Original TabNet invitation by
yam first, with
Everything amendments within and following:
Yes, yes, it's that time of year again! Break out the mini-marshmallows!
FIREWORKS!
July 29th, August 2nd, 5th, and 9th
(saturday, wednesday, saturday, wednesday)
~But for irregulars (read: all you unaffiliated-with-TabNet-Everythingites) the fireworks on August 5, 2000 are the best target date, on a weekend to facilitate out-of-towners (and next-morning workers) and centralized to optimize your chance of meeting other Everythingites instead of a bunch of skanky Tabbers, PsychoNetters and chatboarders.~
Meet at 6:30 pm each night at the pit of doom for mortal marshmallow kombat & b0nkery! At 8:30 or 9 we'll walk over to English Bay to watch the fireworks, and afterwards perhaps go make fools of ourselves somewhere else. Ground tag, anyone?
Hey! you say. I've never been to a tabmeet! Where is this mysterious "pit of doom"?
Why, I'm glad you asked! The pit of doom is a big round air vent at Burrard Skytrain Station. (Transit route information for getting there is viewable at http://www.coastmountainbus.com/bus/exchangespdf/burrard.pdf) Get off the skytrain at burrard, and go up the escalators. You'll be in the concourse where they sell tickets, and where the bored policemen are getting paid overtime to check people's bags for dangerous iced tea. To the north, which is what you'll be facing as you come off the escalator, is a big set of stairs. Go all the way up. Now, turn right. As you walk along, you should see a big round metal grate, with little stone cubes along the edges as benches. You should also see a collection of random tabnetters. If in doubt, or lost, yell "Bonk!" and tabnet will respond in kind.
BE THERE! OR ELSE! YAY! 6:30! PIT OF DOOM! JULY 29 and AUGUST 2, 5, and / or 9! BASTARDS!
......................
All right, what does this all mean? Well: Every year to circumnavigate tobacco advertising regulations the (evil!) cigarette company Benson & Hedges puts on international fireworks competitions (the "Symphony of Fire") in various cities. One of those cities is consistently Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, not incidentally the locale of the above invitation. The massif of area code 604's cyberculture has been getting together for this event for so many years (six? seven?) that it's become an entrenched tradition - many oldschoolers no longer online log cameo appearances at these events, redisappearing for the rest of the year under their rocks of work, academia and hermitage. Since people show up at these firework meets who never show up to otherwise meets anymore, there's lots of introduction, making friends and establishing first impressions.
So in keeping not only with the spirit of making initial nonline connections with members of online communities but with the "if there's going to be chaos, there might as well be a lot of chaos" frame-of-mind that always makes the best contributions to situations of mob mentality (each night an estimated quarter-million people make their way down to the beach to take in the pyrotechnics), I decided that this annual set of events would be ideal for the piggybacking of a local Everything gathering. It has been an observed phenomenon of tabmeets that the more people present the more fun everybody has; these meets are already the biggest meets of the year (topping out at crowds of 40-50 modemers rampaging through the streets, discussing Neal Stephenson, network security and pressing intellectual questions) and my quasi-facetious logic dictates more people = more fun! If I will maintain such faulty reasoning, there's no good reason for you not to humour it by attending!
The fireworks show itself starts each night at approximately 10:15 pm, a different country's team presenting each night (the schedule as yet undeclared, the last night a collaboration of all teams) but keep in mind the exploding skybursts are only a premise, an excuse to get this amazing group of people together under extraordinary circumstances. We meet approximately four hours earlier and tend to remain an unruly mob for four hours after the show is over, laying siege to innocent all-night diners and defenseless coffeeshops and Benny's Bagels (which should consider itself warned that we just might mount another orgy on the balcony this year). There is a spare room across from mine in the basement of the TabHouse in which revellers from out-of-town or heck, out-of-country, are welcome to rest their weary bones and shake the mini-marshmallows out of their clothes.
Everybody who's anybody in the Everything People Registry :Canada : British Columbia should be in attendance (as well as a number of non-Everythinging nobodies) and visitors from Washington and Oregon are encouraged to make the trek. No Idahoans, though. We hate Idaho! Boo! Go back to your potatoes!
Along with the typical group activities (mini-marchmallow bombardment, pick-up soccer and frisbee golf, rousing public games of "up my butt!", boffing and social engineering of the thousands of hoi polloi around and among us) I hope at this event on the night of August 5th to pass around a notepad on which everyone must inscribe thoughts credited to themselves, later to be transcribed and entered into this database as The Writeup Contributed To By The Most People. (Forget the node with the most writeups - I don't hunt small game.) As well, in full TabNet fashion, all attendees must at some point publically post reviews of their firework experience, including at some point in their narrative mention of kitten-drowning. Tradition is a tradition.
On August 5th, 2000, Vancouver will be burning.
Yes, that is the same date as both the Washington, DC EverythingCon and The Midwest E2 Bathtub Jam as well. In the surreal event of a possible conflict, come to this one or I'll kick your ass. I'm a godhead now, I can do these things.
Please RSVP with myself here, at pseudo_intellect@hotmail.com or leave a message for me at 1-604-253-5804 if you plan on attending, need directions, moral guidance or might need lodging in the basement room 8)
Prestigious noders anticipated in attendance include:
Gee, this is almost as much fun as naming Battle Beasts!
With a group like this, how can you afford
not to come?!
MapQuest directions from Seattle to Burrard Station, Vancouver follow (though of course you'll need parking - perhaps at the TabHouse?):
One more bit of unasked contextual information (gim questions and I'll respond to them here): the night before the Everything-centric fireworks (that being, August 4th before August 5th) is the first Friday of the month, and as such the occurrence of our monthly
2600 gathering at the food court of
Pacific Centre, near the phone booths. If you're gonna be in town more than one day, it might behoof or entertain you to show up there.
...
Reviews: Pseudo_Intellectual screwing a clipboard,
my weekend with Jeeves, Something Happened: The Pacific NorthWest E2 Gathering
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