Fans form a human chain inside the Baltimore Science Fiction Society Building to move out of storage equipment needed to run Balticon, the Maryland Regional Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention.
The 53rd annual Balticon will be held May 24-27 at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore.
The Comet Science Fiction Channel provided t-shirts as a reward for the volunteer’s efforts.
[Thanks to Dale Arnold for the story.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
That was my first convention in 1977
Going to Balticon.
Comet TV, which is kind of the SF channel, is owned and operated by the Sinclair Broadcast Group and, unfortunately, should not be supported in any way for their distortion of the news and for acting as a propaganda engine rather than a television network.
It’s a nice-looking place and a good effort; I’m wondering why stuff is being moved so early — maybe they have the space to leave it piled in the middle for a week?
Because BSFS and Balticon are all volunteer, almost everything happens on a weekend and there is only one weekend (two days) between the date of the move from storage upstairs right at the end of the last major meeting before the con and loading the truck to head to the con for us to make sure everything is cleaned up and packed properly.
Well, most of the cons we go to are all-volunteer (I’ve heard Arisia uses hired labor to help logistics but haven’t confirmed this); Boskone does almost everything on Wednesday, although people are expected to have labeled everything before then (e.g., at a Sunday worksession). OTOH, the NESFA clubhouse is mostly flat (despite high local costs, most of the retail fronts don’t have upper stories for offices or lodgings), so there’s relatively little to take down — and no space to put it in, because Boskone and Arisia lend stuff back and forth, eating much of the small amount of floor space (which it looks like BSFS doesn’t lack).
Windycon uses PODs to store their equipment (plus one storage locker for things like computers); the crack logistics team gets everything unpacked on Thursday and re-packed on Sunday.