BAMCon aka Berkshire Anime and Manga was my second convention. Photos below:
As usual, I packed up the car and left the house quite early… at 6:30 AM
BAMCon took place on May 10-12 in the beautiful town of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. I had been told that Pittsfield was one of those hard-hit recovering industrial towns (like so many other towns in New England), but I found it to be quite beautiful. It’s surrounded by woods, hiking trails and luxurious golf-courses. The downtown area (I’m sorry I didn’t take pictures) has a retrofitted turn-of-the-century feel with art galleries, shopping and offices in handsome pre-war structures. The place was nice, and the hotel where the convention took place (The Crowne Plaza) was nice as well.
Once I got in, I started setting up in the dealers room.

Other vendors got more fancy… check out the portable accordian-style bookshelves. That guy must have a had a 1,000 books + DVD’s crammed into a very small floor space.
Of course, the highlight at most “cons” are the people in costumes,which many people now refer to as cosplay… I can only assume that people use the term cosplay because it sounds a bit more cutting edge that “wearing a costume”. (Interestingly, cosplay has also become one of those multi-use words that can be used as a gerund: “I’m cosplaying Darth Vader”; or a noun: “This outfit is my Star Trek cosplay”; or even a straight up action verb: “I always cosplay Mr. T.”)
Below are some of the cosplays that caugth my eye at BAMCon:

Billy Baker- a really nice guy- dressed up as: Choji Akimichi from Naruto Shippuden…. I you have never heard of Choji Akimichi, don’t worry, I had to look him up.

I love this guy’s pixely visage. He was supposed to be a thing from Minecraft the video game… a creeper I think.

I don’t know who this is or who they’re supposed to be, but I love the ninja-assassin-in-pajamas look!
I also met some of the people whom I’d interviewed including, professional belly dancer Kiwii:

Cosplayer Kiwii shows of her convention outfit. She was a wind-up dancer. If you look to the left (it’s a little hard to make out) you can see her wind-up key.
and illustrator Paul Hollingsworth!
I was also joined by Eric Sutton, a good friend and great graphic designer who helped me promote VampCon by photoshopping convention-goers into vampires and adding them to the VampCon cover!
All in all, I had a good time and even sold some copies of VampCon! My next con will be Granite State Comic Con in September. I’m looking forward!
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