Punkie's Photography of Fandom
I used to have dozens of pictures of early BaltiCons, Disclaves, EveCons, CastleCons, PhilCons, and some other weird cons, but I lost most of those in a flood in 1994. yes, I am bummed. Some of them could have made for great blackmail. I had one of Gene Wolfe drunk with a friend, and Piers Anthony lying in a tub of ice cream wheels in the con suite.
Me, skinny, at BaltiCon 20 (or XX, something like 1986) with one of my best high school buddies, Julie (now a married biochemist in California). No, we only dressed that way at cons. This shows off my spiffy "Dungeon Master" baseball tee, which I had custom made for my group. I am a brave and foolish man for putting this up here.
Ahhh... JulieCon 1, 1986. What a con, hosted in Falls Church in Julie's basement. It was straight gaming for 48 hours I think. The people pictured (r-l) are Pearl, Julie, Sheila, Ellen, T-Rex, and Kate. Julie's mother had gone crazy at a surplus warehouse, and bought us Orange and Grape soda in massive quantities along with a pallet of surplus Reeces Peanut Butter Easter eggs (one opened box is on the lower right). We must have been on one massive sugar high. There was a JulieCon 2 the next year, but Julie's mother wouldn't let her stay the night because it was in Kate's basement. Massive bummer.
FanTek has been a BIG part of my fandom life. I lived with them for about a year and a half from 1987-1988 in this suburban home in Mount Vernon, Alexandria. It was a "model demo home" the builder rented out because he couldn't sell it. It had all the bells and whistles of a late 1970s house, including internal vacuuming (which we got to actually work... sort of), but sadly, not including insulation. In the winter, you could, in any room in the house, tell which way the wind was blowing outside. A lot of fun parties happened in these walls.
And here are Bruce and Cheryl as we knew them in the late 80s. I have no idea where these balloons came from, but that's the FanTek house for you. People just brought odd stuff. We even had a real police car light rack. Some guy just left it in our ballroom one day. I think Bruce still has it.
This was most of the FanTek house with two friends. Liska is not pictured because her line of work does not allowed her to be photographed (those who live around here know what I mean). Clockwise, starting with Debbie in the tie-dye on the floor, we have Cheryl in the perm and pith helmet to hide said perm, then Bruce (in *jeans*, to prove he hasn't always worn slacks), a teen Dave Ramsay (now of anime costume fame), who did not live with us but stayed over a lot, and Craig Riefstek (former Evecon security), who sort of lived with us because he was dating Debbie. I miss those days a lot. The blue couch was mine from my old house, and in fact, when I moved in with FanTek, I inherited a lot of older stuff from my house. Some of it still is at the current FanTek house, and so it's the closest to home that I have.
I just title this "Day 3", and left the Polaroid as it was. This was taken, I assume, on Day 3 of Evecon 5. Security had been... odd, that con. I was at registration when this was taken, by the first set of Polaroids used for the first picture badges (thus ending the "Badge named Mike" saga), and had probably not slept for two days. Later, I was put to bed. Also put to bed were two security chiefs, Pat Skovran, who fell asleep at central, and "Fuzz," who had so little sleep, he was blabbing incoherently to his ex-girlfriends, and asking random people to smell his shoes. The head of security had to be retired permanently. Because of this con, we started to have "mandatory sleep periods" for all staff, and the story "Security Blanket" was born.
Due to the flood, my photos leap ahead from 1988 to 1995 here. Here I am hosting Costume Call for EveCon. They put me in a genie costume that was about 2 sizes too big; the turban kept falling off. I am dancing with model actresses Kimber Norquest and Julie Fuller, with Bruce (FanTek Chairman) in the middle. Later, I would give up the Emcee job to become a judge.
Here I am, judging the "Generic Medieval Lady #65." Okay, no, I am lying, this is Charles Nelson Riley judging this page.