Two conventions and a festival
Jun. 7th, 2026 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchellMemorial Day weekend, I attended Bridging the Gap, a one-off fan-run online Pathfinder/Starfinder Society convention which was thrown together when Paizo announced that PaizoCon would not happen this year. By the time I was trying to sign up, a lot of the Saturday and Sunday sessions were full, so I wound up with significant chunks of time free both those days.
(Technically, I still am attending Bridging the Gap, because it had a play-by-post component and I'm in two of those games.)
So on Saturday afternoon, I went out to Waterfront Park to check out CityFair, the county-fair-like area set up there for all three weekends of the Rose Festival. It seems less ambitious than in past years-- just the rides, some food, and a few other vendors. Perhaps I'll be skipping that for a couple years.
On the way back, I stopped by one of the food cart pods in my neighborhood to try out the new barbecue cart I noticed last time I was there. The brisket was divine, the barbecue baked beans were excellent-- I haven't had barbecue baked beans in probably decades, and for that reason alone I'll be going back-- and the collards, okay, I don't know, I don't think I've ever had collards prepared in a traditional manner before. They're certainly something I think I can acquire a taste for.
Last weekend was PIGcon, the first convention run by the Portland Indie Game Squad. Like any first convention, there were a few things to make one think, yup, this is a first convention, I'm sure they'll fix that next year, and a couple things that led more to "have these people ever attended a convention before"? The main thing for the latter was the extremely random length of program items, plus no apparent time allowed for people to cycle in and out between items, meaning that big delays built up throughout the day.
But there were some good items, and some neat things to see. My favorite things were the Choosatron and the print-on-demand con T-shirt setup featuring a manual silkscreening machine. Customers would pick out a blank T-shirt of a size and color they liked, then select one of four possible designs. The only hitch was that this table was badly undermanned, but first convention and all, they'll be able to predict demand better next year.
There was not a whole lot to do, though, so again I wound up with significant free time, and I spent some of it Sunday morning wandering around downtown and checking out about two-thirds of the Bloom Tour installations, another part of the Rose Festival. Lots of pretty things, but a few that didn't work out, like the one that incorporated fruits, and probably looked fine on opening day, but the bell peppers were now visibly shrived and one of the oranges had gone moldy.
Saturday, on my way home, I decided to stop by BG's Food Cartel to pick something up for dinner, and discovered that for once I'd arrived early enough that the Hawaiian cart, which mostly does lunch, was still open, so I got their yakisoba, which is basically stir-fried saimin, and it turned out to be pretty good.
Symposium 2026 is coming up in a couple weeks, and the weekend after that, I will not be attending Between Two Cons, after realizing it's Friday-Saturday rather than Saturday-Sunday, so one day is a work day and the other is Free RPG Day. Still weird that an RPG convention would schedule itself into a conflict with Free RPG Day.
(Technically, I still am attending Bridging the Gap, because it had a play-by-post component and I'm in two of those games.)
So on Saturday afternoon, I went out to Waterfront Park to check out CityFair, the county-fair-like area set up there for all three weekends of the Rose Festival. It seems less ambitious than in past years-- just the rides, some food, and a few other vendors. Perhaps I'll be skipping that for a couple years.
On the way back, I stopped by one of the food cart pods in my neighborhood to try out the new barbecue cart I noticed last time I was there. The brisket was divine, the barbecue baked beans were excellent-- I haven't had barbecue baked beans in probably decades, and for that reason alone I'll be going back-- and the collards, okay, I don't know, I don't think I've ever had collards prepared in a traditional manner before. They're certainly something I think I can acquire a taste for.
Last weekend was PIGcon, the first convention run by the Portland Indie Game Squad. Like any first convention, there were a few things to make one think, yup, this is a first convention, I'm sure they'll fix that next year, and a couple things that led more to "have these people ever attended a convention before"? The main thing for the latter was the extremely random length of program items, plus no apparent time allowed for people to cycle in and out between items, meaning that big delays built up throughout the day.
But there were some good items, and some neat things to see. My favorite things were the Choosatron and the print-on-demand con T-shirt setup featuring a manual silkscreening machine. Customers would pick out a blank T-shirt of a size and color they liked, then select one of four possible designs. The only hitch was that this table was badly undermanned, but first convention and all, they'll be able to predict demand better next year.
There was not a whole lot to do, though, so again I wound up with significant free time, and I spent some of it Sunday morning wandering around downtown and checking out about two-thirds of the Bloom Tour installations, another part of the Rose Festival. Lots of pretty things, but a few that didn't work out, like the one that incorporated fruits, and probably looked fine on opening day, but the bell peppers were now visibly shrived and one of the oranges had gone moldy.
Saturday, on my way home, I decided to stop by BG's Food Cartel to pick something up for dinner, and discovered that for once I'd arrived early enough that the Hawaiian cart, which mostly does lunch, was still open, so I got their yakisoba, which is basically stir-fried saimin, and it turned out to be pretty good.
Symposium 2026 is coming up in a couple weeks, and the weekend after that, I will not be attending Between Two Cons, after realizing it's Friday-Saturday rather than Saturday-Sunday, so one day is a work day and the other is Free RPG Day. Still weird that an RPG convention would schedule itself into a conflict with Free RPG Day.
