The last panel we'd get to was Theme Park Enthusiasts, despite Amusement Park Enthusiasts being the more correct name for it. This is one we get to every year, run by the same guys who share their ride videos of various, mostly Six Flags, parks. (One of the guys has sunglasses with a concealed camera and most ride operators are not being paid enough to make you take that off.) Not just, though. He had a video that he claimed was from the last day Top Thrill Dragster operated at Cedar Point, saying that he'd been on it two ride cycles before the accident that shut it down. It was unsettling to watch, just thinking that among the people incidentally caught in the background was someone who was about to have a piece of metal fly off the roller coaster and destroy their life. There was a lot talked about, much of it Disney-themed thanks to people who had worked at those parks sharing their experiences, but that weird capturing of the moments before tragedy lingered in me.
There was a spot of free time between the end of that panel and Closing Ceremonies and we used it revisiting the Dealer's Dean and discovering Hospitality had already closed. And going back to the room for a little rest and also taking care of small daily chores. 6:00 would be the start of Closing Ceremonies, in Main Events, and ... it was not. The charity auction was still going on. And continuing to go on; after a half-hour or so of waiting in what felt like an ever-hotter hallway ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger went upstairs to work on some of her classwork for the photo course she's taking. About twenty minutes after that the charity auction ended and the Closing Ceremonies could begin. I texted bunnyhugger with the news; she had, of course, only just got everything set up like she'd wanted to work.
My assertions at this moment will be unconvincing, but I had had the feeling there was going to be some big announcement at Closing Ceremonies and thought the likely ones would be that Ed Hyena was stepping down as con chair or that they were changing hotels. The first was the bit of news dropped at the ceremony, with the level of surprise and sadness you'd expect from that.
That they were (likely) moving hotels would come later, during the --- much-delayed --- Feedback Session. Morphicon/Anthrohio has always done an open-mic tell-us-what-you-thought after Closing Ceremonies and in an exception to the usual, bunnyhugger didn't attend. She had to finish her work for class and between Closing Ceremonies starting so late, and running longer than usual, she had to duck out to make the time for all that. I promised to bring our feedback to the session, though. Our platform: being really happy with the letterboxing; wishing Hospitality had literally any kind of vegetarian-friendly hot food; not being at all happy with the Cake-Decorating Contest mess; and approving of the paper con booklet that fit our pocket needs.
Fortunately other people noted the disappointment of the Cake-Decorating contest, so I didn't have to stand up for that. But it was --- after a slow start --- a long feedback session. Many people wanted to thank Ed Hyena for his work, yes. But between the late start of this --- owing to the late start of Closing Ceremonies --- and its great length it ate up the room space and time that would have gone to karaoke. I didn't get to learn if I had improved any at singing in twelve months of not trying in any way.
There were multiple comments about how crowded all the panel rooms were, and how little time there was between panels. The convention, I'm pretty sure I mentioned here, rose from 1200 to 1900 attending over the last year. Something has to give and that's where the board members let slip that they're talking with other hotels. bunnyhugger and I hope they're going to get a hotel on the north side of Columbus, but there's no guessing where we'll be next year. It also meant that the evening, and loading up the car Monday, would have a side trip of doing documentary photographs on the hotel, which isn't as beloved as the Holiday Inn Worthington but still deserves some notice.
And there were a lot of redundant complaints, which made me feel bad for the board members. Like, I understand wanting to talk about how hot the hallways got, and I certainly understand if you just got in not knowing it was already addressed. But when it's come up four times already and the answer just keeps coming back the same (this is what caused it, there's really no limiting it except getting more space or shrinking the attendance, this is why we're looking at new hotels) it's ... something that gets me nervous, anyway. At one point it got into, ``well, if you had the panel rooms cleared out between sessions you'd avoid people squatting in a room all afternoon and so avoid the shortage of space that makes people squat in panel rooms'' versus ``there are people with mobility issues that make leaving a panel room just to re-enter it a bunch of needless work'' and I felt bad for the board members who are going to have to debate that issue.
On a lighter note there was a groundswell of support for (NAME I CAN'T POSSIBLY REMEMBER) to take over next year the role of directing the music performances or something like that. Like, with three or four people in a row coming in to nominate (NAME), with the last pointing to a group of people in the back row of the room who, they explained, all felt the same way but didn't want to take up the board members' time with repeating the message. I don't know that there is a vacancy in the director of music performances or whatever it is. If there isn't, well, that's what got Commander Argyle dumped from the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, you know?
The feedback session ran so long that the Dead Dog Dance started up next door, demonstrating a complaint made by two or three dozen people about how when the dance is going in Main Events, you can't hear anything in Secondary Events. I stuck through the comments all the way to the end, partly to make sure at least someone else noted the problems with the Cake Decorating Contest. Partly to see just how lost in the weeds the feedback might get, with a detailed discussion about how a security incident last year was addressed, after the board members agreed with all the things the commenter said should have been done differently, taking the prize here.
The Dead Dog Dance was pretty near half done by the time the comments all finished, and I got up to the room to tell bunnyhugger how they'd turned out, and all that. bunnyhugger needed a bit of time to get into suit, putting on Velveteen, the more complicated outfit, for the end of the dance. I went in my Stitch's Girlfriend Angel kigurumi and we got a satisfying number of comments from people about how they liked both of our outfits. We got some dancing in, and we were even there for when they turned up the lights after the proper end and played a couple extra songs, meant to clear the room but not chasing us off that easily.
We did some walking around to the dissipating convention. And then went to White Castle for a late dinner or as we know it, 'dinner'. bunnyhugger went for her daily walk after dinner and found that the great number of attendees, and the Dead Dog Dance running until 10 pm, meant there were still clusters of people hanging around and talking and being seen. Big difference from the cozy days we think back fondly of of Morphicon, when the hotel was a ghost town by 8:30 on Sunday night.
And that brought the last day of the con to its end.
Continuing the walk around town, and stuff like the Hong Kong restaurant building that's been demolished since these pictures were taken.
Ghost of the Hong Kong restaurant sign. I don't know where the letters went; the relocated neighborhood-center restaurant uses a printed signboard that's less interesting. Maybe the last owners took them as souvenir.
But here's what makes the place a particular sad loss: it used to be an A&W drive-in! And for a brief while during the pandemic Hong Kong offered drive-in service, a thing that hardly seems possible, or at least wise, for Chinese food. I'm sorry to have missed it.
More of the back of the Hong Kong, and the start of the drive-in overhang on the right here.
Main parking and the covered space that made it very much more pleasant to get there to pick something up in winter as you didn't have to deal with snow or ice for at least the walk from your car.
And here's the terrible news on the door, including the shocking condemnation notice. This makes two Lansing Charter Township restaurants in walking distance that we know to have been condemned and torn down in the last ... seven years, which isn't a lot when you say it like that but still seems like more than we should be expecting.
Photographing the interior didn't work at all, but I like the way in which it didn't work, so you're going to have to see it.
Trivia: Agricultural economist Arthur Young's tours of eastern England in the 1760s concluded that the average harvest from an acre of wheat, barley, and oats was between 1300 and 1500 pounds of food. An acre of potatoes yielded over 25,000 pounds, over eighteen times as much. Source: 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, Charles C Mann. (The scale of nutritional difference is inflated by potatoes being much more water than grain is --- potatoes of the time were about 22 percent dry matter, wheat about 88 percent --- but still.)
Currently Reading: The Best Of The Spirit, Will Eisner.
