There was no bar to entry, save that there was no con suite and no free food/drink at parties in the Intercontinental. Lots of fans spent time there. Heck, we held a BASFA meeting there (which Mary Robinette Kowal and Connie Willis attended).

This happens a lot at Worldcon in recent years. The pros look for a hotel near the convention that has a good bar and settle in there. Fandom heads for wherever the free food & drink can be found. But there is plenty of movement between the two.

So obviously I misinterpreted Lev’s referring to “a bar designated for all-pro fraternizing” as meant as literally “designated” as the actual designation of actual party floors per hotel contract with the convention, whereas the bar wasn’t legally so contracted at all (as also the SFWA suite sometimes is).

Lev wrote:
…and the pros, while also fraternizing with fans, tend also to frequent a bar designated for all-pro fraternizing. ”

Gary wrote:
I wasn’t there, but I have to imagine that you’re referring to the SFWA suite/venue, which has had somewhat different policies in different years, but which is more or less limited to either members and guests, or members and program participants, or some variant thereof; there’s no actual way to card people for “professionalism” in general in the field, or even strictly define who would and wouldn’t count, and neither would an actual commercial bar for some peculiar reason try.

I think Lev was talking about the Intercontinental Bar, a pricey bar with excellent tapas, a poor draft beer selection and absinthe, which I’d never seen sold in a bar before. It had a semi-private side room which a few pros took over. Some fans were in there too. It was also open pretty late, which made it the place to go if you were staying in a hotel near the convention center.

The SFWA suite wound up having to move from one floor of the Delta to another when the hotel decided to close all open parties not on 28 or 5.

Gary, your credentials as a fanhistorian are well known, so I can’t believe you said, “The first Worldcon was in NYC (Queens, to be more precise), in 1939, Nycon I.”

The first worldcon was held in Manhattan, at Caravan Hall on East 59th Street. You were probably thinking of the fact that it was the presence of the 1939 World’s Fair out in Queens that led to the con being called a “World Convention.”

Still, I’m glad you mentioned NyCon 1, since it provides the perfect segue to a mention of Time Magazine’s notorious coverage of that event, which gave the fannish lexicon that wonderful phrase of mocking enthusiasm, first spotted in the pages of Time, “Gosh! Wow! Boyoh-boy!”

Those who’d like to read the complete coverage can find the original article here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,761661,00.html

Lev, your excellent report is helping Time finally atone for its 70-year-old sins!

The first Worldcon was in NYC (Queens, to be more precise), in 1939, Nycon I. (See here: http://www.nesfa.org/data/LL/TheLongList.html)

What you’ve obviously confused is Dave talking about being at what many allege to be the first sf convention, a which Wikipedia correctly notes (I was an expert fanhistorian back in the Seventies, creating the first regular Worldcon displays on fanhistory in 1977 and later, if you believe me about believing me — or you could ask Milt Stevens), is actually a matter of some dispute, particularly between some American fanhistorians, a number of whom favor the impromptu Philadelphia gathering of 1936, and some British fanhistorians, who favor a formally organized convention in 1937, to really get into the weeds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction_convention#History_of_science_fiction_conventions

But Dave was at that gathering in 1936, yes. (Personally, even though American, I’m in the group that agrees that the British have a considerably better claim for their 1937 convention, as the first real “convention,” rather than a party, but there’s never been unanimous agreement about definitions here, not that I imagine you care.)

“It’s a big event — 4,000 people or so.”

It’s variable, depending on location; it’s been as large as 8000+ at the 1984 Los Angles convention, and nearly 7,000 at Boston in 1989, but, no, it doesn’t come anywhere near San Diego Comic Con numbers, and that’s very much the intention of almost all Worldcon runners, who typically seek to create a very different, far more community-driven, and more text-oriented, event.

“I’m always surprised at how heterogenous fandom is.”

That’s absolutely spot-on, and has always been the case, right from the beginning, when fans included doctors and machine-shop workers, lawyers, and film projectionists, well-off people, and the poverty-stricken. (Although fandom certainly was overwhelmingly white and male to begin with, and still trends disproportionately so, which has provoked much discussion in the last couple of decades, and even more in the last couple of years, sometimes with more heat than light.)

Re Steampunk: “At Worldcon only two people showed up in costume.”

Worldcon has always been a lot less costume-heavy than press reports, which focus on the pictorial and sensational (as usual), or simple imagination, or experience with more media-focused conventions, might leave you a false impression of. There are a certain number of costumers, but the percentage of people who wear them around the con is in typically well under five percent or so. (My impression is that the press reports of SDCC tend to over-focus on the costumed, percentage wise, as well, granting that SDCC has a distinctly higher percentage of costumed folk than a Worldcon does.)

“…and the pros, while also fraternizing with fans, tend also to frequent a bar designated for all-pro fraternizing. ”

I wasn’t there, but I have to imagine that you’re referring to the SFWA suite/venue, which has had somewhat different policies in different years, but which is more or less limited to either members and guests, or members and program participants, or some variant thereof; there’s no actual way to card people for “professionalism” in general in the field, or even strictly define who would and wouldn’t count, and neither would an actual commercial bar for some peculiar reason try.

Good report, overall. Glad you had a good time.

I was at your Steampunk panel and have to disagree with you. I don’t really see Steampunk as a reaction to today’s “no user serviceable parts inside” culture. The truth is that those devices are still modifiable and hackable, just usually via code rather than physical means. Witness the jailbroken iPhone, Boxee on the Apple TV, or the various disturbing things people have done with Roombas.

I tend to view Steampunk more as an effort of the modern technological world to impose its norms on to an idealized Victorian age. And by norms, I obviously mean giant mechanical spiders.

…descriptionfail.

In other news, Asians represent! :D