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NekoCon - Author's Notes - 2003 Notes finished under an upside-down Chevrolet Monte Carlo in North Carolina and a couple of miles above the Ohio River: The first big question about Nekocon in 2003 was whether the convention hotel was going to look like one of those 1940's animated cartoons, where so many people crowd into a building that the walls bulge and the roof pops off. Except for one year in a Chesapeake convention center, Nekocon has been held in the Holiday Inn Executive Center in Virginia Beach. While it's a comfortable facility, it's among the smallest in meeting space used by any North American anime convention. And with so little space, Nekocon announced a 1,600 weekend attendance limit just before the convention was held. That limit was reached by 1 p.m. on Friday, when the "sold out" signs went up. After that point, the only convention memberships issued were passes to get into the dealers' room. Nekocon was not crowded on Friday, but the concern was for Saturday. Thanks in part to the attendance limit, Saturday wasn't bad, although the line for the Saturday night costume contest extended out the front door and into the cold (but dry) night. Convention staff kept encouraging fans not to stand around in the way of foot traffic, which led to the odd Saturday night scene of a woman standing on a chair, trying to direct traffic while a crowd gathered around a group of Gundam costumers. The cold weather probably discouraged some of the more elaborate cosplay gatherings around the hotel's pool. No reprise of the famed 2002 Inu-Yasha fest was spotted by this author, but there were lots of Inu-Yasha costumes, which were the most popular at the costume contest. Nekocon fell victim to the convention organizers' quandary. Conventions are lots of fun and grow by word of mouth. They need to grow to stay viable. Some fans want them to stay small, but if they're too small, they don't last long - because they don't make enough money for the organizers, and because dealers don't want to be involved. In 2003, the two startup conventions with the smallest attendance had dealers pack up and leave in the middle of the event. Don't be surprised if Nekocon moves in 2004 to the convention center in Chesapeake, where it was held a few years ago. That facility would have more than enough room for a growing anime convention. This was mentioned in the opening ceremonies feature, but bears repeating: someone pulled a fire alarm at the convention hotel on the event's opening day, forcing everyone out into the cold. Fortunately for Nekocon, one of the security staff saw the guy who caused the trouble and caught him in the act, too late to prevent the evacuation but in plenty of time to make sure he was excused from the event. We heard chatter about the chances that some law enforcement types might be dealing with the guy for violating a false alarm ordinance. The cosplay book? Managed to sell three copies over the weekend, and that would have been far more if the author had used common sense and reserved an author's alley table. As usual, the author waited too late to make a reservation, so he spent the weekend roaming the halls, working on pictures first and book sales second. It was heartening that one fan actually chased down the author in the hotel lobby to buy a copy. Apologies to those who could not find the roaming author at Nekocon. He'll try again at Sugoi Con in a couple of weeks, where the tables are supposed to be first come, first serve. For those who wonder if the author of this site is terminally antisocial at conventions because he doesn't hold prolonged conversations, seems easily distracted and isn't seen often at parties: too much travel and too many self-imposed deadlines do that to you. The author's bad habit of looking at everything except the person with whom he's talking? That comes from spending too much time at race tracks where you need to keep your head on a swivel to keep from being mowed down. It comes in handy at conventions where there's a lot of broken-field running through the halls, and you have to keep an eye out for mecha, large plushie costumes and hotel workers pushing carts. The lack of late-night fun for the author comes because the author takes too many red-eye flights to get to conventions. Both the flights to and from Norfolk left at 6 a.m., which meant the author had to leave for the airports at 4 a.m., which meant the author had to be awake at 3 a.m. to make sure everything was packed and ready to go. Airline travel exists in a world where, if you're on time, you're late. The author tested those unwritten rules when he overslept on the convention's Friday morning and awoke one hour before the flight left. Usually that's too late, but the author barely managed to get to the airport in time to check in, only to find his flight had been canceled. Usually, those two problems mean a miserable weekend ahead, but they worked in the author's favor. U.S. Airways booked the author on another pair of flights, and the new intinerary actually got to Norfolk a half-hour before the original schedule. Go figure. Another "things that go right" story: the author called Beach Yellow Cab in Norfolk for a 4 a.m. Sunday ride to the airport, only to be warned by the dispatcher that they didn't guarantee the taxi would actually show up at that time. That answer got a big "Oh no" thought from the author. But when the author got out of his motel room on Sunday at ten before four, parked right outside the room was the taxi, with the driver asleep inside, waiting for the pickup. That was worth a healthy tip for the cab driver. The Nekocon real world distraction for 2003 could have been a big one. John Muhammad was on trial for one of the sniper shootings that, one year earlier, had laced much of Virginia with fear. But the trial was in a courthouse nine miles from the convention, and that event had no impact on Nekocon. Besides, the author prefers to look at courthouses from the outside (especially the one that has the tree growing through the roof). Roofs were something else to check, to find if they were all in place after Hurricane Isabel. Seven weeks before the convention, the big storm had roared through Hampton Roads, ripping power lines and pushing flood waters to places they had never been seen before. That wind and water had a power that shocked Virginians, and the author wanted to know what effect that force had on the Holiday Inn Executive Center and its glass walls. The convention hotel seemed to be in good shape and all the glass is intact. Only a few apartments near the Norfolk airport had tarps still covering holes in the roofs. The trip home provided some memorable moments. As the return flight taxied to the Norfolk airport runway, the author peered over the starboard engine into the early morning glow and thought how neat it would be to get a good look at the hills that surrounded the airport. Then the realization: this isn't San Jose or San Francisco, there are no hills in Norfolk. A closer look provided the answer: they weren't hills. It was a big fog bank looming over the Atlantic coast, seeming to cut off the world to the east. But as the plane banked southwest and headed toward Charlotte, the source of the glow that illuminated the fog before sunrise was revealed, a bright moon that was reflected in the coastal waters as the plane climbed to cruising altitude. The other highlight came at the Charlotte-Douglas airport. The author had an extra hour to kill between flights and wandered the B concourse, searching for a bite to eat. He found the perfect place in the Stock Car Cafe, a theme restaurant dedicated to the region's NASCAR fans. It's full of pictures, posters and car parts from NASCAR races. Ever wonder what happens to the bruised car parts cut off after wrecks? They end up on the walls of the Stock Car Cafe, especially the entire body from a Coors Light car once driven by Sterling Marlin, dents still intact. Many people are amazed that NASCAR racing, a product of the southern mountain culture, would appeal to millions of Americans. The National Review, a conservative political magazine which doesn't cover sports, looked at the phenomenon in a "NASCAR Nation" cover story that was on sale at the time of Nekocon. The rise of anime conventions is no less amazing a change in U.S. popular culture, and the meaning of that change was emphasized in another story that went to print on the convention weekend. The Virginian-Pilot newspaper ran a story on a memorial cruise of the USS Bataan, a Navy amphibious assault ship. The story, written by Dennis O'Brien, told how the boat is the second to bear that name, which came from the Bataan Death March of 1942, where thousands of Allied soldiers died in a forced march after the Japanese took them prisoner in their invasion of the Philippines. "Bataan" was as much a fighting word in World War II as "Pearl Harbor," and the Navy honored the 61st anniversary of the death march by taking its survivors on the ship named for their sacrifice. For a less resilient and forgiving culture, the horrors of that march and of the war in the Pacific would have turned generations of Americans away from Japan, but not this generation. Anime fans have honored the efforts of those who bought peace through blood by making sure that peace reigns between the two nations. NekoCon Main Page