Chicago's WBEZ follows fursuiters at Midwest FurFest 2011

Chicago radio station WBEZ's Jason Marck and Eilee Heikenen-Weiss today broadcast their experience of MFF 2011 on morning program Eight Forty-Eight. [tip: Iggy & Idlewild]

The eight-minute segment focused on the motivations for fursuiting, and featured interviews with Woody, Atara, Ford Shepherd and convention chair Takaza J. Wolf. Other topics included whether furry was a fetish, and the convention charity, which left with over $18,500 (video).

So a huge part of it is this kind of kid-like, unbridled joy. [...] The whole thing felt like good clean fun ... there's an overall air of [...] innocence, inclusiveness, belonging ...

Jason said he found the fandom by accident, stumbling across WikiFur while looking up Japanese comic books. MFF attracted 2600 fans this year, including 574 parade fursuiters.