Yesterday I hopped on a plane and flew from Los Angeles to Virginia, then from Virginia to Connecticut, rented a car and drove from there to Massachusetts, all to get to the New England Webcomics Weekend. Even after one night, I could tell the trip was totally worth it.
After I arrived and checked into my hotel room around 6:30pm, I drove into the town of Northampton to see if any attendees were in the area checking off the first item on the event list: the pub crawl. I looked online and saw people were hitting “The Dirty Truth” first, so made my way over there and found a huge swarm of webcomics people outside the bar, talking about how they were going to hit a different place on the map since the current establishment didn’t allow Canadians in without a passport. Or something. Anyway, we walked a few blocks to a couple other bars and for one reason or another, were turned away. It was at this point that Bobby and David, a couple of cool webcomics creators, and I decided to split from the group and find a bar on our own. We ended up at the Toasted Owl, a great bar with a cool atmosphere that actually, finally, served us alcohol. Luckily, there were a bunch of other webcomics people there (identified by a Webcomics Weekend sticker being handed out (pictured), although you could pretty much tell us apart from the “normal” folk without it) and I could finally relax and get into the groove of things (i.e. drink). After some time spent there, we walked back over to The Dirty Truth where they let us in (since our American papers were in order) and hung out for awhile before deciding to hit another bar, The Elevens. Once we made it over there and found out there was a cover though, Bobby and David decided to head back to their hotel and I decided to get a piece of pizza from across the street at Mimmo’s. Well, if you were following me on Twitter that night, you’ll know they gave me the biggest slice I’ve ever had (here’s the twitpic). It was so big, I could only eat about a third the thing before giving up on it.
After leaving Mimmo’s, I had a second wind and decided to see what was going on at The Elevens, cover be damned. I was glad I did since I finally got a chance to meet Meredith Gran in person and thank her for putting the Webcomics Weekend together and getting me off the waiting list and into the convention. I also met a few people, Leland, Steve and Lindsay, who I ended up hanging out with the rest of the night. The three of us decided to ditch The Elevens and head to Hugo’s where, although we didn’t find any other webcomic people, we found a couple pool tables and played a little two-on-two (the team I was on with Steve won – woohoo!). It was about five minutes ’til 1am at this point, and the bars around town started closing, so we ran back to Toasted Owl for one last drink. I think by then we were all pretty depleted, and the bars stopped serving alcohol, so we parted ways and I went back to my hotel, and fell asleep in my clothes.
Yep, totally worth it.
OOo! It’s so green and sparkly! Sounds like you had a great time even before the actual gathering, and glad to see you’re back home safe!
It was great to meet you this weekend! I’ll be following the adventures of Jeffbot!
I’m so jealous! I wanted to go so bad but couldn’t work it out. Hopefully there will be another one and I’ll get to be there with all the cool kids.