[NY Day 9ish] World Fantasy Convention part final

This is brought to you by a grant from the Western Australian Government Department of Culture and the Arts.

This isn’t quite a convention wrap-up, but I am writing this as the train speeds south to New York City along the Hudson River, with Saratoga Springs behind me. But I’ll do a proper wrap up later.

I’ll start by saying how chuffed I am that pal and Aussie Angela Slatter won a World Fantasy Award for her collection Bitterwood Bible. It was a strong field of 5 fabulous works this year, and it’s great that she came away with a trophy.

I’d say that the dealer room is the elephant in the room, but quite frankly if an elephant was in the room the place would have been a whole lot busier. I’ve heard from others that my original guess of 1000 attendees was probably an exaggeration by a third: 650 seems closer to the actual. It’s obvious to see that the convention had problems: how an event that had a waiting list of people wanting to come could then not make quota is a little hard to fathom.

Aside from attendance issues, the consensus around the dealer room was that it was totally too quiet, and lacked even an average amount of foot traffic. I couldn’t say if any of the dealers broke even on the event, but certainly no dealers seemed to be openly admitting they made much over the weekend. I think that overall our little table did quite well, though didn’t turn over enough to cover printing the stock. All told we did better than some.

Why was the room so quiet? I don’t know, because I was in the room almost all of the time. I didn’t see how full other program items got, or how empty; I didn’t ever get an idea of where all the program rooms were or how attendees were getting between them. It certainly seemed that the dealer room was away from everything else, which could go a way in explaining this. I also feel that the map on the back of the program didn’t work in any meaningful or helpful way.

Comunication also seemed to be lacking — as a dealer I expect to be told a bunch of things by the convention, like shipping and loading, other facilities, I’ve even dealt at cons where the volunteers would do lunch and coffee runs for dealers, there was none of that. There was a convention hospitality suite, but I only found out where this was on the Saturday and never got there (I know other dealers did, and it probably went a way in helping them cut their lossesin not having to buy lunch).

Being kind, I’d say that any time a group of attendees such as at this one can be assembled, there will be much to be amazed and enthralled by. And those are the memories I’m taking away: having a quick chat with Esther Friesner at breakfast about Footrot Flats; having dinner with Pamela Sargent and Janeen Webb; having whisky with Guy Gavriel Kay (and others); chats with so many wonderful folk about all sorts of things. Getting all of these people together cannot go wrong, so the convention itself seemed to be good in spite of the (lack of) organisation.

—

Convention aside, there was much food. Had some great dinners, including a massive steak at a place called Lillian’s. They have a Saturday night menu, and it highlighted what I read as “slow cooked boneless ribs”. This gave me visions of small pieces of lovely falling apart meat on a plate. What arrived was a piece of rib eye steak the size of a plate. And it was good too, but in hindsight I didn’t need the scallop appetiser (also generously sized, but slightly overcooked in with a sweet sauce, and due to timing issues arrived half way through the main). And I still had the dessert — a Toll House pie as I’d never been closer to a Toll House cookie than an episode of Friends. So it’s probably no surprise I alost exploded.

Sunday night I discovered Lychee flavoured sake, and it’s awesome. Chilled sweet, fruity, slightly dry and crisp, light, it’s gorgeous and I can’t find anywhere in Australia that stocks it. Goes well with asian food like General Tso’s chicken, which I had last night for the first time. As I understand it, General T’s chook is a migrant dish, created by migrant Chinese in the US sometime in the 20th Century. It’s chunks of chicken, battered and fried, with a spicy, slightly sweet sauce. It’s okay, I think most people could order this without fear other than coeliacs because of the breading/battering.

—

Not that I’m saying that I got ripped off by a taxi driver on this trip (only because it was a shared cab and I didn’t pay, reminds me I owe someone a drink) but it was $20 plus tip from the station to the hotel, and $8 including tip going the other way (and I could have got away with a lesser tip). Ah taxi drivers, never failing to disappoint.

New York countryside is quite beautiful. As we toodle south along the Hudson I can see lots of brightly coloured leaves on trees, and stark hills rising out of the river, and lots of old buildings (just as I type this we roll past West Point on the other side of the river, a stark yet olde charming view). I could certainly sit on this train all day looking out of the window.

Next post will be back in NYC, some more food and places.