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Nekocon Author's Notes 2005 On Friday morning, Nekocon looked a little empty, as if most of the people who went to the convention in 2004 stayed away in 2005. Another glance showed you that impression was wrong, because the convention had something in 2005 that it never had in its previous editions: space. After starting in the Holiday Inn in Virginia Beach and making a couple of trips to the small convention center in Chesapeake, the convention traveled to the north side of Chesapeake Bay and settled in the new Hampton Roads convention center. By the standards of U.S. convention centers, the new facility is mid-sized, but it was a huge space by Nekocon's standards. The convention clearly had outgrown the Holiday Inn and filled the Chesapeake center in 2004, but there was more than enough room in Hampton Roads. The main corridor is about 600 feet long and 20 feet wide, which offered space for artists' alley tables, lines for the dealers' room and main events, and groups of people who just chose to hang out. A long-time anime fan lamented the lack of intimacy, but that also meant a lack of crowding. This writer got two cases of deja vu during the weekend. The convention center's fabric canopy, styled to look like the sailing ships that once used the bay, looks just like the much larger canopy at the Denver International Airport. And the nearby Embassy Suites hotel looks like a smaller version of the Collins Plaza hotel that once held AnimeIowa - not a coincidence, because both hotels were developed by the same company, which also owns the hotel once used by Nan Desu Kan in Colorado. The new convention center is so big that Nekocon barely filled half of the facility's main floor. On the convention's Saturday night, the second-floor ballrooms were used for the area's Marine Corps ball and by a Catholic group. Among the Catholics were high-ranking members of the Knights of Columbus in feathered hats and red capes; some anime convention fans thought the outfits were cosplay costumes and took pictures of the wearers, men in their 60's and 70's who already were confounded by the groups of scampering youth in their rave gear. The city-owned convention center was treated by its operators like the driver of a new car dotes over his ride, trying make sure it's not dinged in a crowded parking lot. Nekocon's leaders said they were limited in the number of signs they could erect, and they had to cut back the large number of artists' alley tables they intended to place in all of the halls. The center's monopoly on catering kept dealers' room vendors from selling Pocky at their booths, something that's standard procedure at convention facilities. That center has one oddity: its drop-off drive at the front entrance is flush with the main floor, such a smooth, curbless transition that it doesn't look like an automobile driveway. So fans stood in the drive all weekend, and were often confronted by impatient drivers who insisted on barreling through the drive rather than taking a turn and avoiding pedestrians. Fortunately, no one was mowed down, especially when fans lined up for the 10 a.m. opening of the main entrance each day. We'll guess that Nekocon had more people on hand in 2004 than in 2005. The larger halls made year-to-year comparisons hard, but the new place felt busy from mid-day Friday through Saturday night. Sunday was quiet, and no one objected to the early 3 p.m. closing of the dealers' room. One of the Sunday highlights was when the Jpophouse people brought in a J-rock group that had been touring the area for autographs, one week after the same group had brought D'espairsRay to Sugoi Con in Kentucky. That happened around the same time that, across the hall, a room full of fans was scrounging through a pile of felt, looking for material to use in the plushie-making workshop. Small plushies weren't enough for some fans, who turned themselves into huge versions of the cat from Fruits Basket and Maromi from Paranoia Agents. And it was nice to see that a larger group of fans in outfits based on the Cats musical were on hand at the convention named after cats. Nekocon Main Page