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.