Fanzine fans will converge on Corflu XXX in Portland, Oregon over the May 3-5 weekend. In the latest progress report [PDF file], chairman Dan Steffan’s flair for storytelling makes even the details of reserving hotel rooms lively reading.
The PR is also graced with several mini-essays that make a Portland visit sound irresistible.
Andy Hooper channels Clifford D. Simak while extolling the beauty visible on the road through Oregon:
Running between the west bank of the Willamette River and the Coast Range, OR47 winds through a tapestry of verdantly beautiful, thriving farm country, a landscape that easily rivals legendary agricultural regions across Europe and North America. The two of us have seen great orchards in New Mexico, Florida, Wisconsin, and the Yakima Valley here in Washington, but I’ve never seen anything as green and perfectly groomed as the hazelnut groves that we passed on Highway 47. The hazelnuts in particular seemed to evoke J. R. R. Tolkien for me; surely, Hobbits could not have tended a grove of trees any more delicately than these.
John D. Berry shares his strategies for shopping at Powell’s Bookstore. And Randy Byers, before reminding us that the town is a great place to hang out, explains how his perspective on the subject has matured by beginning, “When I was a kid growing up in Salem, Oregon, Portland was the unimaginable world that produced such TV spectacles as Portland Wrestling (my grandfather’s favorite show) and the Portland Roller Derby…”
Oh, and about those mundane hotel details – at the Red Lion Hotel Portland Convention Center all rooms for Corflu are $99 a night.
Steffan urges everyone, “Tell a friend. Soylent Green may be people, but so is a successful Corflu. Thanks.”
