On The Road:
UberCon Secaucus NJ and Fenians concert New York City

By Rick Silva

UberCon was virtually in our back yard: Lovely Secaucus New Jersey. That still didn't stop us from getting lost. Few things will make you feel sillier than walking into a hotel expecting to find a full-scale gaming/SF convention going on and instead finding... Nothing. Nada. Zip. One somewhat weary-looking hotel guy without the slightest clue what we were taking about, who made a valiant effort (hindered slightly by his limited skills with the English language) to point out other nearby hotels that we might have mistaken his hotel for. Apparently, I was so confident that UberCon would be in the same place as it was last year that I failed to properly check the website. After all, how many hotels could there possibly be in Secaucus? Um... bad question.

We started hitting hotels at random and quickly realized that this wasn't going to work. So we headed back to the Kinkos on Route 3 in Clifton for some quick internet access (things can never be easy; the Kinkos in Secaucus went out of business last year). Except that we made a wrong turn and found ourselves heading straight for the Lincoln Tunnel with only limited opportunities to bail out before we would be forced to break one of my fundamental rules of life: Never drive in Manhattan. Ever. Under any circumstances.

I took an exit for Secaucus hoping to reverse direction, and, after a harrowing experience involving a very large truck that badly needed to be in the same space that my vehicle occupied, we found ourselves wandering through the Mill Creek Mall complex. When what to our wondering eyes should appear, but a huge UberCon sign! Thank goodness for shameless promotion!

Things got much better from there. We ended up spending most of the day at the con, chatting with artists and publishers, attending seminars and generally schmoozing. We met a ton of great people, including the folks from Blood & Cardstock Games, Chapter 13 Press, The Five Wits, USS Justice, Radbu Productions, and NerdNYC. We played Ex Machina, wandered the dealers' room, and met up with Joe and Mike, down from Boston for the Star Wars and Vampire LARPs. We met Pete Abrams, creator of Sluggy Freelance, and gave away bunches of Zephyr & Reginald: Minions for Hire postcards. The con was very well run, although space was tight. Hopefully they'll expand to bigger facilities next time around.

After all that, my day was still far from over. Gynn headed home after dinner with Joe and Mike, but I took a bus into New York City to catch the Fenians performing on their pre-St. Patrick's day tour. I met up with Peter & Rachel from Brooklyn and Indian food and Irish music was the order of the night. The Fenians put on a great show as always, and it was a nice (although exhausting) end to a very good day.

We're trying to step up our convention appearances, so look for us at more shows in the near future. Until then, see you on the road!

 

 

 

 

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