Friday! I had to be up early to do my art show tour (link available for members, I have not watched this because I’m too chicken, but presumably it isn’t so terrible they couldn’t post it).

I ended up enjoying myself a great deal doing it, but I went in with some trepidation, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, when I’d initially agreed to do it I’d assumed it would be a streaming item, with interaction from the Discord audience, so virtual members could visit the art show in real time. A recording was a different proposition, the future audience wouldn’t be able to look closer at the pieces or ask questions. Not being a timed item also meant no listing in the schedule, so there was a pretty good chance most folks who did watch it immediatelly, so the art show or the entire convention would be over, little chance to interact with me or the artists in the discord.

The second problem was that I wanted to do some advance research, especially since it wasn’t live, but the artist information page was still incomplete when I put my out of office on and left for the airport. By the time the convention started the full list of artist names was up on the website, but no links or bios. Most recent worldcons have had something more extensive, if we’re lucky there is a showcase like Glagow 2024 had, but even a more minimalist page of links like Seattle 2025 would have helped me research and maybe put together a little handout. In the end there simply wasn’t enough time to do anything about it, but it did inspire me to fill out the volunteer form for Montreal and Brisbane to let them know I’d be happy to assist if its not already covered.

In the end, Anna was a good audience and knew things about fiber art that I didn’t, so we had a lovely time. I adjusted the “docent” part of the tour to more of a “look at this cool shit” experience and also spent some time explaining how a convention art show works, for both artists interested in displaying and members looking to take some art home.

John had morning panels, so for breakfast I’d just grabbed a bagel with cream cheese from the consuite and a cheap but decent coffee from the little stall near the entrance of the ACC. This place and the food trucks outside were an absolute godsend.

I hung out in the fanzine lounge for a while, did some art in the sketchbook, agreed to do the cover for W00F (due before the end of the convention), and met Schachat’s four year old son Awesome. I’d said I could babysit for an hour while he was on a panel if no one else more suitable volunteered, and now was the time of truth. I haven’t babysat since I was a teenager, but in the end he was an absolute angel, it also meant I saw through my second panel of the convention – on criticism even. Not something I would normally attend, but it was pretty interesting.

Over the convention I spent a fair bit of my between times in the fanzine lounge, we had a relatively steady trickle of folks in the lounge, if many not many new faces because of the location, which was good but just tucked away enough to discourage casual walkups probably. Garcia had brought a 1957 SJSU yearbook for people to sign, a silly project which everyone had fun with. I saw some Teddy Harvia doodles in there, and people had fun tagging themselves as various fraternity members or faculty. I’m not sure if it will turn up at future conventions or what Garcia’s plan for it is, but it was an entertaining conversation piece.

Now that the convention was in full swing John and moved to a bagel-breakfast-and-food-truck-lunch meal plan, and today, after a brief interlude as foxes, we had Barcelona on the Go which was some sort of latin fusion themed, but really really good. John had the burrito and I had a catfish torta I think, anyway – delicious. There were three food trucks most days, and most of the time they had a short enough wait you could probably get a meal in the half hour between panels.

For dinner we finally met up with Jean Martin, who we had said the briefest of hellos to the day before, along with Meg Macdonald and Joe Price. We went to Rakkan Ramen, which had chilled noodels on the menu, something I hadn’t seen before but was really nice in the hot weather. It was great to catch up with Jean who I haven’t seen in ages, and we after dinner we had a little poke around Meeples Family next door, and the outdoor stalls that were set up along the walk, many of them nerd-adjacent, before heading out separate ways – as John and I went to Downtown Disney to meet up with the Hugo Girl gang in hopes of getting a drink at Trader Sams.

For some reason Downtown Disney was incredibly busy, we arrived before them but the wait was over an hour, so after some farcical back and forth trying to find each other and then find someplace else to have a quick drink (did I mention it was incredibly busy?) we cut our loses and caught an uber back to the hotel. We were all a bit sweaty and grumpy, the convention evening was just getting started. The rest of the gang was eager to play the Taskmaster boardgame, so they went to the Lanai deck, but tonight was the Scalzi DJ dance, and I can’t resist a dance. I spent the better part of two hours out there, at one point sharing my corner of the dancefloor with Joseph Price, John O, Bill, and Wolfcat and feeling momentarily transported back to Baycons past in the best way possible.

When the dance wrapped up I spent a little longer on the Lanai deck chatting with people, then went back to the room as the crowds thinned out. On the way down I ran into John Hertz, himself on his way to bed and we had a nice brief chat before saying goodnight.

I should mention that the barcon scene was also hopping, though after 10pm I was usually at the parties. I had a conversation that very night with someone about the ironically evergreen topic of the graying of fandom, and although its a big complex conversation which can be argued in a lot of directions, I do think I notice the general age in the bar was a bit younger, and when thought to pay attention, I think that was also true when wandering about. I suspect that folks daytripping skew a bit younger than hotel guests, for obvious reasons, and perhaps also the extra step of leaving the bar to going up to the party floor might be daunting for newer folk if the bar is providing a decent social space – not always the case at convention, but definitely at this one.