...walk the dinosaur. Open the door, get on the floor. Everybody walk the dinosaur. Open the door...

[hazelchaz]

You may recall from my Anime Vegas trip report that ala_mokita suspects I can find a chorizo and egg burrito in any town. I had to see if I could keep that reputation going in San Mateo. The Yaoi-con restaurant guide (and bless them for having one) listed a Mexican restaurant, Taqueria La Cumbre, so I set out Saturday morning to find it (right). I was doing the shopping, too -- picking up a few things that we didn't worry about for opening up Friday night but wanted to have for Saturday.

I had learned that there was a Japanese market in town. Oh boy! It was "Suruki Super Market" (left) and they certainly had a variety of Pocky flavors. They had a few other things, such as Hello Kitty breath mints (or possibly edible chalk?).
I hadn't yet received bovil's tip to look for "Chizu Mochi" (right) in the stores, but I'll look for it next time.

We didn't have a large team -- it was myself, Christian, midnight_rocket, and my minions Melissa De Mello and aramina. We had just enough people so we could cover the table down by the ballrooms and also the suite, with everyone having time to take a break and wander around the convention. (Things will be different at pmx!) Lunch was usually hot dogs purchased from the hotel, or peanut butter sandwiches in the suite.

Andrew and kproche found our suite. Kevin was one of the bishies performing in the Cafe Verfuhren suite and had a costume with black wings (left). I don't know what it's from.

(Incidentally, remember I talked about giving a cooking wreath as a wedding present? That's what we gave them when they got married most recently. They've been married a couple of times. I don't know any straight couple as persistently committed to getting married as they've had to be -- they've had a commitment ceremony, they were married in San Francisco when that judge legalized it for a few weeks, and again this year when it was most recently re-legalized. It baffles me that the Mormon church is trying to encourage extramarital gay sex by backing Proposition 8 which prohibits the marital kind. As I write this, the absentee votes haven't all been counted, so it may yet be defeated. Here's hoping. Dang it, if you don't like gay marriage then just don't have one, okay? I'll leave aside for the moment my friends who are so scared of gays that they put them in the same category as drug addicts, pedophiles, and bestiality. Can we note that those other three categories involve illegal behavior?)

The Dealers Room, interestingly enough, usually had its doors closed (right). This was on request of the hotel. Apparently, even though the convention had the use of the entire ballroom floor, they were squicked out at the possibility of a mundane seeing the exotic boy-lurve merch on offer.

Our table in the ballroom area was near the entrance to the Dealers Room. Not the exit -- just the entrance. One-way doorways again. (Boo, hiss.) In fact the main traffic flow during the day was from the other end of the hall, down past the restrooms and into the dealers room. Our table was just beyond where you'd make that turn.

You may think I'm a bit cranky about how Yaoi-con turned out. That's not quite what I'm trying to convey. I think we were unlucky in a number of ways (and we did it to ourselves, as far as when we arrived) and the net effect was that we spent a lot of time and effort and didn't have quite the splash we would have liked. Something very important did happen, though -- I met face to face with Rob Miles and we were able to talk about the animelosangeles website. He knows his way around Joomla and he's hit the ground running.

And, of course, we provided a service for some of the members attending the convention. We had snacks on our table, granola bars and water and sour gummy worms, and our little sign telling people where to find our Peanut Butter room. (We're still working on getting a good collection of signs for our publicity tour, by the way. The one we had was just something I whomped out in twenty seconds on my computer, doesn't match any of our Official Signs at all.)

Daniella here had a question about Animé Los Angeles (left). I think I answered it to her satisfaction. If I remember correctly, she hasn't been to our convention before. So therefore, waving the flag accomplished something! Check our her ladybug stockings.

Remember a few posts back I mentioned that Christian had Met A Girl? It would be more accurate to say that he had Met Another Girl; the reason why I capitalized it was not because it was the first and only, but because he displayed such a dramatic reaction. (Seriously, 15 text messages a day?)

He's the sort of guy who's looking for the perfect girl. He's looking for someone who'll be a good drinking companion, who likes hats and will tickle his toes. And until he can find everything in one package, well, he knows a girl in Northern California who's a charmingly robust drinking companion, and another girl that turns up in Southern California from time to time who likes hats, and he's found someone who lives in SoCal who tickles his toes. The drinking is often aided and abetted by johnnyeponymous and the rest of that baycon gang; and the toe-tickling sometimes goes until 3 am. But that's another story.

At Yaoi-con on Saturday we ate at Armadillo Willy's (right). By this point, we've added bear ears to Christian's hat, and as I mentioned previously I Wear My Sunglasses At Night because the Future's So Bright and my clear glasses are home, broken in the street. He's talked to the hat girl, he's talked to the drinking companion, now we're having dinner and then it's back to the convention. Armadillo Willy's is a barbecue place -- if you're not a carnivore, it's not really the place for you. It's not far from the convention, and in fact it's just a hop and skip from the Safeway where we've been doing all our shopping.

When we get back to the hotel, I check in to see how Cafe Verfuhren is doing. We learned that they've finished up the Man Maid Cafe thing and they're just cleaning up and talking (left). Everyone's going to the Bishie Auction. But that ballroom can't hold everyone, so we go back and open up the Peanut Butter room again.

Before we go, though, I have a small glass of wine. Their wrap party is just starting. Christian eventually goes back, has a few drinks, speculates about alternate uses for the jumprope.... We don't see him until morning, so we have no idea what sort of trouble he might be getting into.

We never find out where everyone else has gone -- it seems like everyone who's not in the Bishie Auction must have gone home. Or they're in their own private room parties, or perhaps just milling about in the lobby. People trickle in from time to time; word-of-mouth spreads, a little bit. Eventually, the Bishie Auction ends, and some of them turn up in our party (left).

We end the night with a bunch of extra food. About midnight, we call it a night. Melissa and I spend a few minutes looking at the hallway we wish we'd been on -- Rooms 3142-3149 are the closest to the ballroom area (right). Should have talked to the right people before we made our reservation and room request.

On Sunday, I made another stab at finding a chorizo burrito. I know there are Mexican-Americans in town, so there ought to be the kind of place I'm looking for. I start looking around downtown, and head for the wrong side of the tracks. There's not much of a "wrong" side, but it shouldn't be difficult to figure out which side of the railroad has the lower rents. The main entrance of the train station faces to the west, so I drive up and down a couple of the side streets to the east, and sure enough: I find Las Cazuelas Taqueria, a hole-in-the-wall storefront operation (left). Getting a chorizo burrito is no trouble, although I should have specified no frijoles. They were very tasty.

Back at the hotel, we were late setting up, which was a bit of a disappointment. The line to get into the dealers room went in front of our table, and into the dealers room, and since it was a "one-way" door the fans didn't exit from that door. And after the line was gone, people didn't come from that direction. So by opening shortly after the dealers room opened, instead of for a short period before, we missed a chance to be that much more visible.

On the whole, we had a good time. Christian had a "Go Girl" energy drink, which was almost every bit as good as we expected it would be (right). Well, so he tells us; we didn't have the courage to try it. It was very pink. We still had snacks and food on the table, including a few slices of bread to go with our Peanut Butter and Jelly. When all the bread was gone, we hit the road -- we made it halfway home before dark, and Christian finished the driving through Santa Barbara, to Melissa's, and back to the Tower. After the Tower, Caroline took the wheel (with her newly-minted driver's license). In Lakewood we looked on the street and eventually found most of my spectacles. *Sigh* I was home, in my own bed, by midnight.

Comments

[aramina.livejournal.com]

I am very amused by the disclaimer about Christian. :P

Disclaimers

[hazelchaz]

Apparently my remarks in the previous post were misinterpreted by certain parties. Oh, I didn't even get into "a cell phone is like a loaded gun" either, did I?

Re: Disclaimers

[aramina.livejournal.com]

lol, nor the "don't drink and text" XD