Actually, this page is my anti-flame and anti-troll statement. Over the last few years, I've seen the growing number of on-line users who delight only in causing trouble. It reminds me of the high school basketball game where I sat next to "fans" of a team, both adults and students, who were more interested in insulting the referees and the opposition than cheering their team.

Anyone can find a way to belittle another person or event without much effort. From AWA to NASCAR, there are elements of human behavior that can be seen as creative and daring, or foolish and risky. It's harder to create something than to tear it down, and I hope this puts me on the side of the creative people who made AWA work.

Ironically, both AWA and the Atlanta Motor Speedway have something in common; they've become so successful that they've outgrown their facilities. I can personally testify from hard experience that everything you've heard about a five-hour post-race trip from AMS to Atlanta is true. And, hours before the keynote AWA event, the Saturday night costume contest, the Marriott North Central's parking lot was overflowing. AWA set attendance records in its third year. From what I've seen, the organizers may have to consider moving the convention to yet a larger venue, even though they just moved from a smaller hotel in 1996 to the Marriott, a mid-size convention hotel, in 1997.

Both situations are tributes to the hard-core fans that make each event possible. At the NASCAR race, nearly every fan bore the colors of a favorite driver. At AWA, most people wore an anime character T-shirt - or they were dressed to look like an anime character.Yes, the costume play, "cos-play" as the Japanese call it. Nothing about AWA impressed this author more than the number of people - it seemed like more than one-hundred - who created costumes to appear like their favorite person or thing from a cel or an ink drawing. The sight of a hall full of Sailors Moon, Ranmas, Totoros, Final Fantasy characters, Ayanamis Rei, Skulds and Belldandies (I never saw an Urd, though) and a remarkably detailed Armitage (which I never photographed, to my regret) is a mind-boggling experience by itself. Then to consider the hours, weeks and months to create those costumes - that sort of work and dedication deserves a lot of credit.

One chance encounter showed the degree of emotion the costume players put into their work. I chanced across a young woman, dressed as Shampoo from the Ranma 1/2 series, who was unhappy because she had been briefly booed during her costume contest skit. From the back of the hall from which I saw the show, I couldn't detect any resentment from the crowd, but the woman was disconsolate.

(Charitably, I'll note that the costumes and the people who made them were far better than the contest skits.)

The final tribute to AWA is the life it pumped into the Marriott North Central. I stayed over one day just in case the Winston Cup race had been delayed by weather (which looked very likely until Sunday dawned without a cloud in the sky), and the contrast was striking. Where the convention days saw a hotel crawling with colorful people, Monday saw a few business travelers creeping through the hall. The only legacy of AWA was a group of "wet paint" signs where hotel maintenance had touched up the well-used elevator entrances.

If you were directed to this page and hoped to see more material - especially from AWA's concluding day - I apologize. When I decided to attend AWA and noted that it fell on the same weekend of the season's concluding Winston Cup race, I had to make plans to see both events. I have friends in racing and I was fortunate enough to spend time with them at AMS. By spending two days at AWA, I passed up a Saturday ARCA race that was better than Sunday's Winston Cup feature. By attending the NASCAR race, I forfeited AWA events such as the online fan panel, something I wanted to attend to learn how other anime fans were drawn to the hobby through venues such as the Genie Japan Roundtable, whose former residents led me to set up this dm.net site and attend AWA.

I think I got a good balance from two days at AWA and one day at AMS. I hope I was able to convey some of the enthusiasm from the convention and the intensity of the stock car race. And I thank you for visiting this page.
 

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