Dear Community,
This is one of those moments in time that words seem to fail me. I want to give you an update on what is occurring in IMsLBB land. After many hours, and many, many, emails, the Doubletree released us from our contract for the April 2020 date.
The release came late Friday, even though we had announced the postponement earlier, knowing it was the right decision, but risking having to pay the full contract.
The hotel has been slow to adjusting to the landscape in front of them, waiting for the state and the county to mandate no gatherings, but then maybe we have all been there.
It is not like we have ever faced a pandemic of this magnitude before. In some ways, it reminds me of HIV/AIDS, and in other ways, it seems so much more dire. In the process of postponement of the April event, we started the conversation about available dates in the future. This has been an emerging situation with new information every day on the duration of the pandemic, impact on the economy and on our lives. I, like many Americans, am not trusting the information from our own government regarding how
long we will be sheltering in place and how long people are contagious. According to the World Health Organization data, it looks like we will be dealing with this into the summer
with a possible re-occurrence later this year.
While many have been able to continue working from home, many more community members around the world are seriously financially impacted by this. As I reviewed the dates available to reschedule, I kept asking myself is moving forward the right choice? Covid-19 has forced us to change the way we commune with each other and impacted what our events might look like.
The IMsLBB weekend is, at its core, an exploration of our sex positive culture. In the age of social distancing, how do we gather?
In our talks with the hotel, the only viable date, that met our space needs, was over the summer. By then, the shelter in place requirements may be lifted but what are the risks
with long asymptomatic periods before someone gets sick, and then being contagious for another three weeks after when COVID19 could still be spread. I also asked myself,
even if we could address the disease questions, will our community be economically ready to attend a major event in California. Based on all these factors and the shifting landscape regarding COVID19, I realized that no risk to human life was worth risking and our higher priority had to be our local communities.
Therefore, I have made the difficult decision to cancel the 2020 IMsLBB event.
Now for the details of what this means. Although the hotel has released us from the 2020 contract, we have incurred expenses that cannot be recovered. Refunds will be
available over the next few weeks. You can request a refund until April 24 by emailing your request to refunds
@imslbb.org. We hope these funds will help defray some of the expenses you may be facing.
We are also hoping that some of you, who could afford to not take a refund, would consider this option. With your funds, you could help us pay these expenses. We will donate all remaining funds to two organizations who are working to support members of our community during the COVID19 crisis. The first is the Bay Area Leather Lifeline because this has been the home of our event for the last 11 years. The second is the Leather Heart Foundation Disaster Relief Fund which supports needs nationally. As an international event, we would be willing to consider international
groups but at this point in time, we haven’t been able to identify any organizations that are specifically supporting community in this direct way. If you feel strongly about supporting our efforts, we are also accepting donations via PayPal (sharrin
@imsl.org). We believe this is the best use of funds at this critical time.
We want to thank everyone who has been a part of the 2020 planning. Your work has brought us this far and your contribution has been vital to making the IMsLBB Weekend
a growing, thriving event over the last 6 years of Generation 4. I hoped this would be the year I would be celebrating my last year, and turning the event over to Generation 5 in
2021. Those plans are still in the works and when finalized, we will announce the next steps.
With this cancellation it is our goal is to ensure next generation has a solid base to build on. We will be making more announcements over the next few weeks regarding our stepping down titleholders and future plans. We encourage our local community leaders, titleholders and community members to do what we do best, organize, raise funds and take care of each other as we face this crisis together.
Again, if you would like to request a refund, please contact us by April 24, 2020 by email: refunds
@imslbb.org
Please stay safe,
Sharrin Spector
