So, the Big Gulp party was reasonably successful overall. As previously stated, the room was pretty small, so maximum capacity was probably no more than a dozen folks at any given time. I gave away much pie. Unfortunately, prep time was a truncated, so the excellent chinese takeout from Wang's down the street was left to cool during the party, only having the soup before many folks arrived. I did eat it after the end of the party, after cleanup. Ale was most helpful during setup time, assembling the squirrelly serving dishes and setting things up. I think I had probably fifty to seventy people pass through the party over the evening.

Unfortunately, shortly after the end of the party, my back decided to go into spasm, and I spent a fairly miserable night, waking up every time I tried to roll over in my sleep. It was better in the morning, and I had luckily found a parking spot very close to the back door near my room. So I took most of the morning packing everything up, and schlepping them out to the car in loads small enough for me to manage. I did enlist the assistance of a couple of friends to carry all the leftovers from the party down to the Zoo area of the con, where a steady flow of congoers made the pile of pies, beverages, and snacks slowly erode away. Unfortunately, some idiot had decided to rip open the trash bag full of trash I had put out in the hallway the night before, spilling it on the carpet. I suspect that alcohol was involved, in addition to stupidity. I left a larger tip for the maid who ended up cleaning it up, in addition to cleaning up my room.

I fear that Furpocolypse has some issues that it is going to have to deal with so it can survive long term. There has been previously with furfright, and this year continues the trend, of problems with the behavior of a small number of the members. For most of them is it your basic drunk and stupid sort of antics. There is a growing number of people at the con who drink alcohol to excess, and are unable to control their behavior. They have continued the response of printing an ever longer code of conduct in the program book, and making everyone sign a document that they have read it before picking up their badge. The other response is they have a large and obvious security department that seems to be accumulating the petty authoritarian personality types. These are the types that tell others what to do, and rarely bother explaining why or softening their tone. Their behavior gets more authoritarian when they are in packs. Anthrocon is doing the same thing, unfortunately.

This sort of approach leads to an arms race of sorts. The security folks getting more strict and inflexible, and the troublemakers going to more extremes to get around the security folks to cause a ruckus. This conflict sucks in more and more people at the con over time, pushing them to choose a side or stop attending the convention. Once this pattern has been established, it is extremely difficult to change until the convention implodes from the strife.

But, overall I had fun, until my back decided that pain was a higher priority than having fun.