So. More crazy travels to SF. To be honest, I wouldn’t normally bore you with the specifics and details of my tedious, overly-adult life, but the past few weeks have found me bumping into great- and interesting-ness so I figured what the hell. Or what the hello, as I seem to want to type over and over again.

This weekend saw the wife and I hauling our bones back down to San Francisco for a few concurrent special occasions. As the toy- and/or comics-minded of you may already know, the geniuses at Wondercon decided to schedule, um, Wondercon, for the same weekend as Easter. Which made for an at-once crazy busy and crazy empty SF. It was weird. To add to the madness—a daisy-chain of insanity, really—the fine folks at Super7 organized a big show with Gargamel—the Japanese vinyl toymakers, NOT the gravelly-voiced smurf foil—and they sort of brought the heat. In addition to releasing a couple of new head sculpts for S7′s Monster Family line of toys, they brought a staggering 120-ish customs to sell.

We also had a chance to check out the fabled and mysterious Alameda Flea Market/Swap Meet on Sunday which was…a disaster. It’s raining, it’s cold, and all I got was this (awesome) lawn gnome. One of those types of affairs. Anyway, the whole set is here, but I figured I’d pull a few highlights to make you all jealous at my awesome, glamour-filled, yes-sir-mr.-west, lifestyle. To wit.

PS: Wouldn’t the above photo qualify as Bear Porn? Whatever happened to Bear Porn?

Grace Cathedral don’t discriminate; They’ll regulate every size of (that?) wheel.

Had an awesome lunch at Cha Cha Cha w/ Koji from Cometdebris and who should show up but this totally awesome (tablecloth-blending-into) Custom Mightin! Thanks Koji!

We popped into Giant Robot and caught the GAME OVER III show. Eat you heart out.

I killed some time to death back at the hotel. I was actually trying to slow my heartrate after finding out what the balance was on my hold toys at Super7.

KaToPe’s magic wands; he was doing a live painting during the show at Super7. Joe from KC has some awesome photos of the finished piece.

KaToPe also brought the heat on his new ‘Drunk Seijin’ Sculpt. Amazing customs!

Keys Open Doors at the Alameda Flea Market. The weather was miserable, but at least there was lots of junk.

Really, this post is just an overlong excuse to show you this photo. I’m pretty sure it is a child’s bed (there is another mirrored one behind it). How awesome would it be to go to sleep everynight in the ECTO-1? There are no haters this thing rules. (See what I did there?)

We wrapped up the weekend at Rudy’s Can’t Fail Diner/Cafe, right across the street from Pixar in Emeryville. I have never waited so long to eat somewhere, but when you’re hanging with folks from Gargamel, Cometdebris, Super7, and the always awesome Sutfins, can you put a time limit on such things?

A great weekend all around. And! Lots of toy pickups, so I’ll probably be blabbing about those soon too.

- Hateball