New York, New York

I'm back from New York and it has to be one of the best trips I've taken for work in a while. Very laid back and yet ridiculously fruitful at the same time.

I flew in last Wednesday, got to JFK around 5pm. Ran in to Eric Reynolds of Fantagraphics on the plane. Hooked up with him later that night as we watched the Mariners lose at the ESPN SportsZone in Times Square. Here's me and Eric with our super overpriced ($9.75!) beers:



A picture of the wall of TVs:



So you don't miss the game, there are even TVs above the urinals:



The game started at 10pm EST and ESPN closed at midnight, so we called it a night and I headed back to the hotel. Thursday, I got up around 8am and went to the Javits center where they held BEA. I set up the Unshelved booth all morning and then went to have lunch with Jann Jones from DC Comics. We went out for Greek food, where both of us enjoyed some great octopus:




After lunch, we headed back and I toured the DC offices. This mural is the first thing you see when you get out of the elevator:



Following that, I popped on over to the Marvel offices and visited CB Cebulski. Got the quick tour and chatted with a bunch of the editors, fun stuff. No huge mural, they just have a big picture outside (and inside) the offices featuring a bunch of the characters:



Now, here is the part where Tom Miller hates my guts. Thursday night I went to the official Strangers in Paradise wrap party, hosted by the CBLDF. Tons of comics people were there like Dan DiDio, Jimmy Palmiotti, Ross Richie and tons more, including a couple guys I'd never met before like Paul Pope and Jeff Smith.

There was a picture taken of me at the party by ICV2 and posted here, I have the goofiest grin (which, really, should be no surprise to anyone). There is also a review of the party here (by Heidi MacDonald)

The one picture I took, a shot of Terry Moore being mobbed as he was all night:



Post-party, headed back to the hotel and on my way, took a nightime snap of Times Square:



Friday was the first day of BEA. Great show, we were busy the entire time. Show was over at 5pm, we headed down to Greenwich Village to a place called John's Pizza:



Hands-down some of the best pizza I've ever eaten.

After grubbin, Bill and I went off to check out Monty Python's Spamalot on Broadway:



Hilarious. No real 'name' actors in the cast, which was fine, it had great sets and fun songs and it was laugh-out-loud funny.

That night, Darick Robertson was in town for a signing with Garth Ennis as The Boys relaunches, so I hooked up with those two guys along with Nick Barucci, Filip Sablik, Ross Richie, Jovial Joe Keatinge and others for drinks at Molly's.

Saturday passed pretty quickly at BEA, it was busy again, we had a bunch of meetings and I also had my panel:



(l to r) John Sheblaski, me, Michele Gorman, Gene Ambaum, Todd Krueger, Mike Pawuk and Robin Brenner.

You can check out a review of the panel here (second to last paragraph). It was fun and super informative.

That night was spent once again at John's Pizza for grub and then out with Darick, Garth and Nicky, but this time with a some of the Udon crew (Erik Ko, Jim Zubkavich), plus CB Cebulski and Shannon Monahan from Marvel.

What is a trip to New York without seeing Spider-Man? On the way to the show on Sunday, who do I see but the wall-crawler himself:



Heh...

Anyway, the show was slow, I picked up a couple books at the show then broke down the booth and took everything to the hotel. I toured around NYC that night, hitting some of the cool shops, plus places like the Virgin Megastore and the humongous Toys R Us. It's so big, it has an actual FERRIS WHEEL inside the store:



Also (this is for Paul) they had some cool Lego displays of superheroes:



For food I just ate at a street vendor who made spicy gyros and ended up getting totally soaked on the way back to the hotel as it started a huge downpour just as I was leaving the store. Caught part of the MTV Movie Awards and sacked out.

Monday I wandered around around NYC again, this time finding a Nintendo World store. It was two stories with tons of cool Nintendo merch:



They were selling custom DS Lites for $280 each, you could get them in a variety of colors:



The coolest thing was that you could get your DS engraved for only $20! I didn't have mine on me, but I gotta say, that's damn cool:



I had lunch with Fletcher Chu-Fong from DC Comics and then took off to JFK. Alaska was having an upgrade special on their tickets so I decided to fly back first class for a measly $100. Your own touch-screen TV with a few dozen movies to choose from, free alcohol (which I didn't drink any of, sadly) and a huge seat that reclined nicely, totally worth it.

So there you go, that is my NYC trip in a nutshell. As related to my 101 list, I got to cross three things off with this trip:

#10 - Fly first class
#77 - See a play on/off Broadway (NYC)
#97 - Take a tour of DC or Marvel