The annual tour of northeastern anime conventions kicked off as usual with AnimeBoston. Thursday we packed up and met up w/Inyx and drove in with her truck packed with the new layout which is ten times easier to pack, set up, take down and looks a lot better too. We drove in to Government Center and parked at her work for free and took the train from there to Hynes to check in. Then Inyx went back to get the truck so we could set up. Everything went off without at hitch and we were lucky enough to be located right next to a back door in the ballroom the Artist's Alley was located in that led directly to the loading dock elevators. Ran into Sketch as usual then didn't see him at all for the rest of the con. When you're the northeast's most famous cosplayer/artist and you just finished a life-size replica of a Tardis from Dr Who (I think it's from Dr Who, I'm the only geek in the world who hasn't ever seen Dr Who) you're in high demand and you're gonna be everywhere.
The new display setup
Everyone crashed at Inyx's in Revere instead of getting a hotel room because it was mad cheap. So it was me, Wig, Sin and Sin's minions Ed, Travis and Jacob (who are brothers whose last name is Snape - no joke!) plus Inyx and her new roomie Jaila were all crammed in this tiny house. Sin and her posse were in the living room on air mattresses and Inyx let Wig and I use her room in the loft while she bunked with Jaila in the downstairs bedroom. Some people showered at night so there was no fighting over the bathroom for once.
Everyone crashed at Inyx's in Revere instead of getting a hotel room because it was mad cheap. So it was me, Wig, Sin and Sin's minions Ed, Travis and Jacob (who are brothers whose last name is Snape - no joke!) plus Inyx and her new roomie Jaila were all crammed in this tiny house. Sin and her posse were in the living room on air mattresses and Inyx let Wig and I use her room in the loft while she bunked with Jaila in the downstairs bedroom. Some people showered at night so there was no fighting over the bathroom for once.
I ended up running into a lot of people I knew at this con, which isn't too surprising since it's in Boston. But still the list includes: Nick from work and two former coworkers, Joey Andelman, Manny who used to work with Gahmstead, Phil who I used to work with at TRU, Tonisha an old friend from middle school, Chris, and Fred who was actually on the staff (which basically consisted of standing around making sure people had badges, were in the correct line for registration, not loitering, didn't have dangerous props, or just standing around for no reason). I ended up going to Fire + Ice with Nick and one of his friends on Friday night, which was pretty neat. Kind of a waste because it's all you can eat but we could only eat one bowl. But I made an interesting concoction of Udon noodles, chicken, bacon, broccoli, baby corn, and beansprouts with szechewan sauce. It actually tasted pretty good. I got a pretty good margarita too.
Views from directly under the Pru and the Hancock buildingInyx also ran into a lot of old friends she hadn't seen in a while either like con staff member Billy who was away going to med school for 3 years, one of her ex-girlfriends and a couple other old friends. Her co-worker Sarah also came to the con and helped sell buttons so we had a lot of help this year even though regulars like Ninja and Xaqu didn't come with us.
We made a ridiculous amount of money this year. Not only was I selling my jewelry which only got a smattering of sales in the past, but I had the amigurumi too. Inyx had bought a brain slug for herself and put it on a headband and was wearing it around which caused everyone to want one. I ended up being able to make 2 more at the con before I ran out of googly eyes for a total of 5. They were so popular we decded to raffle off the last remaining one for $1 a ticket or 5 for $3. We sold like $20 worth of tix, maybe more I don't remember so I ended up getting a lot more for the brain slug while the lucky winner ended up getting it for I think $9. Throughout the weekend Inyx kept adding more things to her brain slug so she had the most ridiculous mess on her head. First it was wearing one of the speech bubble clips she made, changing them out so sometimes it'd be saying "WTF?!" or "Ha ha...wait, what?" or "I heart Yaoi" or "Epic Fail!" Then she bought glowsticks for the rave, but everyone was too tired to go to the rave and even if we wanted to the line to get in was pack, so we had our own rave and wore the glowsticks around the booth. I wore them in my gauged ears as hoops. The brain slug ended up with one on its head. Then she bought little ears from some anime that were supposed to be for ball-jointed dolls and a soot ball keychain and put those on. Then the people running the Artists Alley made a special Artists Alley pass for the brain slug. At one point there was a tiny espresso take-out cup on there too but that one I didn't get a picture of.
Anyway, we made a lot more than we ever did in the past. We have over 100 new button designs plus the patches and speech bubble hairclips. Friday we did over $700 while I did $87, Saturday we did over $1000 and I did $100 and Sunday we did over $800 and I did $59. My numbers included selling Flav's scarves for her. Unfortunately they didn't do as well as I expected them and we only sold two. I dropped the price from $24 to $20 on Sunday to see if that'd boost sales but it didn't. But I sold one Slytherin and one Gryffindor 1st edition. One was for the discounted price so I owe Flav $44 out of my total. Also the deal with selling my own products through Inyx is the first $50 I make I get 100% but the rest is half. I ended up pocketing $105 which already went to bills :( Still, it's exponentially better than I've done in the past which was like, $17, $12 etc. I was also reimbursed for my registration as payment for all the work put in at the table so that was $90 back which I spent mostly on food and video games. I always tell myself I'm not going to waste money on overpriced anime merch in the Dealer's Room...and instead I spend it on import or hard-to-find games. For $30 I got the Japan-only Nintendo 64 version of Animal Crossing (in America it came out on the GameCube) and for $20 I got the original Mike Tyson's Punch-Out (before they changed it to just Punch-out after the domestic violence thing), Rygar and Back to the Future for the original Nintendo. I also spent it on some pretty good pad thai from the aptly named Pad Thai Cafe on Boylston. It wasn't as good as the crispy pad thai from Tom Yum Koong but it was still tasty.
Nothing particularly epic happened this year but I saw some great cosplays and witnessed a small Asian man scramble up the partition between escalators because someone bet him money to do it and the escalator was crowded. I also saw subway Twister since Friday was also a big Red Sox game and the green line was PACKED, so when this guy and his friends were trying to get off they were joking about going up and over and he got up on his seat and joked about it being Twister so Inyx said "right hand yellow" so he put his hand on the stop request tape that's yellow. There'll be more pictures on my Flickr, like all the random and unique cosplays and other funny stuff. Next stop is AnimeNEXT in New Jersey meaning I'll probably get to see Zac too. That's June 12-14. So until then I'm just gonna fight this cold and go to work and try to make some more amigurumi
