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solarbirdSo we went to Worldcon...
I really wasn't looking forward to ConJose, because it was in San Jose, which isn't really much to talk about, and because things have been such a mess lately and we really wouldn't have done ourselves any harm by saving the money. But we'd committed when things were less annoying financially, and couldn't get out without losing most of the money we'd already put in, or without screwing the friend from Kentucky with whom we were rooming, so we went down anyway.
(As a side note: what is wrong with airlines who want to send you from Seattle to San Jose through Los Angeles? It takes a 1hr 30m flight (1h 45m including taxi and all that) and turns it into SIX HOURS IN THE AIR. How can this POSSIBLY save money? But apparently it does. Fuxx0r that. We took Alaska, which flies directly there.)
Pleasantly, the flight south wasn't bad at all. There were no more than four people ahead of us at security at any point, and though we did get really, really tired of showing ID over and over again, it didn't cause us any real delay. I wish we'd been able to take the train down - we talked to a few other people who had done things like that and they all loved it. Maybe we can do that for a Westercon - or maybe even Toronto, who knows?
Downtown San Jose, once we arrived, was both cleaner and emptier than I expected. It's a lot like a big, well-maintained, but fairly unsuccessful mall, dominated by restaurants. The area around the convention centre is all recent construction, California-style, with big setbacks and pedestrian hostility, though they seem to be trying to improve on that last part. Just past that on the east side is what's left of old downtown; there were a very few buildings that predated the 1950s. Those that had survived, on the other hand, appeared to be undergoing restoration, so that's good.
First Street was probably the most interesting; it's a one-way street with light rail running down it, confining it to essentially one traffic lane. It's also really, really narrow to start with, so it definitely feels canyonlike, but it maintains pedestrian accessibility even with the rail and street. It did show off how surface light rail is a pretty bad idea, though; the train spent a lot of time stopped at pedestrian crossings and the like.
At any rate, we stayed in the Hyatt Santa Clara, a restored hotel from the late 19th century. They've done a good job, for the most part, at returning it to its best days - the bathroom in particular was delightful, except for a poor shower head - but they're missing a few beats. The shower head, for one. It wasn't a period piece, it was a water-saver head that made it hard to wash your hair. The air conditioner rattled; it had obviously been repaired after a water leak because they hadn't painted over the water stain yet. The armoire is much too large for the old-style small room; a smaller unit and a side-piece would have been appropriately period and not overwhelmed the room, making it feel even smaller than it was. Finally, the corner desk should have been a writing desk, not a full desk, which also made the room feel smaller. (However, if they'd done that, they wouldn't have been able to include a mini-bar loaded up with $6 Snickers.) However, the beds had feather-down mattresses, and that makes up for a lot of other mistakes.
ConJose itself exceeded expectations, but my expectations were low. There were rumours about significant cash-flow problems, but if they were there, they weren't a big enough problem to be noticeable, and they did several smart things. 1) They put a big comfy-chair-stacked fan lounge area directly across from registration. This was a very smart decision. It's facilities-dependant, of course - you need to have the room to do that sort of thing, and generally you don't. But they did, and took advantage of it. It provided a good meet-and-chat place that was central to everybody. 2) The badge holders were the trade-show type, made of some rugged plastic fabric, with a clear plastic sheet pocket in front for your badge, and two zippered pouches on the back side. Perfect for your room key and some money. Highly recommended. 3) Somebody put a lot of thought into programming. The entire convention, I only had one or two really dead spots - times when there were no panel programmes I thought were worth seeing. I was looking for dead time to do other things, in fact, and skipped programming I'd probably liked to have seen. One hour slot had six panels I'd liked to have attended. Of course, I could only see one. It was the first time I'd have thought about ordering tapes - but, of course, this is the year they didn't offer that service. Agh! The science programming struck me as being particularly strong. And, as always, I went to a couple of Heinlein panels just to see whether any fistfights would break out amoungst the panelists. ^_^
Of the large-scale programming events other than opening and closing ceremonies - both of which attempted to be funny and in fact succeeded, which is rare - the only large-scale event I attended was a live radio-play performance of The Adventures of Luke Skywalker. The conceit: Lux Presents Hollywood, in 1944, went on the road to an Army base to entertain the troops - as did many other shows of the time - and performed an adaptation of the popular 1930s serial, The Adventures of Luke Skywalker. Kathryn Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and Mickey Rooney starred as Princess Leia, Han Solo, and Luke Skywalker - in that order, of course - heading an all-star cast. Jimmy Stewart played Obi-Wan Kenobi, Erich von Stroheim played Grand Moff Tarkin, and Bela Lugosi stole every scene he was in as Darth Vader. The voices were, in general, very well done. The funniest appropriate casting decision, though, was Rin Tin Tin as Chewbacca,
Arf!
The other large events were attractive, of course, but the programming during the day was so good that both Anna and I consistently felt we needed a break before going out to the parties at night, so we skipped the Hugos and the Chesleys, as well as the masquerade.
In turn, the parties were also pleasantly well-run and attended. Personally, I'd start each night on the 20th floor (consuite and UK in 2005 bid) and work my way down the floors via the stairwell; Anna was a bit more focused about it. Surprises were the last-day appearance of an Australia in 2010 bid (egged into an early bid start by people at the business meeting basically taunting them into going ahead with an announcement), and Penguicon - an attempt to hold a joint Linux conference and SF convention. They had a Big Mouth Billy Bass hacked to say "Open Source is the Future" every time somebody walked in front of it. Funny, and I fled before it had a chance to become (inevitably) very old very quickly. I was less amused to see Columbus bidding against Japan for the 2007 Worldcon; their pitch is centred around the idea that three border crossings in five years (Toronto in 2003; Glasgow in 2005; Yokohama in 2007) is one too many. They're going to get a bunch of midwest and east-coast support, too, because they don't like the idea of travelling so far. This strikes me as kind of annoying, particularly after LA moved its planned bid up a year to avoid conflicting with Japan. Japan has never hosted a Worldcon, and a lot of people have been trying to get fans over there to launch a bid for years.
So I'm going to pre-oppose Columbus. I've never done that before. I don't think they're evil, but I am annoyed.
Anna and I only attended one night of filk together; I made a second late-night appearance on a later day. We also showed up for an afternoon instrumental jam, but oddly, we were pretty much it. We did gather an occasional tiny audience, hanging around by the door, who would listen for a song and then move on; the filk schedule was very badly confused and I don't think anybody really knew about it. (It was listed on separate sheets that were floating around the filk rooms, rather than in the pocket programme. The video programming was handled similarly; they lose some points there.) It did give me a chance to play in front of people I don't know, though, which is painful but valueable experience, given that we have a wedding to play this Sunday. Guh.
We were rooming with Rod Smith, who we know from back in our days in Kentucky; he's generally a pretty good person to share a room with; I ran into fewer people than I usually do, did see a lot of the usual suspects. Jane Dennis and company were there, selling the convention shirt, as always. We bought a couple of Lovecraft books; I'd read one of![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spazzkat's Lovecraft short-story collections and decided I wanted more. annathepiper makes fun of his tendency to describe things as unnameable and indescribable, but it works for me. Being on a tight budget, we didn't buy much, though - which is sad, there were a couple of pieces in the art show I really liked. One in particular I'd normally have bought, but, alas. (Our budget was such that we took peanut butter, jelly, crackers, poptarts, and tea down with us, and those were breakfast and mostly lunch. That's probably more protein than we'd usually get, though, so maybe we won. ^_^)
After closing ceremonies, we had some dead time, so after running out for a quick cheap dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant, I went and put in several volunteer hours helping set up - and then run - the dead-dog party. Most of the first part consisted of hand-trucking seemingly endless amounts of leftover soda and supplies down from the consuite (20th floor) to the party room (2nd floor). It was okay, really; that's the most difficult time for volunteers, so they gave me a Hero ribbon in addition to (eventually) giving a standard volunteer ribbon. I'm pretty sure, though, that I never got into the paperwork - I never signed up, per se'. I just showed up and did the right things. But I do have the ribbons as proof. ^_^ I actually did not intend to help run the dead dog party; the Toronto worldcon committee was going to run it, but they were Too Damn Tired to keep the thing as organised as it could be, so I started putting more cans of soda into the icebins and it took off from there. I ended up helping close the room - they decided to close around 1am, and were wondering how to chase the remaining people out when I said "I say we just quote Jake Blues and play the theme to Rawhide." They didn't realise that I meant it - I had my flute with me and it's an easy song to figure out - so were surprised when 1) I did it ("You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here") and 2) it worked! The remaining Japanese fans - who made up about half the dead-dog contingent at that point - seemed particularly appreciative. (No, really. They thought it was funny. Which it was supposed to be. ^_^)
There isn't too much else to mention after that - we stopped by and toured through San Jose's downtown art museum the next day while waiting to go to our flight; it's pretty small. Reasonably well laid-out for what space they have, but we got through two of the three exhibitions in about half an hour, and we weren't even in a rush.
Bought a pre-supporting membership for LA in 2006; converted from supporting to attending for Glasgow; took a few pictures, but not really all that many. And that's about it!
I really wasn't looking forward to ConJose, because it was in San Jose, which isn't really much to talk about, and because things have been such a mess lately and we really wouldn't have done ourselves any harm by saving the money. But we'd committed when things were less annoying financially, and couldn't get out without losing most of the money we'd already put in, or without screwing the friend from Kentucky with whom we were rooming, so we went down anyway.
(As a side note: what is wrong with airlines who want to send you from Seattle to San Jose through Los Angeles? It takes a 1hr 30m flight (1h 45m including taxi and all that) and turns it into SIX HOURS IN THE AIR. How can this POSSIBLY save money? But apparently it does. Fuxx0r that. We took Alaska, which flies directly there.)
Pleasantly, the flight south wasn't bad at all. There were no more than four people ahead of us at security at any point, and though we did get really, really tired of showing ID over and over again, it didn't cause us any real delay. I wish we'd been able to take the train down - we talked to a few other people who had done things like that and they all loved it. Maybe we can do that for a Westercon - or maybe even Toronto, who knows?
Downtown San Jose, once we arrived, was both cleaner and emptier than I expected. It's a lot like a big, well-maintained, but fairly unsuccessful mall, dominated by restaurants. The area around the convention centre is all recent construction, California-style, with big setbacks and pedestrian hostility, though they seem to be trying to improve on that last part. Just past that on the east side is what's left of old downtown; there were a very few buildings that predated the 1950s. Those that had survived, on the other hand, appeared to be undergoing restoration, so that's good.
First Street was probably the most interesting; it's a one-way street with light rail running down it, confining it to essentially one traffic lane. It's also really, really narrow to start with, so it definitely feels canyonlike, but it maintains pedestrian accessibility even with the rail and street. It did show off how surface light rail is a pretty bad idea, though; the train spent a lot of time stopped at pedestrian crossings and the like.
At any rate, we stayed in the Hyatt Santa Clara, a restored hotel from the late 19th century. They've done a good job, for the most part, at returning it to its best days - the bathroom in particular was delightful, except for a poor shower head - but they're missing a few beats. The shower head, for one. It wasn't a period piece, it was a water-saver head that made it hard to wash your hair. The air conditioner rattled; it had obviously been repaired after a water leak because they hadn't painted over the water stain yet. The armoire is much too large for the old-style small room; a smaller unit and a side-piece would have been appropriately period and not overwhelmed the room, making it feel even smaller than it was. Finally, the corner desk should have been a writing desk, not a full desk, which also made the room feel smaller. (However, if they'd done that, they wouldn't have been able to include a mini-bar loaded up with $6 Snickers.) However, the beds had feather-down mattresses, and that makes up for a lot of other mistakes.
ConJose itself exceeded expectations, but my expectations were low. There were rumours about significant cash-flow problems, but if they were there, they weren't a big enough problem to be noticeable, and they did several smart things. 1) They put a big comfy-chair-stacked fan lounge area directly across from registration. This was a very smart decision. It's facilities-dependant, of course - you need to have the room to do that sort of thing, and generally you don't. But they did, and took advantage of it. It provided a good meet-and-chat place that was central to everybody. 2) The badge holders were the trade-show type, made of some rugged plastic fabric, with a clear plastic sheet pocket in front for your badge, and two zippered pouches on the back side. Perfect for your room key and some money. Highly recommended. 3) Somebody put a lot of thought into programming. The entire convention, I only had one or two really dead spots - times when there were no panel programmes I thought were worth seeing. I was looking for dead time to do other things, in fact, and skipped programming I'd probably liked to have seen. One hour slot had six panels I'd liked to have attended. Of course, I could only see one. It was the first time I'd have thought about ordering tapes - but, of course, this is the year they didn't offer that service. Agh! The science programming struck me as being particularly strong. And, as always, I went to a couple of Heinlein panels just to see whether any fistfights would break out amoungst the panelists. ^_^
Of the large-scale programming events other than opening and closing ceremonies - both of which attempted to be funny and in fact succeeded, which is rare - the only large-scale event I attended was a live radio-play performance of The Adventures of Luke Skywalker. The conceit: Lux Presents Hollywood, in 1944, went on the road to an Army base to entertain the troops - as did many other shows of the time - and performed an adaptation of the popular 1930s serial, The Adventures of Luke Skywalker. Kathryn Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, and Mickey Rooney starred as Princess Leia, Han Solo, and Luke Skywalker - in that order, of course - heading an all-star cast. Jimmy Stewart played Obi-Wan Kenobi, Erich von Stroheim played Grand Moff Tarkin, and Bela Lugosi stole every scene he was in as Darth Vader. The voices were, in general, very well done. The funniest appropriate casting decision, though, was Rin Tin Tin as Chewbacca,
Arf!
The other large events were attractive, of course, but the programming during the day was so good that both Anna and I consistently felt we needed a break before going out to the parties at night, so we skipped the Hugos and the Chesleys, as well as the masquerade.
In turn, the parties were also pleasantly well-run and attended. Personally, I'd start each night on the 20th floor (consuite and UK in 2005 bid) and work my way down the floors via the stairwell; Anna was a bit more focused about it. Surprises were the last-day appearance of an Australia in 2010 bid (egged into an early bid start by people at the business meeting basically taunting them into going ahead with an announcement), and Penguicon - an attempt to hold a joint Linux conference and SF convention. They had a Big Mouth Billy Bass hacked to say "Open Source is the Future" every time somebody walked in front of it. Funny, and I fled before it had a chance to become (inevitably) very old very quickly. I was less amused to see Columbus bidding against Japan for the 2007 Worldcon; their pitch is centred around the idea that three border crossings in five years (Toronto in 2003; Glasgow in 2005; Yokohama in 2007) is one too many. They're going to get a bunch of midwest and east-coast support, too, because they don't like the idea of travelling so far. This strikes me as kind of annoying, particularly after LA moved its planned bid up a year to avoid conflicting with Japan. Japan has never hosted a Worldcon, and a lot of people have been trying to get fans over there to launch a bid for years.
So I'm going to pre-oppose Columbus. I've never done that before. I don't think they're evil, but I am annoyed.
Anna and I only attended one night of filk together; I made a second late-night appearance on a later day. We also showed up for an afternoon instrumental jam, but oddly, we were pretty much it. We did gather an occasional tiny audience, hanging around by the door, who would listen for a song and then move on; the filk schedule was very badly confused and I don't think anybody really knew about it. (It was listed on separate sheets that were floating around the filk rooms, rather than in the pocket programme. The video programming was handled similarly; they lose some points there.) It did give me a chance to play in front of people I don't know, though, which is painful but valueable experience, given that we have a wedding to play this Sunday. Guh.
We were rooming with Rod Smith, who we know from back in our days in Kentucky; he's generally a pretty good person to share a room with; I ran into fewer people than I usually do, did see a lot of the usual suspects. Jane Dennis and company were there, selling the convention shirt, as always. We bought a couple of Lovecraft books; I'd read one of
spazzkat's Lovecraft short-story collections and decided I wanted more. annathepiper makes fun of his tendency to describe things as unnameable and indescribable, but it works for me. Being on a tight budget, we didn't buy much, though - which is sad, there were a couple of pieces in the art show I really liked. One in particular I'd normally have bought, but, alas. (Our budget was such that we took peanut butter, jelly, crackers, poptarts, and tea down with us, and those were breakfast and mostly lunch. That's probably more protein than we'd usually get, though, so maybe we won. ^_^)After closing ceremonies, we had some dead time, so after running out for a quick cheap dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant, I went and put in several volunteer hours helping set up - and then run - the dead-dog party. Most of the first part consisted of hand-trucking seemingly endless amounts of leftover soda and supplies down from the consuite (20th floor) to the party room (2nd floor). It was okay, really; that's the most difficult time for volunteers, so they gave me a Hero ribbon in addition to (eventually) giving a standard volunteer ribbon. I'm pretty sure, though, that I never got into the paperwork - I never signed up, per se'. I just showed up and did the right things. But I do have the ribbons as proof. ^_^ I actually did not intend to help run the dead dog party; the Toronto worldcon committee was going to run it, but they were Too Damn Tired to keep the thing as organised as it could be, so I started putting more cans of soda into the icebins and it took off from there. I ended up helping close the room - they decided to close around 1am, and were wondering how to chase the remaining people out when I said "I say we just quote Jake Blues and play the theme to Rawhide." They didn't realise that I meant it - I had my flute with me and it's an easy song to figure out - so were surprised when 1) I did it ("You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here") and 2) it worked! The remaining Japanese fans - who made up about half the dead-dog contingent at that point - seemed particularly appreciative. (No, really. They thought it was funny. Which it was supposed to be. ^_^)
There isn't too much else to mention after that - we stopped by and toured through San Jose's downtown art museum the next day while waiting to go to our flight; it's pretty small. Reasonably well laid-out for what space they have, but we got through two of the three exhibitions in about half an hour, and we weren't even in a rush.
Bought a pre-supporting membership for LA in 2006; converted from supporting to attending for Glasgow; took a few pictures, but not really all that many. And that's about it!
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Date: 2002-09-10 05:03 pm (UTC)uh, thanks. ^_^
Date: 2002-09-12 08:36 am (UTC)Yes, thanks!
Date: 2002-09-15 07:21 am (UTC)