Arisia Saturday: Dinner in Chinatown

I didn't get to Arisia until late afternoon Saturday.  There was enough to do in the shop that instead of taking the 11:59 train like I'd originally planned I ended up taking the 3:22.  I was juggling three items along the way: my laptop bag, my overnight bag, and a painting for koshmom .

Got to the con, got registered, then decided to start shedding load.  Up to Dealer's Row to find Pandemonium and deliver the painting.  Nice chat with koshmom .  Quick check of the con suite, then down to the coat check.  Turns out that coat check is NOT checking bags this year... damn.  The NEXT thing I'd wanted to do was to head to the art show and make some notes for the next day's picture framer's tour.  Get back up there, turns out that Art Show *is* checking bags, so I check the one bag and decide to let them inspect the other on the way out.

I make a pass of the art show... not as exciting in the framing department as I'd hoped.  I actually got my idea at last year's Boskone art show, where I saw some things that really excited me.  Not so much this time around.  I'd say well over 75% of the art was hung with no frame at all.  Some of it was nicely matted and bagged in acetate, some of it was just tacked to a mat and hung with clips.  Still, I managed to find at least one example of most of the things that I wanted to point out, so I figured I could run a decent tour.

Finally caught up with Tam.  She had a table display for her little sculptures, so we retrieved my overnight bag and tucked it under her table -- bag check problem solved.  She was going to work bag check until 7, at which point we could think about dinner options.  I went for another circuit of the art show, making notes of the things I'd noticed.

Ran into bikergeek  as we were figuring out dinner plans.  Hotel options limited and overpriced, nothing much else in the area, so we decide to take the Silver Line to South Station and walk to Chinatown.  We decide to dine at China Pearl, having had a very nice Christmas dim sum there.

Big mistake.

As we're waiting for our soups and dumplings, we notice platters and platters coming out of the kitchen for a large party in the back.  In retrospect, my guess is that it was a wedding party or somesuch.  We're talking a dozen HUGE platters each of some really choice stuff... shrimp and veggies, tureens of soup, whole duck, lobsters, sea bass... meanwhile our own food is taking a while to arrive and they keep forgetting stuff.  bikergeek  and I get our hot-and-sour soups, but Tam's egg drop is nowhere to be seen.  Then they deliver his moo shi.  We have to remind the waitstaff that we have dumplings and an egg-drop soup coming.  Finally everything else arrives... and Tam's squid is just a little bit chewy, like the cook was distracted.  Gee, I wonder why?  On top of all this, they seem short-staffed.  At this point I have to wonder why if they had such a kitchen-busting private party AND short staff, why they bothered to seat any regular patrons?  It wasn't a BAD meal, but I would have liked better.

Got back way too late to see the masquerade, so we chilled in the con suite for a while.  At one point the famous crock pot of meatballs was put out, at which point I got to tell the tale of Meatball Man from a few years back... as we were discussing varying levels of cluelessness and asshole behavior, I coined the term "asshole event horizon".  That's when the degree of assholishness reaches such intensity that normal socialized behavior can no longer escape... meanwhile any attemps to impart Clue are sucked in, never to be seen again.

We had made plans to crash at sarahwriter 's place.  She had an 11PM panel.  We weren't particularly interested in that, but we went to the "Igor, Throw The SWITCH!" panel which was fun.  Caught up with her afterwards, drove to her place and crashed.

Arisia, Sunday: fumble and recovery

Sunday we awoke and had a leisurely breakfast, then got to the con a bit before 11AM.  Tam and I wanted to see the "Jews In SF" panel, but first I made a detour to Program Nexus to pick up my ribbon.  There I was told that there was a complaint about my "Picture Framer's Tour of the Art Show".  ?Wha?!  The complaint wasn't about the tour itself, but rather because it was scheduled opposite a "Business of Art" panel... and there's considerable overlap of interest there.  Oops.

Much fun was had at "Jews in SF"... talking about various flavors of Golem stories, Ivanova and her Rabbi on Bab5.  Most people were surprised to learn that Neil Gaiman is Jewish.

Afterwards, I made a tour of the dealers area to see what was there... lots of shiny but nothing that screamed "BUY ME!".  I'm in a decrufting phase of my life now... if I acquire something it has to serve me somehow.  Nothing to see here, move along.

Time for my tour.  Hmm, where is everybody?  In the end, even though several people expressed interest, only one person showed up.  I ended up conducting the tour anyway, and we had a nice discussion.  Since the tour didn't take the full hour I went and sat in on the "Business of Art" panel.  At the end, I got up and announced that I'd heard of the schedule conflict, so if anyone wanted I'd be happy to give a repeat performance of the tour.  About half a dozen people took me up on it and we had a nice tour and discussion.  As we went by one artist's panel the artist himself showed up and we had a nice discussion about his framing (and lack-of-framing) choices for various pieces.

I think the reason nobody showed up (aside from the conflict) is that this was a last-minute addition to the program.  It made it into the pocket program, but not into the schedule grid.  My sole person on the first tour suggested that some signage would have been useful.  There were several tours of the art show this year; perhaps next time a prominent sign listing all the tours would be useful.  I may even volunteer to do that next year...

The basic idea of the tour was to open people's eyes as to the choices that are available when presenting one's artwork, and certain things to be aware of (e.g. if you want to cram a non-standard-sized piece into an inexpensive standard frame, then cut a mat to make up the difference, don't just leave blank space showing on the sides).

I enjoyed it, and I'd like to see if I can slip it in to Boskone this year...