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SugoiCon - Author's Notes - 2006 Notes finished back home on the day after the convention: So we'd finished work at SugoiCon on Sunday, loaded up the lighting gear, stopped at the motel for to watch the end of the NASCAR race while we started to work on magazine pictures, then walked over to the O'Charley's a couple of doors away for a quick meal. We were peering around a potted plant to watch a TV set showing the end of the Colts-Broncos game when a woman, creeping along in a walker with the rest of her family, asked us if we were alone. Yes, we replied, and we were enjoying the meal while we watched football players try to put each other in the hospital. Northern Kentucky is like that, a place where no one's a stranger, and that attitude carried over to SugoiCon, a convention where everyone felt at home. No big entourages for the guests, whether American or Japanese, and plenty of good times for everyone. We got another lesson in the spread of the appeal of these events when we were taking pictures on Saturday. A woman who spoke to us said she was from Milan, Ind., one of the most unique small towns in the state. This Milan, not to be mistaken for the one in Italy, is the home of a 20th-century sports miracle that remains the town's claim to fame. In 1954, back when the Indiana high school basketball tournament was the largest event in the state, the Milan team won the state championship, beating all of the big-city teams (places like Indianapolis and South Bend are "big" by Indiana standards). A half-century later, the championship still is celebrated and the team's high school gym has been preserved. And there were fans from this outpost of Indiana at SugoiCon, and even fans from Columbus, Ind., one of the homes of Tony Stewart, who won the big NASCAR race on the convention's weekend. All of these Hoosiers, Buckeyes and Kentuckians rubbing shoulders with Hidenobu Kiuchi, Mai, the Funny Stones and a bunch of actors from Texas. That says a lot about the appeal of these conventions, especially one that has a reputation as a "small" event. After a couple of years at the convention center in Covington, Kentucky, SugoiCon moved back to its previous home at the Holiday Inn in Erlanger. The move cut the convention's expenses and meant less room for fans, but it didn't seem to make any difference as everything fit. We heard that attendance was a little higher in 2006 than in 2005. We also heard there's a chance the convention might move north to the Dayton, Ohio area in 2007. That would mean no Bengals coincidences; for the last two years, the Cincinnati Bengals have had home games on the SugoiCon weekends, and the Bengals have lost both games. That might explain the somber faces borne by the fans in Bengal jerseys we spotted at the restaurant on Sunday evening. When we first wandered through the Holiday Inn, a back meeting room was labeled with a sign saying a wedding was going to take place there. On the convention's busy Saturday afternoon, a photographer, carrying a Hasselblad medium format camera, briskly walked through the atrium with the wedding couple in tow. That photographer recruited some of the convention costumers to pose with the bride and groom; fortunately, it was just in range of our fixed strobes, so we were able to get the shot. After spending Friday with our usual single-point portable lighting gear, we decided to set up a fixed base in the hotel's lower atrium and go with three-point lighting, featuring two umbrellas and a rim light from the rear. That's the reason the Friday and Saturday pictures look different (although we had to go back to a single flash when we took the costume contest entrants' pictures). The last weekend of October was one of the busiest times of the year for anime conventions, with three of those events in the U.S. We chose the easy trip to the Cincinnati area, a two-hour drive from home, over a long flight to California for the Pacific Media Expo held the same weekend. On the first weekend of November, there will be five conventions from Vermont to Florida to Oklahoma. That's more events than time for us: we'll be limited to a Sunday-only Youmacon stop and have to miss NekoCon for the first time since the Virginia event began in 1998. Next year looks to be as busy on some weekends. We just got word that Animazement will return on the Memorial Day weekend, making at least three U.S. conventions and Anime North running at the same time. That once was unusual, but that conjunction of events is getting to be standard business as the number of events grows to match the number of fans. Two real-world examples of the unchecked power of this web site: On SugoiCon's Saturday night when the costume contest winners were announced, one winner wasn't at the ceremony. We left the spot for that award blank and included a "did not show" note to explain the blank spot. The winning costumer, who didn't expect to win anything, had left for his hotel room and just happened to check the page on this site where the winners were listed. He got curious about the winner who didn't show, checked around and found he was that winner. That guy was seen carrying his trophy for the rest of the night. The Funny Stones loved that costumer, insisting on getting a picture with him when he was wearing a spotted cow outfit. And another of the contest's winners, who also had checked this site from the hotel, came up to us and thanked us for the pictures of us that we already had posted online. Thanks for that is due to the Holiday Inn's installing a robust WiFi system in the years since SugoiCon had last been at the hotel. SugoiCon Main Page