4th Street 2013: Overall
Aug. 6th, 2013 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
abracanabraThis was the year that 4th Street Fantasy became the premier dark fantasy convention in the Midwest. ...That would be because all the lights went out, and power wasn't restored at the hotel for a couple (?) of days. The summer solstice storm of 2013 hit the Twin Cities area hard, leaving 500,000 households without power, uprooting trees, flooding streets, and creating sinkholes that looked like Godzilla had been stomping around Robbinsdale.
I was at dinner at Super Moon Buffet* with a group of friends from 4th Street when the heavens opened. Between the torrential downpour and the near-tornado-strength wind, it became a question of how to get to the car, and who was going to get in it, and if it was safe even to drive back. You see, half of our party had chosen to walk to the restaurant! I dashed out to the car with the driver and settled in. Driver went back. I was just wondering what the other people were delaying for (and deciding that I wasn't going anywhere unless the car started to float away) when the restaurant lost power. In the end, we were able to get everyone out safely in a couple of car trips. When we got back to the hotel, we learned that it, too, had lost power. They had some emergency lights, and that was it. I was happy that I'd just downloaded a flashlight app on my new cellphone, especially after the emergency lights in the bathroom ran out of power.
Eventually, I got home and discovered that we had also lost power--and many large tree branches, but nothing that caused significant damage. It was actually really nice. Phil and I had a relaxing evening chatting by candlelight while music played on the laptop that still had battery power.
The next morning, I got to see all the damage while I was riding back to the hotel. We got to play a game of bush-branch-tree, identifying what that ground-level foliage was by the side of the road. The answer was often tree. It took a couple of weeks after the storm before the giant tree that was blocking a road north of our house got moved. As of today, a month after the storm, there are still piles of fallen branches pushed to the curb and waiting for the city to collect them. They claim they'll get here eventually.
In many ways, the power outage was good for 4th Street Fantasy. It made the convention memorable, promoted camaraderie, and didn't (quite) persist for an intolerable length of time. People staying in the hotel who remember glacial showers and critical coffee shortages may disagree.
In addition to the lack of power, there were a couple of other differences this year.
The people welcoming new attendees did a *fantastic* job. Newbies were clearly labeled, got some extra orientation, and designated group meal guides shepherded unclaimed newbies--and anyone else who didn't have other plans but wanted to be social--off to communal meals. Everything I've heard says that this approach was highly successful and left new attendees planning to tell all their friends and come back next year. It was an interesting mix of new folks, too. Many of them were non-locals who heard about 4th Street Fantasy through their writing networks (Clarion classes, etc.).
The other major difference, of course, was moi. I was planning to talk on a couple of panels at CONvergence this summer (and they went well and yay free membership and yay short lines and more on that later), but that was all I was planning on until I was informed that I'd been put on a 4th Street panel about intertextuality and originality. Ulp. CONvergence panels and 4th Street panels are two wholly different kettles of fish, and one of those kettles of fish has a kraken in it.
Okay, maybe that only really made a difference to me...worth noting, though!
The panels were 4th Street panels. I took a lot of writing craft-related notes, had a couple of things go *click* in my brain, and got a handful of short story ideas out of it. In general, though, I think I had fewer (craft or story) ideas sparked this time around, but it's entirely possible that that was related to either pregnancy brain or my focusing on "Jill Underhill" when my brain wasn't being fully engaged by the discussion. I did get a fair amount of writing done on "Jill Underhill," my notebook story at the time (I wrapped "Jill Underhill" up during CONvergence).
Um, social things. There were some. Not so many for me since at, um, about five months pregnant with baby number two, I didn't have a whole lot of energy to spare and tended to go home to sleep right after things. One of the really nice things was going out to lunch on the last day with Pat at a strip mall Mexican place that was surprisingly tasty. It felt good to have a break from large groups, and we talked writing projects the whole time, with happy results.
There is a comprehensive list of all books referenced on 4th Street panels here: https://sites.google.com/site/4thstreet2013/home Treat it cautiously, since some of them were referenced as *bad* examples of a thing!
I definitely plan on going back to 4th Street again next year (with husband, toddler, and infant in tow). I am still definitely getting enough out of it to make it worth budgeting for. And speaking of budgeting--plans are afoot to move to a bigger hotel next year if funds were/can be successfully raised--something with a restaurant, bar, larger conference room, etc.
(A raffled-off auction item, also part of the theme of this year's convention.)
Actual panel notes to follow!
4th Street Fantasy 2013 Posts:
http://cloudscudding.livejournal.com/tag/4th%20street%20fantasy%202013
I was at dinner at Super Moon Buffet* with a group of friends from 4th Street when the heavens opened. Between the torrential downpour and the near-tornado-strength wind, it became a question of how to get to the car, and who was going to get in it, and if it was safe even to drive back. You see, half of our party had chosen to walk to the restaurant! I dashed out to the car with the driver and settled in. Driver went back. I was just wondering what the other people were delaying for (and deciding that I wasn't going anywhere unless the car started to float away) when the restaurant lost power. In the end, we were able to get everyone out safely in a couple of car trips. When we got back to the hotel, we learned that it, too, had lost power. They had some emergency lights, and that was it. I was happy that I'd just downloaded a flashlight app on my new cellphone, especially after the emergency lights in the bathroom ran out of power.
Eventually, I got home and discovered that we had also lost power--and many large tree branches, but nothing that caused significant damage. It was actually really nice. Phil and I had a relaxing evening chatting by candlelight while music played on the laptop that still had battery power.
The next morning, I got to see all the damage while I was riding back to the hotel. We got to play a game of bush-branch-tree, identifying what that ground-level foliage was by the side of the road. The answer was often tree. It took a couple of weeks after the storm before the giant tree that was blocking a road north of our house got moved. As of today, a month after the storm, there are still piles of fallen branches pushed to the curb and waiting for the city to collect them. They claim they'll get here eventually.
In many ways, the power outage was good for 4th Street Fantasy. It made the convention memorable, promoted camaraderie, and didn't (quite) persist for an intolerable length of time. People staying in the hotel who remember glacial showers and critical coffee shortages may disagree.
In addition to the lack of power, there were a couple of other differences this year.
The people welcoming new attendees did a *fantastic* job. Newbies were clearly labeled, got some extra orientation, and designated group meal guides shepherded unclaimed newbies--and anyone else who didn't have other plans but wanted to be social--off to communal meals. Everything I've heard says that this approach was highly successful and left new attendees planning to tell all their friends and come back next year. It was an interesting mix of new folks, too. Many of them were non-locals who heard about 4th Street Fantasy through their writing networks (Clarion classes, etc.).
The other major difference, of course, was moi. I was planning to talk on a couple of panels at CONvergence this summer (and they went well and yay free membership and yay short lines and more on that later), but that was all I was planning on until I was informed that I'd been put on a 4th Street panel about intertextuality and originality. Ulp. CONvergence panels and 4th Street panels are two wholly different kettles of fish, and one of those kettles of fish has a kraken in it.
Okay, maybe that only really made a difference to me...worth noting, though!
The panels were 4th Street panels. I took a lot of writing craft-related notes, had a couple of things go *click* in my brain, and got a handful of short story ideas out of it. In general, though, I think I had fewer (craft or story) ideas sparked this time around, but it's entirely possible that that was related to either pregnancy brain or my focusing on "Jill Underhill" when my brain wasn't being fully engaged by the discussion. I did get a fair amount of writing done on "Jill Underhill," my notebook story at the time (I wrapped "Jill Underhill" up during CONvergence).
Um, social things. There were some. Not so many for me since at, um, about five months pregnant with baby number two, I didn't have a whole lot of energy to spare and tended to go home to sleep right after things. One of the really nice things was going out to lunch on the last day with Pat at a strip mall Mexican place that was surprisingly tasty. It felt good to have a break from large groups, and we talked writing projects the whole time, with happy results.
There is a comprehensive list of all books referenced on 4th Street panels here: https://sites.google.com/site/4thstreet2013/home Treat it cautiously, since some of them were referenced as *bad* examples of a thing!
I definitely plan on going back to 4th Street again next year (with husband, toddler, and infant in tow). I am still definitely getting enough out of it to make it worth budgeting for. And speaking of budgeting--plans are afoot to move to a bigger hotel next year if funds were/can be successfully raised--something with a restaurant, bar, larger conference room, etc.
(A raffled-off auction item, also part of the theme of this year's convention.)
Actual panel notes to follow!
4th Street Fantasy 2013 Posts:
http://cloudscudding.livejournal.com/tag/4th%20street%20fantasy%202013