The Philly Browncoat Ball
Oct. 2nd, 2007 12:44 pmThe 2007 Browncoat Ball was hosted this year in Philadelphia, a city I'd never visited before. So ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
miss_emelia, capricious_k and I flew out there last Friday for another weekend of misbehavin' with 150 of our closest friends.
We arrived Friday evening, and after a smooth check-in we prepped ourselves for an evening out. The first night was spent at a local pool hall, where we noshed on munchies, sipped drinks, and got to know the crowd. We were happy to see our old friends from the Chicago Browncoats, the geniuses who originated the event. Also the gals from the Austin Browncoats made a strong first impression with their charm, wit, and enthusiasm.
Saturday was a very full day. After locating the local Starbucks, we joined up with our fellow ball attendees for a walking tour of Philadelphia. It started off normally, with a stop by Ben Franklin's grave, the Liberty Bell, and Independence Hall. Then it got kinda crazy-cookie in a fun way; Firefly has always had a strong Chinese influence, and our tourguide took this to heart. He's American-born Chinese, and he took us on an extended tour of the Philadelphia Chinatown. And I do mean extensive. We walked down crowded streets, into a Buddhist temple on the 6th floor of a former sweatshop, and through a basement Chinese supermarket. At first I was a bit annoyed -- I mean, c'mon I'm from California near San Francisco, which has the greatest Chinatown outside of China, and all this stuff was old hat to me, and frankly Philly's Chinatown is pretty weak compared to San Francisco's. But this feeling quickly wore off; Al was proud of his heritage, and the strength of the local Chinese community was obviously strong and worthy of recognition.
A wise coworker told my that the Philly cheesesteak sandwich gets better and better the closer you get to Philadelphia until you actually get into Philadelphia, at which point the quality drops drastically. Lunch on Saturday seemed to bear this wisdom out, since I've had better cheesesteaks at the local Max's Diner than the one I had in Philly.
After lunch we spent an amusing afternoon on a bus tour of the city and in the local science museum. The museum is clearly geared towards children, but was entertaining none-the-less. By the end of the afternoon we were quite tired and knew we had to dance for hours that night, so we retreated to the hotel for a nap.
The ball itself was lovely. During the pre-dinner cocktails it was immediately obvious that the costuming quality and general awesomeness of the attendees had gone up yet another notch this year. Dinner itself included the brilliant game of running from table to table acquiring stickers for your interplanetary passport, where each one of the tables represented a different planet-of-call and made you do different things to get their stickers. I think I did four different dances just to get stickers!
Dancing that evening was mostly a combination of folk and filk performed by the Bedlam Bards, interspersed with English Country Dancing taught to the crowd right there on the spot by a very good local teacher (who also clearly happened to be a Firefly fan). During the awards ceremony, I was honored with the "Reaver's looks most delicious" or somesuch award... well let's just say that I got many, many compliments on my look and attire, which boosted my ego tremendously.
On Sunday we had brunch with the Browncoats, then walked around town some more before our loooooooong plane ride home. Hats off to Tequila Matt, our host this year, who did an amazing job continuing the fine tradition of the Browncoat Ball. I'm very much looking forward to what the Austin crew does next year, since Austin one the bid for the 2008 ball. If the emissaries they sent to Philly are representative of the folk we can expect to meet there, it'll be another great time.
My big damn pile of photos from the event can be found here.
miss_emelia, capricious_k and I flew out there last Friday for another weekend of misbehavin' with 150 of our closest friends.We arrived Friday evening, and after a smooth check-in we prepped ourselves for an evening out. The first night was spent at a local pool hall, where we noshed on munchies, sipped drinks, and got to know the crowd. We were happy to see our old friends from the Chicago Browncoats, the geniuses who originated the event. Also the gals from the Austin Browncoats made a strong first impression with their charm, wit, and enthusiasm.
Saturday was a very full day. After locating the local Starbucks, we joined up with our fellow ball attendees for a walking tour of Philadelphia. It started off normally, with a stop by Ben Franklin's grave, the Liberty Bell, and Independence Hall. Then it got kinda crazy-cookie in a fun way; Firefly has always had a strong Chinese influence, and our tourguide took this to heart. He's American-born Chinese, and he took us on an extended tour of the Philadelphia Chinatown. And I do mean extensive. We walked down crowded streets, into a Buddhist temple on the 6th floor of a former sweatshop, and through a basement Chinese supermarket. At first I was a bit annoyed -- I mean, c'mon I'm from California near San Francisco, which has the greatest Chinatown outside of China, and all this stuff was old hat to me, and frankly Philly's Chinatown is pretty weak compared to San Francisco's. But this feeling quickly wore off; Al was proud of his heritage, and the strength of the local Chinese community was obviously strong and worthy of recognition.
A wise coworker told my that the Philly cheesesteak sandwich gets better and better the closer you get to Philadelphia until you actually get into Philadelphia, at which point the quality drops drastically. Lunch on Saturday seemed to bear this wisdom out, since I've had better cheesesteaks at the local Max's Diner than the one I had in Philly.
After lunch we spent an amusing afternoon on a bus tour of the city and in the local science museum. The museum is clearly geared towards children, but was entertaining none-the-less. By the end of the afternoon we were quite tired and knew we had to dance for hours that night, so we retreated to the hotel for a nap.
The ball itself was lovely. During the pre-dinner cocktails it was immediately obvious that the costuming quality and general awesomeness of the attendees had gone up yet another notch this year. Dinner itself included the brilliant game of running from table to table acquiring stickers for your interplanetary passport, where each one of the tables represented a different planet-of-call and made you do different things to get their stickers. I think I did four different dances just to get stickers!
Dancing that evening was mostly a combination of folk and filk performed by the Bedlam Bards, interspersed with English Country Dancing taught to the crowd right there on the spot by a very good local teacher (who also clearly happened to be a Firefly fan). During the awards ceremony, I was honored with the "Reaver's looks most delicious" or somesuch award... well let's just say that I got many, many compliments on my look and attire, which boosted my ego tremendously.
On Sunday we had brunch with the Browncoats, then walked around town some more before our loooooooong plane ride home. Hats off to Tequila Matt, our host this year, who did an amazing job continuing the fine tradition of the Browncoat Ball. I'm very much looking forward to what the Austin crew does next year, since Austin one the bid for the 2008 ball. If the emissaries they sent to Philly are representative of the folk we can expect to meet there, it'll be another great time.
My big damn pile of photos from the event can be found here.
