We only really planned on going Saturday, but I was half-hoping we’d get there in time to catch some of Friday afternoon. That…didn’t work out so well.

Saturday morning around 11:30, we walked down to the Moscone Center in surprisingly clear weather (it was supposedly 50°F, but the sun was warm enough that a T-shirt was just fine), followed a series of people giving directions, and breezed through the line to pick up our badges. I think we were on the main floor within 10 minutes of entering the building.

Main Floor and Costumes

The convention seemed more crowded than I remember last year — despite the move to Easter weekend. There were places on the main floor where traffic just stopped. The mezzanine balcony, which I remember being a relatively empty traffic corridor last year, had somehow become a popular hang-out spot and photo-op location. Several panels proved to be too popular for the rooms they’d been placed in. People were even lining up three hours ahead for Geoff Johns.

It’s not a San Diego-level crowd yet, but it’s getting denser. Fortunately they still have room to expand. They’re only using two-thirds of the main floor space.

Still, they could really use some more seating out in the lower lobby with the food services. In three years, I don’t think I’ve ever sat at a table for lunch at this con.

Neither of us noticed any obvious costume theme. Two years ago the place was full of GI Joe costumes. Last year it was Watchmen. This year nothing really stood out. I don’t think I even saw as many steampunks as usual. Admittedly, I no longer really notice people in Stormtrooper, Mandalorian, or Jedi outfits, so they could have had the entire 501st Legion wandering around and I wouldn’t have noticed.

You can see all of my photos of the con on Flickr.

Panels

Since I’d missed the DC and Geoff Johns panels on Friday, I went to the DC Editorial panel (covered at Speed Force). Instead of being an actual presentation like last year, it was an hour and a half of question-and-answer. Unfortunately, the timing blocked several other things I’d considered attending, and I’m not sure it was worth it.

Never Give Up. Never Surrender

The best panel either of us caught was the mock Galaxy Quest “23rd Anniversary Celebration” that Katie attended. The panelists made a point that it was actually the 30th anniversary, as we were all there to celebrate our love for the original show and not “that movie,” and the original airdate was several years earlier than non-Questarians reckoned. And it went from there. The audience members who came up with the best answers to “trivia” questions about the original show were rewarded with t-shirts for the upcoming “Next Generation” show (it was apparently picked up for a full season!). There was a lot of speculation about how the new version might go too far in being Darker and Edgier, or that someone had heard there might be a movie with all younger-and-hotter actors and more lens flares than plot. Essentially, a free-for-all to both lament and celebrate the current state of SF media productions.

Missing In Action

Several panels were canceled when presenters couldn’t make it. The Comics Arts Conference session on “Urban and Political Mysteries” had to replace two of its three presenters. The reexamination of Batman: The Long Halloween went on as scheduled, looking at the evidence without taking the confessions at face value. Rounding out the timeslot were an examination of different narrative ways to make the shift from Silver Age to modern storytelling, and the comparison of Wonder Woman to Canadian heroine Nelvana of the Northern Lights.

Another casualty was the Real Archaeology of Indiana Jones, which I caught last year, but Katie missed because it was opposite a special-effects makeup demo. She was hoping to catch it this year, and I was kind of curious as to whether he’d be covering anything different this time.

Goals (or Lack Thereof)

I think part of the problem I had with the con this year was that I didn’t really have any goals in mind. I wasn’t looking for any books. I didn’t have a huge stack of items to get autographed (partly because I didn’t want to carry around Comic Book Tattoo, and partly because I didn’t get around to looking through the guest list or my recent acquisitions). My to-do list consisted of one panel and a couple of artists, and was basically done by 2:00. Usually I make at least one full pass through the main floor, but this time I just kind of wandered aimlessly.

Around 4:00, Katie called me to tell me that her costume shoes had practically killed her feet (she had a really nasty blister, too), and she was ready to go back to the hotel — but couldn’t imagine walking even the short distance. I picked up her sneakers, and then we both went back for takeout and Lord of the Rings. (Thank you, TBS, for your conveniently-timed marathon!)

Hotel: Staying at the Marriott

I think this is the first time I’ve stayed at an actual headquarters hotel for a convention. For the most part, we didn’t notice…except for the Power Girl/Terra photoshoot we saw in the atrium Sunday morning.

The Marriott Marquis is just a short block away from Moscone South, and across the street from the Mosser, where we stayed last year. The rooms are a more typical size, though, and of course the building is more modern. Oddly enough, the Mosser is a better choice for Internet access. The Marriott has free wifi in the lobby, but the rooms are wired only — and they want $13/night for it! (We mostly went without, and just ran down to the lobby for uploads and downloads.)

Restaurants: We were disappointed to find that Mission Steak is gone — or, rather, has been converted to “Mission Grille,” which had a decent enough brunch, but isn’t open for dinner anymore. Despite what the outdated ads in the elevators said. The concierge assured us that the other bar-restaurants in the hotel were open for dinner hours and would serve full meals, but neglected to mention that the 4th Street Bar and Deli had just been closed for renovations the day before. The menu at The View lounge didn’t seem much bigger than a typical bar menu either, the $19 Kobe cheeseburger notwithstanding. The view from our table was a wide city panorama, rain-soaked in typical San Francisco fashion, and we got to watch the fog slowly thicken until the Bay Bridge towers were just hints in the mist. (The picture window with its radial supports reminded me of the Gotham Clock Tower, but apparently it’s become known as the Death Star Bar.) We didn’t visit Bin 55, as neither of us is a wine drinker and their food menu is half the size of their wine list.

A woman in the middle of the bus remarked, “I feel like I’m in my own reality show.”

Another man responded, “Yeah, it’s called San Francisco.”

So, we didn’t make it to WonderCon today. We got out later than planned, and ended up hitting rush hour traffic in San Jose, which cleared up after a while, but dropped back to parking lot status as we approached Downtown San Francisco. By then it was raining pretty steadily as well.

Then I made the mistake of relying on Google Maps for directions to the hotel. One way streets, poorly labeled streets, streets where cars have to share with cable cars, trolleys and pedestrians… We missed our turn at one point & had to go around a few blocks to get back on track, then got stuck on Market Street where we could only move one carlength at a time.

Somewhere in all this, I drove over a bump. I didn’t think anything of it, since the car wasn’t moving fast enough to notice any change in how it handled. The low tire pressure light came on, but I see that in cold weather sometimes. It was only after we’d reached the hotel (on the left side of a one-way street) — and been handed a flyer with directions to the parking entrance — that someone in another car told us that the front right tire was flat.

Great. Flat tire, San Francisco, rush hour traffic, rain, and no parking. I decided it was better not to drive around 4 more blocks on the dead tire, and pulled over into a loading zone to change it. Still on the left side, of course.

I spent the next 20 minutes squatting or kneeling in a puddle, changing a tire in the rain while cars whizzed by two feet away. That was “fun.” Add in the fact that it was my first flat in this car, and it’s been long enough since I looked at everything when it was new that I had to look for everything, and the fact that the provided lugnut wrench doesn’t give me enough leverage…(Note to self: hang onto that ancient 4-pronged tire wrench. It works a lot better than the tool that comes with the car.)

The adrenalin rush was wearing off as we finally checked into the hotel, to the point that the clerk actually asked me if I was OK. Some boxed juice, a snack, and a hot shower later, I was ready to do things like discuss what we were going to do tonight and looking for a place to eat dinner.

As it turns out, I’m sitting in a hotel laundromat washing the street puddle out of my jeans, while Katie watches Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring. Not my first choice, but what can you do?

Next: finding a nearby place to get the tire fixed or replaced before get back on the road.

Note: If you want to skip straight to the photos, head over to my Wondercon 2009 Photo Set on Flickr.

Originally we’d planned to only go to the convention on Saturday, and pre-ordered one-day tickets. Then WonderCon published their schedule, and most of the stuff we wanted to see turned out to be on Friday. So we juggled our schedule around, and bought a second set of one-day tickets.

On the plus side, it ended up being slightly cheaper than getting three-day tickets and not using them all three days (which is what we did last year). On the minus side, it meant we had to pick up our badges twice. (I asked on Friday whether we could pick up both badges at once. We couldn’t.)

Day 5 (Feb 28): Saturday at WonderCon

The crowds outside were slightly bigger, but I don’t think we had much of a line, since we arrived about an hour after the floor opened. The first real hint of fandom was a group of people dressed as Jedi and a pair of life-sized R2D2 robots on the mezzanine. Then another group of people dressed based on what I assume was an anime or video game. Then we were down the escalator, across the hall, and walking to pick up our badges again.

Costumes

While we were still getting our badges ready, we spotted a trio of women in Battlestar Galactica costumes. Katie leaned over to me and said, “Isn’t that a Six?” and then one of us realized that the two with her were dressed as Starbuck and Boomer/Athena.

There were a lot more people in costumes on Saturday. If last year’s big theme was G.I. Joe, this year it was clearly Watchmen. I remember seeing the occasional Rorschach at cons a few years ago, but this year they seemed to be all over the place. I saw at least two Sally Jupiter/Silk Spectres as well (one with a somewhat more modest costume), at least one Comedian, a Laurie Silk Spectre and even a Doctor Manhattan (a brave soul who had painted himself blue and walked around in a bald cap and a speedo). The weird (or perhaps not so weird when you think about it) thing is: They were all based on the movie versions of the costumes.

I have a lot more cosplay photos up at my Wondercon 2009 Photo Set.

The Main Floor

Actually, there were a lot more people on Saturday, period. I ended up skipping the DC booth swag line, because it was at least four times as long and not noticeably moving when I walked by. It was made worse by running past the gaming area and, as near as I could tell, through an area where the 501st Legion (or perhaps another Star Wars fan group) seemed to be doing photo ops. Speaking of which, it’s weird: 10 years ago, someone with a Star Wars Stormtrooper costume was impressive. These days, they’re so common that I hardly even notice them.

The autograph area in particular was very crowded, partly because they had big names like Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher. I don’t think I ever had to resort to shuffling on Friday, but it happened a lot on Saturday.

In many ways, WonderCon resembles San Diego Comic-Con before it went insane. Actually, I’d recommend it for anyone who wants to attend a comic/pop culture convention in California, but has gotten sick of the crowds and the hotel rush and the lines and not being able to get into the events you want and everything that has made Comic-Con International so frustrating over the last few years.

What I did find frustrating about this year’s WonderCon, though, was that several people I would have liked to meet (or at least hear speak at a panel) ended up not coming because MegaCon was the same weekend. I’m not sure, but I suspect there was a regional divide, with most west-coast people going to San Francisco, and most east-coast people heading to Orlando, Florida instead. Ultimately I only added two signatures to Comic Book Tattoo, and no one involved with Flash: Rebirth was there at all.

Panels

The only panel I really wanted to make sure I attended was the DC Universe panel, though it was more a matter of obligation (Speed Force). It turned out to be mostly rehashing the previous day’s DC Nation panel. I will say one thing for Dan Didio: he certainly brings energy to the room for his panels. I expect I probably would have paid a lot more attention instead of using my phone to read about the scans_daily meltdown.

Katie caught a writing workshop run by David Gerrold, which she found quite helpful, and got into the giant room for Star Trek.

Now, the Esplanade Ballroom never managed to be as tough as the infamous Hall H in San Diego…but Star Trek was absolutely packed. Everyone’s seen the latest trailer by now, but it premiered at this panel, and Katie remarked afterward that it was the first trailer that made the movie actually look interesting, like it had an actual story and not just a bunch of ships blowing up. On the downside, no one asked Zoe Saldana any questions during the Q&A period — they were all directed to Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto.

The plan, originally, was for me to catch up with the panel for 9 in the same room. I made it about halfway through, because of the crowd issue. It wasn’t that there were no seats. It was that five million people (well, it seemed like it) left the room after Star Trek, and after crossing that torrent, I had to ind the line…and trace the line to the end. That turned out to be out the front door and down along the entire side of the convention center almost to the very back. It stayed still for a few minutes, then started moving more-or-less smoothly. As I made it up to the doors, a woman handling crowd control assured us, “There’s plenty of room, they all left after Star Trek because they’re crazy.” There was no hope of figuring out where Katie was sitting (quite near the front, as it turned out, since she got to move up when so many people left between panels), so I just grabbed an empty chair near the end of an aisle.

Anyway, Nine was just Elijah Wood and animation director Joe Ksander talking about making the film and occasionally showing clips. Someone asked Elijah Wood to compare his character to Frodo Baggins, and he remarked something along the lines of, “I’m going to be hearing this for the rest of my life, aren’t I?”

Wrapping Up

After 9, we met up again and did a final circuit of the floor, checking for anything either of us wanted to show the other, or anything one of us might want to pick up. We ended up at the SLG booth examining The Map of Humanity for something like 20 minutes, trying to spot all the real-life and fanciful place names and where they were located. (Hollywood showed up in about 5 places.) We bought a copy.

Then it was back to the hotel to drop off all our stuff and get ready to meet up with my brother and his fiancee for dinner. They took us to a fantastic Indian restaurant called Mehfil that was somewhat off the beaten path as far as the convention was concerned. Afterward we tried to go to a nearby pub, but it was really crowded (it was Saturday night, after all), so we started looking for another place to go. We ended up walking through the area where Wikimedia has its offices. Eventually we ended up back at a frozen yogurt place in Metreon, a shopping mall across the street from the Moscone convention center, and we hung out there until closing.

Coming up next: Sunday in San Francisco.

Note: If you want to skip straight to the photos, head over to my Wondercon 2009 Photo Set on Flickr.

We’d been to WonderCon once in 2008 and had a great time, and while we weren’t planning to make it an annual trip, the timing worked out such that we’d be in San Francisco the right weekend anyway.

Staying in San Francisco: The Mosser

Last year we stayed at the Mark Twain, which was okay, but this year on my brother’s recommendation we stayed at the Mosser Hotel. It was quite nice, although the rooms were still extremely small by modern standards — small enough that instead of an actual desk, there’s a fold-out desk on the armchair. There’s also a flatscreen TV with both pay-per-view and video game rentals, and an AT&T wireless hotspot accessible from the room. The staff was nice, and the location was perfect. We were in a decent area of town, near restaurants, 5 minutes from the Moscone Convention Center one way, 5 minutes from a BART, MUNI & cable car station the other way, and right across the street from the official convention hotel.

Day 4: Friday (Feb 27) at WonderCon

After Thursday’s long drive, we slept in Friday morning and made our way to the convention center around 11:00. The “line” to get to the registration area moved quickly enough that it might as well not have been a line, and there were only a few people in front of us at the badge pick-up windows, so we made it through the whole process in only a few minutes. Then we stood in line for 45 minutes waiting for the hall to open at noon. Oh, well!

We started by making a beeline to the BOOM! Studios booth to pick up several copies of the Farscape #1 WonderCon exclusive variant — one for us, and several more for people at the Terra Firma message board. Series writer Keith R.A. DeCandido was there signing them, and we chatted a bit with him and with another Farscape fan. After that I got in line for the DC booth, and Katie went off to explore. I picked up a bunch of random swag from DC, some of which I want to keep and some of which I’ll probably offer to people on Speed Force.

Next I headed over to Artist’s Alley to track down some of the artists connected with Comic Book Tattoo for signatures. I’d gotten a few of them (including Tori Amos herself!) at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con, but took the massively heavy lead weight book back to my hotel room at the first opportunity, not thinking that I could catch up with more of the creators. So now I’m trying to fix that.

I found David Mack first, and he had a whole spread of Kabuki material. As we talked, I admitted that I’d never read any of it, and he not only offered me a few issues of the latest series for free, he signed them!

I wandered the floor a lot, picked up some cheap trades, scarfed down a small pizza and eventually went up to a panel on “The Real Archeology Behind Indiana Jones.” It was run by an archeology professor from some college out near Lake Tahoe, and he had this talk about the major artifacts in the four films — what is known about the Ark of the Covenant, where people are looking for it, (or in some cases, claim they’ve found it but won’t let anyone see) — the actual stories behind the Sankara stones and the Thugee cult — legends around the history of the Holy Grail, and where people think it might be — the history and legends of the various crystal skulls, none of which can be verifiably traced to an actual excavation.

Then I hit DC Nation, Katie hit panels on 2D visual effects and the shift from a cowboy metaphor to a super-hero metaphor in US Politics (all those Obama-as-Superman images), we met up at the BOOM! panel, and finally went to the Wonder Woman screening.

Friday was, overall, really laid-back. The crowds were light, people in line were patient, and there weren’t even too many people in costumes. Even DC Nation was relaxed, though that’s probably in large part because Dan Didio was at Megacon and Ian Sattler was running the panel.

Wonder Woman

We had no trouble getting into the Wonder Woman screening, and managed to get seats maybe 10 rows back. I noticed a woman I recognized in a WW outfit (someone I’d seen as WW at other cons). Oddly, they kept calling it the movie’s premiere, even though it had premiered at New York Comic-Con a few weeks earlier, so at best this was the west coast premiere. Still, the movie was very good and amazingly epic for a 90-minute animated film. (Reviews are all over the place now that the DVD is out, so I’ll skip the details.)

After the screening there was a discussion panel with producer Bruce Timm, screenwriter Michael Jelenic, actress Virginia Madsen (Hippolyta), director Lauren Montgomery, and executive producer Gregory Noveck. They talked about making the film for quite a while, then took audience questions until their time was almost up.

Then they ran the trailer for the next DC animated project: Green Lantern: First Flight. I’m not a huge Green Lantern fan, but this looks suitably cosmic in scope and sci-fi in tone, and frankly, that’s the way I prefer the character, so it looks promising!

Evening

After the discussion, we cleared out. Neither of us wanted to watch a bunch of Star Wars fan films at this point (I would have 10 years ago, but these days? Not a priority.), and we were hungry. So we headed back to the hotel to change and went out to look for someplace to eat dinner. We ended up at a very good steak restaurant in the Marriott, then went back to the hotel where stayed up way too late uploading photos and dashed off a first impressions post of the con.

Update: On the way out, though, we stopped at the mezzanine walkway, which has a long glass-enclosed view into the main floor. It was eerie to see all the booths set up, fully lit, but with covers thrown over tables, and the aisles empty except for (as far as I could see) one person.

Continued in Saturday at WonderCon.

Friday morning, we checked out of the motel as quickly as we could, then met up with our friends before they left for work. After reminding ourselves of why we don’t usually eat at Denny’s, we drove up the east side of the San Francisco Bay toward Napa Valley.

I don’t really like wine much, and Katie can’t drink it, so we weren’t looking for tastings, but Katie had found a sake garden on one of the maps. The weather kept changing from partly cloudy to light rain and back again. The play of light and shadow on the hills made for beautiful scenery. It was somewhat similar to our drive along the 46, which seemed to be half ranches (the west half) and half wineries (the east half).

Unfortunately, the sake garden in question was gone. The building was deserted, and a chain stretched across the driveway. I stopped the car in front of it, and Katie dashed through the drizzle to look at the limp paper sign taped to the post in the middle of the driveway. It was a public notice for a liquor license, in a new name.

We tried to look for another place that did sake tastings, but had no success. We decided to drive into Napa for lunch. Downtown Napa is an odd mix of old and modern. One block looks like Old Town Orange, or Tustin, or Fullerton. Half a block away, there’s a shopping center that looks like it could be a section of the Irvine Spectrum. It was more or less dead, which I thought was strange even for early afternoon on a Friday, but we found a place called Christopher’s that made wraps and sandwiches, and sold interesting food.

After lunch we made our way west through Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley until we reached the 101. From there we went south (a drive which reminded me quite a bit of the I-5 between Oceanside and San Diego), crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, and checked into our hotel. It was approaching sunset.

Once we were settled, I called my brother for directions to his place. It turned out he was just getting off work, so we met up at the train station and took the MUNI out to his neighborhood. We met his fiancee, hung out at their apartment for a while, then went out for sushi.

Back at the hotel, Katie did some make-up tests for her Sylar victim costume (which she ended up not using), we got our backpacks in order for the convention, and went to bed.

Saturday is pretty much all covered by the WonderCon convention report.

Sunday morning we went down to the coffee shop next to the hotel, then checked out and started on the long drive home around 11:30. It ended up taking 12 hours for several reasons:

• We took the 101 instead of the 5, which follows the coast and is considerably longer. On the plus side, it twists and turns enough to prevent highway hypnosis at night.
• It was windy and raining. The storm we’d been expecting all weekend finally hit.
• We took a detour to Casa de Fruta, which probably added ~45 minutes of travel time.
• And of course stops for lunch, dinner, coffee, etc.

The worst of the rain hit in two places: First, on that detour to Casa de Fruta. I filled up the car there, and got thoroughly drenched even though the gas station was covered. We stopped for lunch, I dried out somewhat, and the rain moved on. The second was near San Luis Obispo, where it rained hard enough at I could barely see the taillights of the car in front. It didn’t help that it was approaching dusk.

We stopped for dinner in Santa Barbara, and finally made it home around 11:30.

The Prius handled its first real road trip admirably. We drove 1193 miles in total. The best mileage was on the last leg of the trip home, the final ~130 miles from Santa Barbara, where we averaged 48 MPG. The worst was from San Luis Obispo to Sunnyvale, with the side trip out to San Simeon—full of twisty mountain roads, steep grades, and, when it turned into a full-on freeway, I was pushing the speed to get us to San Jose in time for the last Winchester tour. The car handled everything thrown at it, except two things: a Target shopping cart in Paso Robles, which careened into it and scratched the paint, and a piece of gravel that dinged the windshield. I was seriously annoyed.

Update: Photos are up!

Getting There

The trip to San Francisco was spread over several days during which we stopped at various tourist traps and visited friends. We got into town late Friday afternoon and spent the evening visiting family.

Saturday morning, shortly before 11:00, we arrived at Moscone Center. We could tell we were at the right end of the convention center by the Stormtrooper waving people along. The pre-reg line ran to the end of the block, but at least it didn’t wrap us around the corner. And when it started drizzling, they opened up a ballroom as a holding area and moved everyone inside. Clearly, they decided to get people in as quickly as possible instead of worrying about ticket fraud (probably more of an issue with CCI anyway). Instead of scanning the tickets’ barcodes, printing labels, etc., they had two people standing at the front of the line: one with a cardboard box, the other with a bunch of blank badges. As we walked past, one collected printouts and tickets, checked whether it was a one-day or 3-day pass, and put it in the box. The other handed out blank badges of the appropriate type. We were in the convention proper within 15 minutes.

The Exhibit Hall

The main floor reminded me a lot more of SDCC than Wizard World Los Angeles, though everything was smaller. I wandered around for several hours over the course of the day, spotting people in costumes, looking unsuccessfully for back issues*, and looking more successfully for deals on books and other stuff. At one point I spent probably 45 minutes looking through the unsorted boxes of a booth selling trade paperbacks for 50% of cover, and ended up getting $80 worth for $27.

I didn’t spend as much time as I’d hoped to in Artists’ Alley, but I did stumble across the artist of Alcatraz High. Last year in San Diego, I’d looked through a preview at his table, and walked away with a signed copy of #1, not realizing that the preview wasn’t actually in the first issue. I completed the set with the next two issues, and the one I’d passed up last summer.

Lines were a lot shorter, even for well-known celebrities like Kurt Busiek or Terry Moore. I spotted Phil Foglio at the Studio Foglio booth, and Sergio Aragonés had his usual table. I snapped a shot of JMS on the escalator, and he gave a sort of embarrassed “Oh, crap, I’m getting attention” wave. It was a bad angle, though, so I deleted the photo from the camera.

Panels

We both caught panels on the making of last year’s Beowulf, specifically animating Grendel and the dragon, and on Tokyopop’s manga licenses with Jim Henson: Return to Labyrinth and Legend of the Dark Crystal. I hadn’t realized that the first volume of the latter was already out, but I’ll be picking it up as soon as I have a chance. Though I have to admit that I picked up the Labyrinth sequel last year, and haven’t read it yet. (Sadly, I skipped the JMS spotlight to go to this, which means I missed the bunch of announcements.)

Katie made it to a panel on the psychology of comics and comics fans, and to one on special effects make-up. I attended the premiere of Justice League: New Frontier, which I reviewed earlier. I was surprised that there was no problem getting in. I caught the last ~15 minutes of the big Lucasfilm Clone Wars presentation, got a seat only 1/3 of the way back on the right side of the hall, and had a decent view of the movie and the panel afterward. (Funny moment: the panel moderator explaining that it was coming out on both DVD and Blu-Ray, and that the serious collector should get both. And that the really serious collector should get the HD-DVD as well, since they weren’t going to make any more!)

I almost went to the “DC: Countdown to Crisis” panel just to ask why the heck they think killing the Flash is a Crisis tradition, but killing Supergirl isn’t…but decided against it.

Oddly, people at this con didn’t seem to be interested in seeing specific things. They’d drop in on a panel for 5-10 minutes, then leave and do something else. It was like they were trying to sample everything.

After New Frontier, we met up again and made our way back to our hotel through the cold rain and gusty wind. By then, it was the kind of rain that comes at you sideways, bypassing any attempt at shielding with an umbrella. Even though it was only a 10-15–minute walk, it was infinitely more miserable than the same walk had been that morning, when it was marginally warmer and—more importantly—dry.

The Verdict

I’d definitely go to WonderCon again, though I’m not sure I’d make it an annual visit. If we do go again, I’d definitely do a few things differently. For one thing, I’d make sure we had more time in San Francisco proper. It’s too far a trip not to spend time sightseeing. We basically saw the hotel, the con, and the area right around my brother’s apartment! Though we did manage to catch a few nice views from across the bay on Friday. I’d also try some more restaurants. As for lodging, the Hotel Mark Twain was okay, but there are plenty to choose from. It might be worth staying in the official con hotel. And finally, I’d want to do something about the trip home. 12 hours, even with breaks for food, is just too long to drive.

*Regarding the back-issue hunt, it’s the same problem as other conventions. There isn’t a lot of Golden-Age material out there, and stores only bring the high-grade books they expect to sell. If you’re looking for readers’ copies, like me, you’re better off looking online. More recent books are more likely to qualify for the quarter bins—or, these days, the one-dollar bins.

Best Western Cavalier Oceanfront Resort in San Simeon: Excellent. Calling it a resort is pushing it—it’s really just a motel—but we had absolutely no complaints. The service was friendly, the bed was comfortable, everything was clean and worked (including the free wifi). It’s right on the coast, with a wide lawn atop a bluff where you can sit and watch the waves come in. At night they light up firepits, and you can sit, keep warm, and listen to the ocean. Even the standard room had a well-stocked mini-bar. We’ve been talking about going back to Hearst Castle to catch the tours we missed, and we’ll probably stay here again.

Best Western Silicon Valley Inn in Sunnyvale: Lousy. I forget which one of us came up with the phrase, “The Worst Best Western in the West.” The sink leaked, the hotel was on default air conditioning (even though it was ~50°F and raining outside), the heater was a loud, grinding thing that sounded like a truck engine, the bedspread had cigarette burns in it, the towels felt like sandpaper, and the wifi wouldn’t accept the password the front desk gave us (which is probably just as well, since there were 4 access points broadcasting the same SSID, so for all I know one of them could’ve been a rogue). And the staff was taciturn at best. All this for the same price as the Cavalier.

Hotel Mark Twain in San Francisco: Good. It’s located in downtown San Francisco, just a few blocks from Moscone Center (about a 10–15 minute walk), and it’s a classic hotel. On my brother’s recommendation, we paid extra for the “deluxe” rooms. Everything was comfortable, if small, and again the staff was friendly. Never got a chance to try out the Internet access. The one thing I was really disappointed with was the room service. It’s hard to eat a mostly-done pork chop with a plastic knife and fork out of a 4-inch-high cardboard box. There was also a loud party in the room next to us Saturday night, but we were up late anyway. On the plus side, there’s a coffee shop two doors away that was always packed, though we never had to wait for a table. The rate of people arriving and finishing was perfectly balanced. One caveat: The hotel is located at the edge of the financial district, so you want to leave going uphill on Taylor or east on O’Farrell. If you go downhill on Taylor, you end up walking through the Tenderloin.