Tag: San Diego

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Here’s the latest round of strange sights from San Diego.

[Outhouse on a crane]We stayed at the Radisson Harbor View. The end of the hallway had a view of the harbor, but our room had a view of the construction across the street. When we first stepped onto the balcony, we saw a crane lifting an outhouse up to the topmost floor of the site. There’s something inherently absurd about a port-a-potty flying through the air.

We walked up and down Cedar Ave. from the hotel to the Little Italy trolley stop at least once a day, stopping at the same It’s a Grind coffee house we frequented two years ago. Strangely, we didn’t notice this message on the street until our last day in town:

No SBC to India

Now, it may look like a tagger’s commentary on outsourcing, but it makes more sense if you happen to know that India Street is just a block away.

Apartment high-rise with identical balconies... and one red umbrella.There were quite a few high-rise buildings that looked very much like this one. Sort of the skyscraper equivalent of clone homes, I suppose. This one had one difference: One of the tenants had set up a large, red umbrella on their balcony.

Moving on to the Gaslamp Quarter, we saw—but didn’t photograph—a club called Tsunami Beach. I don’t know about you, but if there’s a tsunami, the last place I want to be is on the beach!

This next one was actually pretty neat. The window boxes outside Dussini (a Mediterranean restaurant on Fifth Avenue) are full of low-water plants. Practical, low-maintenance, and still decorative.

Windows box with low-water plants

Finally, here’s a sign from somewhere along the 5, elsewhere in San Diego:

Fish and Richardson

I think it’s pretty safe to say that Richardson isn’t a fish…

Next: con-specific weirdness.

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I mentioned that on Saturday, we left Comic-Con for a few hours to check out the ships at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. We saw five:

  • The Star of India, billed as “the world’s oldest active ship”
  • The HMS Surprise, a replica of an 18th century British ship.
  • The Berkeley, an 1898 steam ferry
  • The Medea, a 1904 yacht
  • A B-39 Soviet submarine.

The big attractions, of course, were the Star of India and the HMS Surprise. Naturally, the Star of India was closed when we got there.

Star of India as seen from a porthole in the Surprise
The Star of India seen from the Surprise

The Surprise was fun, though. It turns out it was built in the 1970s as a replica of an 18th century British Royal Navy vessel, the HMS Rose. It was sold to 20th Century Fox in 2001 and used to film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. After filming was complete, the museum bought the ship and renamed it the HMS Surprise in honor of the fictional vessel.

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Last week, Mark Evanier wrote about media coverage of Comic-Con that exaggerated the number of people in costume.

I think it was Saturday afternoon that I noticed a huge cluster of people in really good hall costumes, all ringing the G4 TV booth. I noticed the words, “For the next two hours…” scrolling by on the teleprompter, and realized they were probably trying to film an intro to their con report with all the cosplayers in the background.

No wonder people get the impression that everyone dresses up!

For the record: Katie dressed as a pirate on Saturday. Ironically, she got more attention for the Serenity T-shirt she wore on Friday. I just wore a T-shirt and shorts all four days.

Katie as a pirate

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Sunday at SDCC was, oddly, more crowded than Saturday. Maybe it was the desperation of the last day combined with the fact that it was still on the weekend. We got in later, closer to 11:30, since we spent the morning packing.

I did a final round of back-issue hunting, and ended up not buying anything. All the Golden Age Flash books were high-grade, and therefore out of my price range. Unfortunately I forgot to check eBay this morning, because several auctions I’d put off bidding on ended before we got home.

I hit two panels: First Fables, which was basically the entire creative team of the book and the spinoff, Jack of Fables, and was great fun. They also announced the upcoming “burning questions” issue. They’ll take questions from readers, and put together a bunch of one– or two-page stories to answer them.

The other panel was for Lord of the Rings. People from New Line Home Video, EA Games, Games Workshop, and Topps Cards all talked about their new tie-ins. At least, they did after the 15-minute attempt to get the screen properly hooked up to both the DVD player and the laptop. I’m annoyed that they’re releasing another DVD edition (this set has the theatrical version and the extended version on one double-sided disc—no, they’re not making more changes to the films, thank the Eldar), but the Battle for Middle Earth II expansion pack, Rise of the Witch-King, looks pretty cool. Too bad I’m not any good at real-time strategy games.

We left the con around 4:00, had dinner back in Little Italy, then got on the road around a quarter to six. 2½ hours later, we were home.

It’s odd how quickly you get used to the walking. After the first day, my feet were sore from walking and my shoulders were sore from carrying my backpack. They were still bad the next morning, but better by evening, and by the third day, they were perfectly fine. (Well, except for the blister on my toe.)

Still, I think I’m going to be a zombie at work tomorrow. Next year, it might be worth taking the following Monday off as well.

Anyway, stay tuned. I’ll be posting photos (cosplay, weirdness, and possibly sightseeing)—and with any luck, quotes as well—sometime in the next few days.

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Neither of us spent more than an hour or so on the floor on Saturday, in part out of self-defense. Comic-Con is usually the most crowded on Saturdays, though we didn’t see much difference from Friday this year.

After the Flash panel, I went back to my back issue hunt. Found quite a few in the $150-500 range. Unfortunately I’m looking in the $50-100 range. Dealers just haven’t brought their low-grade Golden Age books, so it looks like it’ll be back to eBay.

Quick Draw was, as promised, lots of fun. I missed the first 20 minutes or so (I’d been planning to go to the One Year Later panel, but changed my mind at the last minute—no regrets there!), but Katie caught the whole thing. Sergio Aragonés, Scott Shaw!, and Kyle Baker were directed by Mark Evanier to draw ever crazier things, sometimes competing to convey a “secret word” in a Pictionary-style game.

The Narnia/Pirates panel, expected to be the highlight of the day, turned out to be a big disappointment. Last year, the Narnia presentation was fascinating, despite the delay from the satellite link-up, because things were completely new, and because the people involved knew what fans were interested in seeing. This time they basically sent the marketing guy out to talk about the special edition DVD.

As for Pirates of the Caribbean… the talk by John Knoll was a fascinating insight into the technology that they used to animate Davy Jones, but the first half was out of place at a Comic-Con. It would have done much better with a highly technical audience—maybe at a Cal Tech Seminar Day or something. Once he started showing the before-and-after shots, and the test footage, the audience warmed up to him. And some of the joke footage, like the giant Krispy Kreme donut rolling out into the surf, or Elizabeth Swann cutting a swath through the Dutchman’s crew with a pair of lightsabers, was great.

After that fiasco, we decided to clear out instead of staying for the Spider-Man panel. Neither of us had anything we were looking at for the rest of the afternoon, so we decided to go out to see the Star of India (the ship, not the restaurant) and the other ships out by the bay. Among other things, Katie wanted to get some pictures while still in her pirate costume. Unfortunately it took us so long to get around the insanely long line for Spider-Man—which was a big surprise, since we’d just walked into the hall earlier—that we missed our trolley. Literally, we were up to the gate on the opposite side of the tracks when it pulled away. We ended up postponing our dinner reservations to make sure we had enough time.

As it turned out, the Star of India itself was closed, but the HMS Surprise (used for filming Master and Commander) was open, along with the HMS Berkeley, a ferry, and a pleasure boat called the Medea. The Berkeley had mostly been turned into the Maritime Museum, but the engine rooms were open for view. We skipped the Soviet submarine. Bulky costumes and full backpacks don’t go well in confined spaces.

Absolutely no climbing in the rigging!

We had enough time to drop stuff off at our hotel room and lie down for a few minutes, then went back to the Gaslamp district and dinner at Dussini, a Mediterranean place that replaced the old Spaghetti Factory. Once again, a great restaurant. We also saw a great demonstration of why you should make reservations: The walk-in couple in front of us had a 45-minute wait. We were shown to our table immediately.