Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I should have really carried my camera with me all day at Nova Albion Steampunk Con, because everywhere you turned there were people in spectacular and wonderful outfits. I've posted those photos I did take to a set on Flikr, but it just doesn't do justice to an event where I feel a little out of place because I'm not wearing a costume. Well, I wore my fez along with my Westercon t-shirt; I have, after all, spent a good chunk of the day at the Westercon table.

( A few photos )

When the table closed at 7 PM, I found that I was very tired and very hungry, having not felt like having lunch and subsisting on food bars all day. So I'm afraid I blew off the entire evening social scene and headed off to my hotel, the Milpitas Crowne Plaza, had dinner thereafter, and turned in to work on getting these photos posted and getting some other maintenance done on the Westercon web site that came up during today's activities at the convention.

I wasn't as last year's iteration of this event at the Emeryville Hilton Garden Inn, but the Santa Clara Hyatt (current home of BayCon) is a much better site than that HGI possibly could have been. Having stayed at that HGI once (the night before my train trip to Montreal in 2009), I can't see how they possibly made it work in that hotel. But it's still not ideal. In particular, they effectively had to split the dealers room between two rooms on two levels, plus the mezzanine, and even then I think they have the aisles uncomfortably narrow.

But complaints about this and about the much-too-small type on the name portion of the membership badges aside, I really must praise this event for the high energy and enthusiasm level of the attendees. It's fun. I may have more to say about this after I get home tomorrow evening, but for now I need to get some sleep.

I have posted my California Steampunk Convention photos to my Flickr site. This includes the ones I pointed to yesterday as well.

I was fortunately able to get away from work early today thanks to one project being canceled around lunch. Thus Cheryl and I were able to zip down to Sunnyvale in the carpool lane to register for Steam Powered, the California Steampunk Convention. When we arrived at the Domain Hotel, we were politely informed by a convention staffer in the parking lot that parking was restricted to hotel guests only. He pointed us to an overflow hotel a half-mile away and talked of shuttle buses. We instead drove a short distance away and found street parking. Here's hope we'll be able to find a spot so easily tomorrow.

( Initial Impressions; Only a Little Snark )

( Fanboy Kevin and the the Foglio Family )

Cheryl had gone off to explore a bit while I enthused, and when she came back, we went around the Dealers Room, where she bought me books and we looked at many other things that would be nice to have but we can't afford at this time. You can read more in her Day 1 Report.

( Lots of talk about not much happening, but a lovely Steampunk Club )

We were not really up to sticking around for this evening's dance, and we needed to have dinner, so at johnnyeponymous's suggestion we headed out to a nearby Mongolian BBQ for an excellent dinner, after which we returned home. Sort of boring of us, I know, but we have to be up early if we want to see Chris's 10 AM panel, and since our decision to attend CA Steampunk was on short notice after the WFC trip was scrubbed, we did not and could not make hotel arrangements at the Domain.

The Domain looks like it should be a decent hotel for smaller, focused conventions like next year's Potlatch, but parking is certainly an issue unless you don't mind parking a few blocks away on the street and walking. I hope it isn't raining tomorrow morning when we get there.