED models add a fourth color -- yellow -- to the traditional red-blue-green trio of primary colors, which the company says will enable it to display more than a trillion different colors.

I agree with every word of your post. Many of the boys on Gay Romeo are bar boys anyway. If you enjoy the bar scene and enjoy finding boys in that manner, that's wonderful, but there's nothing wrong with understanding that's not the only way to find willing boys. Also, Gay Romeo is not the only web site on which to find personal ads and nice boys. I've met boys from: http://www.ratefun.net http://www.silverdaddies.com http://www.gboysiam.com/picpos I haven't regretted meeting any of them and have had wonderful experiences with them. On the Gboysiam site, many of the boys include their telephone numbers on their profiles. I never call them out of the blue. I start by sending a text message. Sometimes I get a response and sometimes I don't. When I do get a response, that's when I call. The only negative I've experienced was being naive enough not to recognize that sometimes the boy is using photos that are not actually of himself, but photos he grabbed off the internet. It doesn't take long to recognize who is and is not using genuine photos of themselves. Most are genuine. If they post photos in which their heads are excluded from the photo, that's usually a dead giveaway that it's not the genuine article. But even then , that doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't worth meeting the boy. One time the boy turned out to be far better looking, to my eyes, than the phony photos he used. When I asked him why he didn't post genuine photos of himself he said he was shy about using his own photos, so he just used photos he found that had a body similar to his own. The point is there are alternatives to the bars. Some say that they're only in Thailand for a limited time on a holiday, so going to the bars is the quickest and easiest thing to do. That's not necessarily the case. You can easily make arrangements before you even make the trip. Once you're here you can also walk into any Internet shop and get on Gay Romeo. There are at least a few boys online virtually 24 hours a day. If you find someone you like and offer to pay for a motorbike taxi to bring him to you, often you have him with you by the time you get back to your hotel. I have found that one of the best times to get on Gay Romeo is between 1:00am and 2:00am, Thailand time. Many of the boys head for the nearest Internet shop when the bars close if they haven't been taken off. Use common sense. Just like the bars, make damned sure to check his ID card before taking him to your hotel room.

Yes, as a matter of fact that's what I'm saying. You know why? To this day I still have never been in the Copa, so I have no way to see the difference. Having never been in there, I have no idea what they charge for their drinks. I don't go to any of the bars all that often in the first place, but when I do it's very rare for me to go to the Pattayaland bars.

Have you ever tried translating Thai words, phrases, web pages, etc, using Google Translate? Do you usually end up with unintelligible gibberish? Have a look at the following article: _____ Breaking Through the Language Barrier By Matt Ford, for CNN January 6, 2010 (CNN) -- Communications technology has shrunk the globe, but there remains one large boundary to all this togetherness: language. So far businesses can only spread as far and as fast as they can find people speaking a common tongue. However, researchers at IBM may be about to punch a hole through this barrier. The multinational currently has 100 staff working on an internal project named "n.Fluent" that offers instantaneous translation across a variety of platforms. "We have a web page interface, where you type in a URL and it automatically translates the web page for you," Salim Roukos, chief technology officer for translation technologies at the company's T.J. Watson Laboratory in New York, told CNN. "We also have an app that you can put on a web page and when users arrive... they can pull down a menu and change the language. "The ability to translate URLs is something that our customers love a lot, because once you translate the page, you can click on all the links and suddenly you are exploring the foreign language web as an English speaker." At the moment the software is still in development and only available with IBM, but the company's intention is to take the project to market. They are also developing versions for instant messaging and mobile devices. "n.Fluent" began in 2006 as one of 10 innovations sponsored by IBM's chairman Samuel J. Palmisano. The company decided that the language barrier was a key issue, both for global businesses and companies with clients worldwide and so resolved to find ways of addressing the problem. "The core technology... is work in progress, but it is significantly advanced that for many languages we can do accurate translations," says Roukos. But IBM is not the only tech giant convinced that language is the next barrier to be broken online, and Google are currently working on a tool that will translate not only web pages -- but web searches as well. At the moment Google only searches English words on web pages when given an English-language query, but the company hopes soon to be able to open up sites of any language to users. "Imagine what it would be like if there was a tool built into the search engine which translated my search query into every language and then searched the entire world's web sites," Google's vice president Marissa Mayer told the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper recently. "And then invoked the translation software a second and third time -- to not only then present the results in your native language, but then translated those sites in full when you clicked through." Away from the Internet, NEC are hoping their new device, the Tele Scouter will mean conversations won't get lost in translation. Unveiled last November the device is a set of headsets and glasses that can automatically translate spoken words and display them on a tiny retinal display. Still a prototype, NEC believes it could be used by technicians to translate manuals. Crowd-sourcing to greater understanding Vernacular and jargon can be particularly problematic for translation software, so "n.Fluent" has been designed to learn from its mistakes and pick up specific terms used within IBM. To do this the project has been opened up to all 400,000 staff working for IBM around the world, and uses this "crowd sourcing" to access their expertise to feedback on the project. Over a two-week period in October last year IBM launched a "worldwide translation challenge" to its workforce, which resulted in two million words of text being translated. Incentives in the form of charitable donations and other prizes were offered to staff who took part. "Every single interface has a pop-up window, so if you happen to be bilingual you can make corrections," David Lubensky, an IBM specialist in the "real-time" aspect of translation systems, told CNN. "Many IBM-ers have more than one language, so we can get them to translate and use that to improve the quality." IBM believes the technology will be particularly useful for companies that produce a large amount of support content, such as technical manuals. These tend to be dynamic, as new bug fixes are found or updates added, and they also need to be accessible to a multi-lingual customer. Rapid, accurate translation of such literature published online can deflect calls from call centers, and bring significant savings. Alternatively, when a company has its workforce spread across the world "n.Fluent" hopes to allow documents from a client that arrives in one language to be quickly assessed by a geographically dispersed team. "So far we are much better at Spanish, French, Arabic and Portuguese," says Roukos. "It's harder for languages like Japanese, Chinese, and Korean, but we're working on it. "It's not only the sentence structure, but also how explicit the language is. There is a little bit more assumed from the context in Chinese and word order can change." Although "crowd sourcing" has proved extremely effective for IBM during the development of "n.Fluent", there are still aspects of working remotely with huge numbers of people that can be improved. "There are two challenges," says Lubensky. "Firstly, getting a sustainable, enthusiastic community can be difficult. The goal is to have an ongoing interest, to make it part of the fabric. "The second issue is quality assurance of content; how useful is the feedback, how many mistakes do people make and how much impact will they have?" Whoever wins the fight for market share, be it IBM, Google or others hoping to close the language divide, advanced translation software looks set to make a huge splash and businesses should get ready: it looks like the world may be about to shrink yet again.

ESPN to Launch 3-D Network By Doug Gross, CNN January 5, 2010 (CNN) -- World Cup soccer, the 2011 BCS National Championship game and dozens of other sporting events will be shown in 3-D by ESPN in the coming year. The cable network announced Tuesday that it will launch a new channel, ESPN 3D, on June 11 with its three-dimensional broadcast of a FIFA World Cup soccer match between South Africa and Mexico. In the next 12 months, the network will show at least 85 games, including the January 11, 2011, national championship and other college football games, college basketball, and ESPN's Summer X Games, according to the network. "ESPN's commitment to 3D is a win for fans and our business partners," George Bodenheimer, president of ESPN and ABC Sports, said in a news release. "ESPN 3D marries great content with new technology to enhance the fan's viewing experience and puts ESPN at the forefront of the next big advance for TV viewing." The network has been testing its 3-D technology for more than two years. In September, the University of Southern California vs. Ohio State football game was shown in 3-D in several theaters and on USC's campus by ESPN. The new network will require a 3-D television set -- a technology that is still emerging and a step ahead of high-definition -- and 3-D glasses. Initially, the channel is expected to be dark between live events. ESPN probably won't be the only player in the 3-D TV game. Industry analysts expect DirecTV to announce its plans for a three-dimensional channel this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

It's amazing how attitudes can change once you are actually retired and living here. When I used to come to Thailand on a holiday I wanted to be in the bars before I even unpacked my luggage. If I was in my hotel room before 12:30am, I was in the bars even before I unpacked. If I missed a day getting to the bars or missed a day taking a boy off, I felt as if I was really losing something. Now that I live here, the bar scene is rather ho-hum to me. I sometimes go for days or even weeks without setting foot in a bar at all and I don't feel as if I've missed a thing. That's one reason you'll never see me patronizing a bar that charges 300 baht for a drink. Why should I? "All that you wanted, he would not even take." - Anne Baxter, 'The Ten Commandments'

Thank you for that post. I think you just increased their customer numbers substantially, and you can include me in that number next time I'm in Bangkok. It sounds like a restaurant I'd love to try.

If you go to just one bar with prices like that, have just one drink, buy just one drink for the boy, pay the off fee for the boy . . . by the time you're done you've already spent 1000 baht on that alone. Chances are that a lot more will have left your wallet before you've even taken a boy off. I suppose people in Bangkok on a one or two week holiday don't mind spending that much, especially when they compare those prices to prices where they came from, but for many of us who live here, our point of view is a little different.

And I definitely "ain't it" and never was: _____ Dating Site for Beautiful People Expels 'Fatties' after Holiday Weight Gain By Mallory Simon, CNN January 4, 2010 (CNN) -- A dating site that markets itself as an elite community for beautiful people with a "strict ban on ugly people" has axed about 5,000 members for packing on the pounds during the holiday season. The international site BeautifulPeople.com threw out members after they posted photos "revealing that they have let themselves go," according to a company statement. "As a business, we mourn the loss of any member, but the fact remains that our members demand the high standard of beauty be upheld," said Robert Hintze, founder of BeautifulPeople.com. "Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded." The site describes itself as an "elite online club, where every member works the door" -- that is, users can join only after enough members vote them "beautiful" during the 48 hours after their profile is uploaded. And apparently, enough beautiful people were angry that some members had enjoyed a bit too many treats during the holiday season. So BeautifulPeople.com sent those flagged members e-mails, according to the company statement, telling them they could register again for the site when the extra pudge was gone. "We responded to complaints by moving the newly chubby members back to the rating stage. This is the same as having them re-apply," Greg Hodge, managing director of BeautifulPeople.com, said in a statement. The company said it "expelled" 1,520 users from the U.S., 832 from the U.K., 533 from Canada, 510 from Poland, 425 from Germany, 402 from Italy, 323 from France, 220 from Denmark, 176 from Turkey and 88 people from Russia. In the e-mail, it gave users suggestions for boot camps and workout facilities to get themselves back in shape. Some gave the site a shot again, hoping fellow users might not see them as the "fatties" others had. "Their re-applications were reviewed by existing members, and only a few hundred were voted back in. Over 5,000 were rejected," Hodge added. Hodge admits, and has admitted from the time his company started, that his site may not be fair, but people want to date someone they are attracted to. "Is it elitist? Yes, it is, because our members want it to be," Hodge said when the company started out in 2005. "Is it lookist? Yes, it is, because our members want it to be. Is it PC? No, it's not, but it's honest." And on this site, beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder; only one in five applicants is normally accepted, a company statement said. Maintaining those standards is what the site is about, Hodge said, and that's why people were expelled. "Every year we see that some of our members from Western cultures eat and drink to excess over the holidays, and clearly their looks suffer," he said in a statement. "The U.S.A. has been grossly over-indulging since Thanksgiving. It's no wonder that so many members have been expelled from the network. We hope they will be back after shedding the festive pounds." _____ "I don't want to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members." - Groucho Marx

Wow! I am very behind-the-times. I remember when the reason to own a telephone was to talk with someone who is not right there with you. I'll bet the first people to rush out to buy one of these are people who already own an iPhone. Blackberry, iPhone, GooglePhone . . . I can't keep up with it all. I don't even understand what some of the functions are for or why they would be included on a telephone. An accelerometer on a telephone? Why? What is the practical use of it? I think I need to take a course in this. For me, the title of the course might very well be: "Smartphones for the Dumb-ass." ______________________ Is Google Unveiling an 'iPhone Killer?' By Doug Gross, CNN January 4, 2010 (CNN) -- Could it be the long-awaited "iPhone killer?" Tuesday at 1 p.m. ET, Google will make some kind of announcement related to its Android smartphone operating system. It's expected to be the launch of Google's Nexus One phone -- the company's first full-on leap into the smartphone fray and one that will put the online giant head-to-head with the darling of the market, the iPhone. Google scheduled the announcement for the day before the annual Consumer Electronics Show -- the Super Bowl of the technology world. In doing so, the tech giant is taking a page from the Apple playbook, rolling out a big announcement in the relatively clean air right before news from CES floods the tech world for days. While the Google-phone buzz has centered on whether Google can take down the Apple iPhone, analysts say unseating Apple probably is unrealistic. "Is this going to be an iPhone killer? I don't think anything is an iPhone killer," said Kevin Burden, a mobile industry analyst with New York-based ABI Research. "Was the iPhone a Blackberry killer? "It's never going to be that one device that was promised to us a decade ago." The term "iPhone killer" has been bandied about virtually every time a new smartphone has been introduced in recent years. Each release has been followed with reviewers almost unanimously announcing, "Nope ... not this time." Google recently released its to-be-announced phones for use by some of its employees, leading to the inevitable appearance of videos and unofficial reviews online. Leaks suggest the Nexus One will be a global-system device with a 3.7-inch touch screen, five-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi connectivity, an accelerometer and a compass, according to CNN.com partner, Wired magazine. It is expected to run the latest version of the Android operating system, Android 2.1, which is also made by Google but runs on other phones as well. It's widely speculated that the phone will be "unlocked," meaning users won't have to sign up for long-term contracts with a particular mobile carrier to use the phones -- as is the case with most major phones now. Unlocking would mean the price of the Nexus wouldn't be subsidized by a carrier, as is the case with iPhones and others. So the Google phone could carry a price tag of $500 or more. But analysts expect Google to address the cost difference through advertising on the phone, or by other means. One possibility, Burden said, is that Google will be willing to sell the phones at or below cost as a way of ensuring Android, or some other future product, has a longstanding place in the market. "Google could be thinking, whatever their endgame is, that [the phones] are really just part of the plan," he said. "I can't think it's really just about selling hardware. "That goes back to the '70s and '80s. It's not a hardware business any more and Google's smart enough to realize that." Tech blog Engadget reports that it got its hands on one of the phones. In a review, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Topolsky gives high marks to the Nexus One for design and performance. But he, too, dismisses the "iPhone killer" speculation. "Now, of course everyone seems to have one question about the device -- is this the be-all-end-all Android phone / iPhone eviscerator?" he wrote in the January 2 review. "In two words: not really." He wrote that the Nexus One is not dramatically different than the Droid, Motorola's smartphone that runs the Android operating system. But Topolsky writes that the Google phone is "super fast" and "very smooth" in operation.

I'd rather do without it anyhow. Once I forgot to remove it from the glass. Damned near poked my eye out.

If that's the case, then good. It won't cost me anything. That's because I won't be there at all. I don't like the shows and when I order a drink, I want a drink. Paying 50 baht or 10 baht or even free, if I order a gin and tonic, I expect to get what I've ordered. A glass of tonic with a slight hint of gin doesn't cut it for me. Neither does paying 300 baht for it. So, you gents who don't mind paying 300 baht for your drink can have it. I'll be elsewhere.

I have never believed in that 'if you have to ask how much . . .' cliche. I don't mind spending money, but I mind rip-offs very much. If I had the money Bill Gates has, I would still mind being ripped off. In my opinion, you analogy has no validity. 5-star hotels all are expensive and they offer luxuries that are not found in less expensive hotels. With regard to go-go bars, the only difference I can see between one bar and another is the price. So yes, I think the bars do have to justify it. I don't think I'm stepping out of line by wanting to know why a bar that offers nothing that can't be found in other bars is charging 2 to 3 times the price. However, justified or not, I'm not going to pay a bar 300 baht for a drink when I can go to another bar and get the same drink for 100 baht.

If anyone out there really wants to pay 250 to 300 baht for a drink at a go-go bar, fine with me. Personally, I think it's highway robbery and you won't find me setting foot in any bars that charge so outrageously. I doubt that this is the only web site on which complaints about these prices appear. I also doubt that none of the Bangkok bar owners read these web sites. I would like very much to see a post from any bar owner who charges these prices explaining why and justifying their rates.

It looks to me like we have the makings of the latest brouhaha going here on this thread. I'd like to address a couple points. First, Oogleman - I don't think RichLB or anyone else who takes his position is finding any fault or placing any blame on you, the charity effort, or the worthiness of the charity itself. I get the impression that you think people are somehow blaming you or misinterpreting your position. You certainly did nothing wrong in any way and I think everyone is aware of that. I agree with RichLB about this issue. I don't think the fact that 20,000 baht was collected has anything to do with the issue. The issue is the means by which the 20,000 baht was solicited. The only reason that I'm coming up with for not letting the audience know about the video in advance would be because they figured people would leave and not view the video. In order to promote this charity I don't see the need for a video in the first place. What was it supposed to accomplish? I think those who donated would have done so if a brief announcement was made. Maybe even more than 20,000 baht would have been collected. We don't know. It wasn't tried. I also think RichLB has a very good point about the nature of the video. Apparently it was quite depressing. Has anyone noticed that the history of charitable events in Pattaya has always been fun, enjoyable activities as the means of solicitation? The PGF dinners, the Quiz Nights at Bondi, Oogleman's parties at Memories, Gunking GB, etc. Is anyone disputing that this particular video did not quite fit the profile? While I think The Venue's heart was in the right place, I also think they exercised poor judgment in their method. I think it was a mistake and I hope they won't repeat that mistake.

I disagree. I haven't seen anything from The Venue stating they are collecting donations, but even if I had, my assumption would have been that they have a collection box somewhere on the premises. I think it is a huge leap to think they would present a program. In the entire history of Pattaya, I have never heard of any bar doing any such thing. What on earth would have caused anyone to suddenly expect a presentation, especially with no forewarning about it? I think all of us are sensitive to those less fortunate, but I don't think anyone is out of line to expect sensitivity from the venues soliciting to those making the donations. If I had gone to The Venue that night, I would have been there to have an enjoyable time. I wouldn't have been there to unexpectedly be subjected to their solicitation video. In all honesty, I think this has backfired on them. They may have been well intentioned, but I think the end result will be fewer people donating to this particular charity. If I had been there I would have been mad as hell.

Neither am I. Getting off the thread subject for a moment, if there is a bar show anywhere in this city that doesn't include drag and doesn't include lip sync, I'd like to know where. That might be a show I would enjoy. As far as I can tell, every bar show in Pattaya is essentially the same. Don't any of the bars believe in employing a singer who actually sings? Can't any of the bars come up with a show that leaves out the drag queens, the lip syncing, and the lady-boys with breast implants? That's why I never go to bar shows or always leave if a show is about to start. People tell me I must go to see this show or that show. It's fun! It's wonderful! Yeah? Bullshit! That's precisely what I hate. So, I don't go. Am I the only one who feels this way?

I certainly have no objection to them offering to help and it was kind of them to make the offer, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. When you run your charity events, Oogleman, you make plenty of announcements well in advance and people who come know they are going to be solicited for donations. Obviously RichLB did not know and resented being surprised by it and subjected to it. I would have felt the same way. I should also be obvious that I support this charity too. Otherwise I never would have subjected myself to "the gunking." Again, I knew in advance what I was in for and so did everyone else who attended and participated. But if I walked into a bar show at which I had no idea I was going to be solicited and if there was no prior announcement or nothing to indicate there would be a solicitation, whether it was part of the show or not, I would have donated nothing. To my mind, if it was done as RichLB described, that's a high pressure tactic and an abuse of the customers. There's no way I would put up with going to a bar at which there is an attempt to high pressure me into anything. I wouldn't stand for it and I would never return. Unless RichLB and I are the only ones who feel this way, then perhaps The Venue would be wise to reconsider their methods unless they like the idea of losing customers.

I don't know, but some of you guys sure seem to embarrass easily. If some schmuck really wants to leer at me messing around with one of the bar boys, let him. He's the one who ought to be embarrassed, not me. I'll ask him if he wants to buy a ticket or at least give me a tip for the show. Maybe that will offset the 150 baht fee. For me, if I'm up there "engaged" with a young gentleman, that's who I'm paying attention to. I guarantee I'm not paying attention to whoever might be looking, unless 'me mum' walks in . . .

That's good. I'd hate to go to a bar that was indefinitely open . . . I can think of several reasons to go upstairs rather than take a boy off. Instant gratification comes to mind. Then we had that thread here on which some people posted about being embarrassed to be seen walking the streets with a bar boy. That upstairs area is a good alternative for them, unless of course they are too embarrassed to even be seen walking up a set of stairs. It also saves time. By the time you arrange to take a boy off, wait for him to change clothes, get to your hotel, get to your room, and take the showers that neither of you probably really need anyway, who knows? You may have lost the mood and now have to wait for the Viagra to take effect. By taking him upstairs, you also don't have to be concerned about the possibility of him stealing any of your valuables. Some people enjoy doing their thing within the bar atmosphere. To some, while in the bar the boy is still perceived as a sexual being. Once he is in street clothes and is headed for your room with you, now he is a human being again. Going upstairs also can save money. Many people who take a boy off don't necessarily head directly for their hotel room. Sometimes they offer to take the boy somewhere to eat first, or maybe some shopping, or maybe a stop somewhere for a drink, or whatever. One other thing comes to mind. If you take him upstairs there is no television for him to turn on and most likely he doesn't have his mobile phone with him either. That alone can make the upstairs option very attractive.

Yes, it is open. It's been open for quite a while now. It costs 150 baht to go upstairs, but only if you haven't bought a minimum amount of drinks while still downstairs. I really can't remember what that minimum is. It's probably about 250 baht, but maybe someone else knows for sure. Regarding a tip for a boy you bring upstairs with you, I can't answer that one. There is no set amount. It's an "up to you." I would imagine, depending on what you do and how good the boy is at doing it (if it goes beyond just having a nice little chat), 500 to 1000 baht would be appropriate.