Toy and Hobby Expo 2002 Novi, Michigan

Posted by administrator on 2002/12/29

Attendees:

Kai Brodersen
Tim Courtney
Stefan Garcia (& mom Victoria)
Rick Hallman
Ondrew Hartigan
Andrew Jager
David Kohrman
Ken Koleda (& son Trevor)

Chris Leach (& wife Sandi, son Evan,daughter Kira)
Larry Pieniazek
Jason Spears
Alfred Speredelozzi
Steve Weiser
Lester Witter
Erik Zempel

Overall Picture Gallery:

Kai Brodersen	Ken Koleda	David Kohrman

Friday, December 27th, 2002

Setup started around 7:00 am. Definitely an early morning for the west siders. Fortunately a few came over Thursday night to get at least some sleep. Other members began to trickle in as the morning went on. We had been given the impression that a news crew would be there around 2:30 pm and so we would have to have at least one corner running by then. We got most of the setup completed by 3:00 and were only waiting for a few members to show up and fill in their areas. So in the end, this did not turn out to be a problem. The TV crews re-scheduled for 8:00 am the morning. So we finished much sooner than we expected and had the trains running about 2 hours before the public was to be let in. Tim Courtney and Ondrew Hartigan from NILTC showed up around 4.

Saturday, December 28th, 2002

Another early morning (7:45 am). Jason Spears was interviewed by Fox2 News around 9:05. Throughout the day we heard from people who said they had seen us on the news and ‘had’ to come by. Larry’s mountain and Ken’s Armory seemed to be a big hit with the crowd. Kai setup a disgruntled crowd outside the Armory, while the military tried to quell the masses. We did meet a number of interesting people and hopefully recruited some new members. Also a photographer/writer from the Oakland Press came by. He did a brief piece in the Sunday paper.

Sunday, December 29th, 2002

Sunday went quickly as we only had 5 hours of show time. The riot was cleaned up to make way for a bike race. This seemed to go over better with the show attendees. Our take back from this is that people coming to shows like smiling happy minifigs, not angry ones. Still the police and fire figs running around Jason’s block did receive comment all of which seemed to be positive. So perhaps the opportunity for action is still there. Tear down started at 3:00 pm and was finished by 4:30 pm. This was by far our fastest tear down. I think a combination of teamwork and experience with shows helped us along. All in all it was a great show and we hope to work with the organizers again.