So the show is done, its glorious frenzy history, and only now is it that I can take the time to actually blog, despite the kind reminders from my colleagues for days that I really gotta get to bloggin’. So it is that I sit here thinking about the convention, and there’s only one thought that keeps coming to mind:
I love San Diego.
I love San Diego because it has Mexican food so good that people are not only willing to drive out of their way for burritos, but also to bring them back for those who’d doubt their awesomeness.
 I love San Diego because when you gaze out over the water, your view is of an artful seascape where sailboats and naval frigates and yachts glide along the surface with motion almost poetic.
I love San Diego for Tony Gwynn and Horton Plaza and Coronado Golden Ale.
I love San Diego because of the way the moon hangs over the Coronado Bridge that arcs gracefully in the distance, behind the convention center where I’ve spent the past few days.
And I love San Diego because once every year, it becomes a place where thousands of the brightest, bestest fans of nigh-everything cultural come to celebrate our hobbies and our industries.
A place where I can ask for help to fold a thousand origami cranes and days–even hours–later be inundated with the most elegantly folded papers, getting our thousand with cranes to spare.
A place where a guy in a purple suit is not out of place–indeed, is dressed fairly conservatively.
A place where I guy I went to college with and haven’t seen in decades and a guy I went to high school with and haven’t seen in decades-plus can coincidentally wander past my booth and renew acquaintance.
A place where everywhere you look, there’s something worth looking at, and where everyone you meet is someone worth meeting.
I’m left here realizing that so many people worked so very hard to bring Del Rey to San Diego–folks you met in our booth and folks behind the scenes in New York–that I can’t name ‘em all. But my thanks to them all for making it possible for me to be sitting here now, contemplating the show and its one inescapable conclusion:
I love San Diego.
Thanks!
