The Last Five Days in Seattle

I’m thinking that I might just stop trying to announce (or predict) what’s coming up on the blog.  I mean, I said that I wasn’t going to participate in the LEGO SHIPtember build challenge, and then I went and built a SHIP during September anyway. 

Then I said that my post about Reddit was being postponed, but was on the schedule for October 5^th.  Now here it is, October 5^th, and that post is nowhere to be seen.  (Currently rescheduled for October 16^th, but who really knows?) 

But the biggest and most recent reversal of position was when I said that I wouldn’t be posting about BrickCon following BrickCon.  I had honestly been planning not to, but then… yeah.  Here I am, posting about BrickCon 2022, days after the end of BrickCon 2022.  It’s like I can’t make up my mind or something. 

Not a Review

First up, I need to point out that this is not going to be a convention review.  I’m not really going to be talking about what went on in the presentations and workshops.  Not going to be talking about the (excellent) keynote given by noted AFOL and Pixar animator, voice actor, and director Angus McClaine. 

I also won’t be talking about other people’s MOCs, or showing pictures of them.  (Still not used to having the photo-capable smart phone, and thus, didn’t think to take any.) 

And I certainly won’t be giving the convention a letter grade or number of stars or anything like that. 

I fear that if I tried to do something like that, I’d end up with the same problem I had when trying to write a con review for Bricks Cascade earlier this year.  And none of us want that. 

Resolving the Cliffhanger

When I posted about the MOCs I was taking up to the con with me last week, I included a cliffhanger.  I needed to get the post up on the blog before I had finished building.  And I didn’t know if I was going to finish building two of the three mechs in the Cool and the Gang MOC in time to leave for Seattle the next morning. 

So… did I manage to finish them?  Well, yes and no. 

I built Soft Serve’s mechsuit, and I was very happy with how it turned out.  The cockpit is my favorite feature of any mech I’ve built thus far.  I wanted it to look like an ice cream cone with a transparent scoop of ice cream up top, and that’s exactly what it looks like.  And having Soft Serve nestled snugly inside that cockpit, peeking out over the rim of the cockpit’s cone is just adorable. 

Yes, the mech is a little top-heavy & back-heavy, but I was still able to get it posed into a position where it could stand on its own before I attached it to the plate.  It could definitely use some additional tinkering time.  (And it will get that before its next convention appearance.) 

So, yes, I was able to finish building Soft Serve’s mech in time.  Jerry’s mech, however… that’s another story. 

It was very late, and I was very tired.  Plus I was unhappy with the meager assortment of bright green parts that I had.  I knew that whatever I ended up building would likely be somewhat redesigned when I was ready to build the mechs for Ben and Sprinkles for Bricks Cascade next year. 

So, instead of building Jerry’s mech, I built a mech and put Jerry in it.  I’m not thrilled with the cockpit, and I’m also unsure about it being a four-legged mech (which was done simply to avoid needing to fiddle around with it endlessly to get it to stand upright). 

It’s entirely possible that I’ll strip off all of the bright green elements and reuse the basic mech for somebody else at some point.  But definitely not for a member of Cool and the Gang. 

 

Wheelchair Performance

The new folding electric wheelchair was, as expected, an extremely beneficial component of my con-going experience. 

This was my first time really putting the chair through its paces.  Prior to this I’d been out in my apartment’s parking lot a couple of times, and had taken the thing to one medical appointment.  So I had used it, just not enough to really know what I was doing. 

On the first day of BrickCon, I discovered that when the wheelchair is set to its highest speed, it can slowly climb a steep incline.  (Then once you reach level ground at the top, it suddenly goes like a bat out of Hell and you have to quickly reduce your speed again.) 

And the power indicator light didn’t inform me that I was running on low power until I was on my way back to the hotel at the end of the evening.  About which I thought, “Great, that’s perfect! Get back to the hotel, plug it in to charge, and it’ll last me all day tomorrow!”

What I hadn’t taken into account was that we didn’t even get to the venue until about 1:30, and then spent most of the time until 3:00 focused on setting up MOCs and stuff before I really started using the chair.  The next day?  The next day would start at about 8:00 am.  So when I checked the power indicator about halfway through my day and saw I was running low on power it took me a minute to figure out why. 

For the rest of the convention, I was very careful about my wheelchair use.  No zipping around the hall just for zipping around’s sake.  Keeping the power turned off if I wasn’t actively travelling.  Things like that.  And then it was just fine.  (I’ll be looking into getting a battery with a larger capacity very soon.)

By time the con was over, I was far more confident in my ability to steer the thing.  And I only ran over one person!

The Loot

As with any LEGO convention, I returned home with more stuff than I had when I first arrived. 

Okay, starting with the swag bag… the bag itself is a drawstring backpack, sponsored by the fine people at the BrickNerd website.  Among the swag that was contained therein were a 16 oz metal cup with the BrickCon logo, a deck of similarly logoed playing cards, a BrickCon minifigure (that came with both normal legs and a skirt piece), and several bags of LEGO parts intended for trading with our fellow con-goers. 

I also scored some new badge bricks for my brick bandolier.  The traditional convention brick, it’s ‘Recognized AFOL Networking Event 2022’ companion, the two bricks that I got to choose the engraving on, and finally, a Classic Space brick that I got from the Brickrock Press table in the dealer’s area.  

 

A couple of the workshops that I went to had little kits for the attendees.  The ‘Stickers Aren’t Scary’ workshop came with a few miscellaneous LEGO parts, a couple of sticker sheets from LEGO sets, a Q-Tip, and a small spray bottle of Windex. 

The presentation on incorporating motion into your MOCs included a bag of (mostly Technic) parts so that you could build some of the basic motion machines being demonstrated.  

 

Friday night, I became one of the lucky few to win a doorprize, thanks to the generosity of BrickCon’s Prize Princess and whatever Random Number Generator their computer system uses. 

And just what was this prize, you ask?  The Art Project – Create Together ($119.99 MSRP) mosaic LEGO set.  Which looks just fantastic, and may end up introducing me to mosaic building.  (Who knows?) 

 

There was also an assortment of minifigs, special printed parts, and other LEGO elements that I purchased in the dealer’s area.  (Most of which is still scattered throughout my luggage, MOC containers, and the pockets of my vest.)  

The Anti-Loot

You might be asking yourself, “What the Hell is anti-loot?”  Well, unlike the stuff that I acquired at the con and then brought home with me, the anti-loot is the stuff that I saw at the con, neglected to buy, and then realized that I needed for a MOC after I got back home. 

Once BrickCon was over and I got back home, I started going over my To Build list for next year’s Bricks Cascade.  And as I started adding new MOC ideas to the list (and modifying ideas that were already there), I found myself disappointedly muttering things like, “Oh, man – I should have bought that assortment of minifig clown heads!” and “Damn it, why didn’t I get that minifig-scale bong and miscellaneous pothead accessories?” and “Crap, I should have gotten a brick engraved with this specific phrase!” and so on and so forth. 

Can I still get all those things?  Yes.  Will they not only cost more but also have shipping charges?  Sadly, also yes. 

Tokens of Appreciation

The day after I got home, my brother called.  Mainly to make sure that I’d made it back home all right.  But one of the first questions he asked was, “Did you win an award?” 

No, I hadn’t won an award. 

However, there’s been this trend among the convention attending AFOLs in recent years where people unaffiliated with the convention will leave small brick-built tokens on or next to the MOCs that they found worthy of their praise. 

(I didn’t have a name for these tiny pieces of brick art, and so I asked my good close personal friend the Internet if they knew.  They did not.  But, they did know a little bit about this history of the practice.) 

Apparently, there was one year at the Brickworld convention where a builder named Arthur Gugick would leave a LEGO black scorpion piece on MOCs that he really liked.  The following year, Simon Liu (SiMOCs) decided to go one better, and designed something called the FrogPod (a tiny little single passenger spacecraft with a LEGO frog pilot) to mass-produce and leave on the MOCs that he was especially fond of. 

From there, other people started picking up the practice of building simple little LEGO trinkets to ‘award’ to their favorite MOCs.  I got my first one at the Bricks Cascade “Bricknic” event in 2021 for my “World Cookie-Eating Championship” MOC.  And another at Bricks Cascade 2022 for the NSFW MOC I had brought not to display, but just to show certain people. 

 

But at this year’s BrickCon, I found no less than three of these personal awards on my MOCs.  The shuttlecraft looking one was awarded to the “World Cookie-Eating Championship” (in its final convention appearance). 

My Cool and the Gang mechs was awarded the little build that Kyle identified as a gnome.  (At first I couldn’t tell what it was, but once it was pointed out to me I simply can’t unsee it now.) 

The third token, which I’ve simply been referring to as ‘the Eyeball Thing’, was found at the Muppet Chungus. 

 

No official convention awards, but a veritable bounty of tokens of appreciation from my fellow AFOLs.  Not bad.  Not bad at all.  

The SigFig Debacle

As usual, I brought my SigFig with me to the convention. Unfortunately, I was unable to bring it back home. 

The night before we were to leave, as I was sitting there wide awake with the insomnia, I decided to get up and update my SigFig.  Oh, it still looked like I looked, but since I’d be using the wheelchair at the convention, I figured that the SigFig might as well be using one, too. 

The next morning when I got up to get ready, I slipped the SigFig, wheelchair and all, into one of the pockets of my brand new wheelchair vest.  (When you get a motorcycle, you buy yourself a motorcycle jacket. Well when you get a wheelchair, you buy a wheelchair vest.  Multipocketed, as you’ll have no access to your pants pockets when seated.) 

It wasn’t until Sunday just after closing ceremonies that I discovered a major design flaw in the vest.  Its pockets are such that the lowermost pocket on each side is accessible from the pocket top (with a flap that snaps shut).  And there’s also a side pocket where you can stick your hands.  That all seems normal.  Except…I discovered that those ‘two’ pockets are actually only one pocket, with two openings.  So I put my SigFig safely into what I thought was a reasonably secure pocket, and the SigFig eventually escaped out the side opening.  Maddening!

My SigFig Thursday morning vs. Sunday afternoon

Once I discovered the SigFig’s absence, I went to talk to the people who looked most likely to be in charge of Lost and Found, and reported my missing item.  One of the members of convention staff that was within earshot asked me to describe it, and when I did she informed me that she thought she had seen it in the Cornish Theater next door to the exhibition hall where all of the presentations and meetings had taken place. 

But when she went to check for me, she discovered that the theater doors had already been locked for the day.  (Once I got home I made an inquiry on the helpdesk section of the BrickCon discord, and was told to send an email, which I then did.  As I sit here writing this, I have not yet heard back from them.) 

One of the suggestions I heard from various interested parties was, “Just buy the parts off of Bricklink and build yourself a new one”, but that’s far easier said than done. 

The average Bricklink price for the head I used is $0.46.  Okay, that’s doable.  The hairpiece, on the other hand, has a current average of $11.08.  Which is way more than I want to pay for it.  The torso that I stole the arms from averages $3.33.  (It’s actually cheaper to buy the whole torso than just the arms, plus, there currently aren’t any sets of those arms for sale in the US.)  The legs run an average of $0.78. 

So far, the subtotal is $15.65.  Or an average of $3.91 per component.  But I haven’t yet included the torso in my calculations.  And the reason that I haven’t included the torso is because I don’t believe it’s available anymore. 

It’s a minifig version of the blue Bricks Cascade shirt made especially for that convention.  I don’t think they’re still available from the con’s merch table.  But a limited number of those (including the one that my SigFig used) had Theme Coordinator printed on the back, and those were given out to the con’s Theme Coordinators one year.  Which likely makes it irreplaceable. 

So right now I’m keeping all of my hopes pinned to the idea that it will be located by convention officials and returned safely to me. 

Five Days

I always think of BrickCon as being ‘Five Days in Seattle’.  That’s often how I describe it to people who don’t know I’m an AFOL (or probably even what an AFOL is) when I’m telling them why I won’t be available those days.  I’m spending Five Days in Seattle.  (Five Days in Seattle kind of sounds like a cheap novel or indie movie to me.)

After attending the four days of the convention (Thursday through Sunday), we stay the extra night and leave on Monday so that Kyle doesn’t have to drive from Seattle to Salem and then back to the Portland area while exhausted from the convention.  So: Five Days. 

Those Five Days cost quite a bit.  Seattle is expensive.  And the Queen Anne neighborhood where the con is located is expensive even for Seattle.  The (extremely limited number of) hotels are expensive.  Parking is expensive.  The local restaurants are expensive.  Even just standing on the sidewalk and breathing the air is expensive.  So attending BrickCon is a major financial undertaking. 

My other big complaint about the convention is the exhibition hall.  First of all, that place was not built with the handicapped in mind.  While there is a ramp outside that provides wheelchair access down from street level to the front doors of the hall, it’s a long winding ramp that takes awhile to navigate. 

Inside the hall are staircases that take you up for quick access to the courtyard between the exhibition hall and the next door Cornish Theater.  But no elevators.  So for anyone in a wheelchair, instead of the quick path up the stairs and over, you have to go back out the front doors, up that ridiculous ramp, then over a bridge and still a little bit further until you come out about where the staircase has led everyone else much earlier. 

And the restrooms inside the exhibition hall seem to have been designed to specifically deter wheelchair users from utilizing the facilities.  The restroom entrance is a zig-zag of multiple doorways that lead into a tight fit past a row of sinks into the area where the urinals and stalls are.  The handicapped stall is hard to get into (and out of), and then you have to reverse the difficult path you took to get there. 

Plus… the BrickCon exhibition hall has a similar quality to the TARDIS from Doctor Who.  It has a spatial anomaly.  Only instead of being bigger on the inside, it’s smaller.  Much smaller on the inside. 

34,000 square feet, but some of that space is occupied by the 27 large support columns and four giant staircases, rendering a not insignificant portion of that space unusable for display. 

But, fortunately for us, BrickCon has one other similar quality to the TARDIS.  And that quality is this:  It has the ability to travel.  In both time and space.  For instance, between now and next year’s convention, BrickCon is moving from the last weekend in September/first weekend in October to the weekend after Labor Day.  And it’s also moving from the Seattle Center in Seattle… to the Meydenbauer Center in far less expensive Bellevue. 

The Meydenbauer Center is surrounded by not just two or three, but many, many hotels.  Local food is cheaper, parking is far more plentiful, and as for the venue itself?  BrickCon’s new exhibition hall is 36,000 square feet.  Yes, that’s only an additional 2000 square feet on paper.  But when you factor in all of the space opened up by the lack of support columns and the ridiculous staircase set up, it’s suddenly a whole lot bigger than what those listed 2000 feet would indicate. 

Which means that this just completed BrickCon wasn’t just Five Days in Seattle, but the Last Five Days in Seattle.  And what’s coming up next year will be Five Days in Bellevue.  I can’t wait!

But First, Bricks Cascade 2023

It’s traditional for Bricks Cascade to announce its theme and open up registration at the BrickCon closing ceremonies.  Bricks Cascade is also moving through time next year, from it’s normal late February/early March date to Mother’s Day weekend in May.  Which is no doubt what inspired the theme of “They Came From… A Mother Dimension!”

Registration is now open, and currently at the early bird price of $65.00 until October 16^th, at which time the price slowly rises until it hits $130.00 at the door.  So if you’re interested in attending the annual Portland LEGO convention next year, go to brickscascade.com as soon as you can. 

Speaking of Bricks Cascade, I’d better get myself back into the LEGO room and start building for that event.  Until next time!