DAY ZERO - PAGE 2
We had some time to kill before the exhibit hall opened for Preview Night, so we checked into the Hampton Inn first. This Hampton Inn was pretty nice, like most of the Hampton Inns we've stayed at, and I'm not just saying that because the Hampton Inn pays me every time I mention the Hampton Inn by name. Hampton Inn.
After learning that we were here for the Con, the desk clerk remarked that we must have booked awfully early to get the rate we were paying. I told her that advance arrangements were easy when you drive to Comic-Con in a 1.21 jiggowatt DeLorean. She reminded me that I wasn't at the Con yet, so I should save my best material.
Our room was on the 5th floor. We didn't have much luggage to haul, but I had brought along a big box containing all the comic book collections that were in my "to-read" pile, and it weighed about as much as Sam, so I asked him to carry it up. Fortunately, we found one of those brass luggage carts on the ground floor near the elevator, so we loaded all of our stuff, and Sam, onto that and got settled into the room.
We still had some time to kill, so we decided to procure Ben's pallet and locate a local supermarket to get in-room snacks and drinks.
There was a Big 5 Sporting Goods nearby, so we browsed their bedding section. It's bigger than you'd think. There are sleeping bags and cots and air mattresses and ground pads and something ingeniously labeled a "self-inflating mattress" that's really just a big sponge that you squeeze the air out of when you stash it. Amazingly enough, the cheapest thing there was an air mattress equipped with a battery-operated pump, so it was an easy decision to make, and we were out of there before we had the chance to feel uncomfortable around all the athletic equipment.
We continued down the main drag, figuring we'd run into a supermarket soon, but by the time we reached Tijuana we realized that, similar to our experience in Fullerton, we'd apparently picked the only street in San Diego singled out under a "no groceries" statute. Finally resorting to the GPS, we found a Vons and loaded up on Diet Dr. Pepper, cookies, and chips. Sam decided to experiment with Doritos' "Tacos At Midnight", part of their line of "Late Night" tortilla chips. We spent a good deal of time in the chip aisle discussing what these chips were all about--- do tacos taste different at midnight? What qualifies a chip as "late night"? Are they less crunchy to avoid waking up roommates?--- until we noticed it was time to make our way to the Convention Center.
As I mentioned, I had pre-booked parking for preview night at the subterranean lot right under the Convention Center, and our pass worked like a charm. There's an elevator that opens up onto the sidewalk right in front of the building, but we decided to take the stairs. It was there we encountered an example of the kind of people that make CCI (or any densely-packed event) so interesting.
We were ascending the right-hand side of the stairwell; Sam was a few steps ahead of me. Coming down the stairwell were two gentlemen that were obviously exhibitors (because their arms were full of uniform merchandise boxes) and obviously together (they were both wearing the same kind of shirts and carrying the same kind of boxes). One of these gentlemen was a few steps ahead of the other and descending the same side of the stairwell that we were ascending (our right, his left). The other, trailing, gentleman was on the other side of the stairwell. Sam, exhibiting courtesy he undoubtedly learned from his mother, sidestepped to the left to allow the first guy to continue straight down the stairs. About a half second after Sam made this lateral move, the second guy exclaimed in an exasperated tone, "Keep to the right on the stairs, please!" Sam graciously said, "Oh, sorry," and moved back to the right. I managed to avoid any altercation because the first guy had moved over to the same side of the stairwell as his buddy after noticing that Sam had shifted for him.
I didn't think much about this incident, but I'm a middle-aged guy who's had years of experience with people telling me I'm where I don't belong and I don't know what I'm doing. But I sensed that it bothered Sam a little bit, especially when we reached the top of the stairs and he asked me, "What is it about the Con that makes some people such jerks?" I was about to ask him who had been masquerading as my son at previous conventions where we had encountered similar behavior, but it dawned on me that, although he may have witnessed this kind of thing before, I was always the one at whom it was directed (I seem to be a magnet for this sort of thing). It was probably hard for Sam to believe that I hadn't cornered the market on cluelessly irritating folks. So I told him to shake it off and remember that, if he was going to hang around with me for the next four days, he better get used to it.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton