ECCC Day 1

I woke up at 5AM, and just did my morning routine. My bottle of shampoo was still there from.the previous time I had been over. It was all pretty quick.

I had a feeling to arrive at parking earlier than expected. I was able to find a cheaper parking spot. By the time I put my parking receipt in my car, most of the spots were gone.

I wrote all the notes for the day before while on the ferry. I even did a video. The food was cheap enough that I felt like I was saving money. Everything seemed to work fine. The walk to the convention center I saw a lot of construction, and a poke place. I decided to check it out sometime during the stay.

Honestly it was so easy, there was a bit of delight in my step. I knew the path, and what to do. This was a routine.

When I got to the arcade, it was simple to get in, and start setting up the batteries for the RC car. Towing the camera and all would take out most of the battery in five minutes. To get around the entire convention floor, I needed to swap out the batteries quickly. So, I had 5 new batteries charging at once. I would have done more, but two of the wires I ordered were missing when I packed.

Chris set up a blue tooth speaker to drown out the repetitive 60in1 iCade music. It started to mix with the other music playing, and created an interesting effect.

The worst thing found was when I began to itch everywhere. My arms were red, and blotchy. I was having an allergic reaction to something. It was pretty bad, and I couldn't find a store for benedryl.

We got everything up and running, and ready. I tried uploading my first video over the cell service. It took several hours, and then the cell reception was basically none. So the plan was changed to upload when wifi was there.

Once the door opened, I stood outside and told people to come in. It was amazing. I could just point at the door, and swarms went in. I diverted large groups into the arcade. I told people to look in, or to check out the amazing time travel machine inside. They did.

Slowly I began to be dizzy, and had to lean against a wall. I grabbed a spare chair, and sat down as needed. It was great. I used my voice and people moved in.

Lefty asked how I was doing, and I told him the chair was nice. He told me to go to lunch. It was noon. So I walked over to the subway I regular, and had the sandwich of the day. The people were different from the years before. I tried saying gracias, and the lady turned out to be from India.

On my walk back I grabbed a con chart. It would help me give directions to people. This quickly turned into a good idea. People asked questions a lot, and I could answer most of them. If I couldn't, this was mostly for lanyards, I pointed out the minions in green shirts.

Then I had to find out where our badges were. I went into the proper place, and they didn't have a chart for me. I went back to tell the head of my floor. He said he sent a list.

So I went back with someone to go talk to the official exhibitor area again. They did not have the list, or at least the arcade was not listed.

Eventually we got our badges, and lanyards. Then it turned out the reason why was a simple mistake. We weren't paying exhibitors, we were guests. So yeah, there were apologies and stuff, but it was all settled quickly and politely.

I worked to grab people in. The minions and other exhibitors were amazed at my work. I felt like a Jedi because I got so many to look in. There is a simple answer, they were there early, and had the time. The arcade is easy to bring you in if you have a bunch of time.

Eventually we got our fliers and posters. I was told the picture arrived that morning and everything was emergency printed for the convention. So I grabbed a pile.

If people spent a lot of time in the arcade, ingave them a flier. If they promised to come back, I gave them a flier. It was really easy. But once again, it's an arcade.

Then, people began to nod at me, and walk away. Others moved away. Then others made some comment to mock me.

This was the the people who had little time, and wanted to see only things on a list. They were busy. Others were not at the convention, and just thought I didn't understand. When I was able to get the attention of some, I told them I didn't care about the badge. Most of those people got fliers.

There were tons of people who walked by, and I would ask for pictures or join other photographers. The Cinderella cosplayer said she couldn't sit down, or she would fall over. Then a little boy saw her. She knelt down and talked to him like a real Cinderella. He was so excited.

A geographer and I talked about how this culture worked. The religious response of gamblers to winning, or the possibility of winning. Then look at the people at the convention, they treated their characters as almost gods. Meeting a celebrity makes people tear up.

One guy apparently looked exactly like David Tennant, and talked around with a portable tardis around him. He stepped out to get his autograph from Tennant and Billie Piper, and made the two do a double take.

There were tons of cool things.

Finally my time was up, and I slowly assembled my moving tripod. While putting some stuff together, I had the tripod record the arcade. I ended up talking to the owner of a dog named Star.

The owner loved retro games, so I told him about the shows that covered that. He was really excited.

Finally, I got everything ready, and began to walk to my chosen start point. And this is the point that I was told no. I could walk around with the dolly, tripod, and camera but not have an RC car on it. The guy who told me no said he wished he could high five me.

So I walked around with the camera, and hoped it was good enough.

After that, I disassembled it, and prepared to leave. On my way out Ben showed up. He wanted to hang out. We went over to the minions area, and sat down. Everyone had code names, and long jokes.

One guy recognized me, but he couldn't place me.

“We ever go drinking?”

“No. If we drank together, you would order something hard and I would order root beer. Then I would drink you under the table.”

This came up later, and it turned out the headguy for that shift was also Mormon. We joked about how we had no idea where the beer garden was. Maybe root beer.

It was a fascinating visit as they went through shifts. It seemed the minions would be in charge of the arcade after ten. The arcade folks would have left then. I was amazed.

After a while Ben got up to leave, so I did as well. The walk back I saw the poke place was still open. I wanted some, but decided not to.

The cell service was still down, so after buying my ticket I started writing notes. The ferry ride was just me drinking Gatorade, writing notes, and listening to a bunch of 20 something's try to sound cool. I'm old now.

Once I caught up to myself in real time, I just walked around the ferry. There were things happening and I got a picture of one of them. I also found a nickel.

I got back, and started to charge my phone, and upload videos. After that I went to bed.

Expect a cosplayer article soon.