February 24, 2015: Chi-Fi In Chicago

I will be a guest at Chi-Fi on March 19-22. Their motto is "Celebrate Geekdom." That works for me.

The hotel is the historic and swanky Palmer House, the third of that name on the same site. The original opened on September 26, 1871, and stood a mere 13 days, until the Great Chicago Fire. The second one was built to be fireproof, but it collided with an iceberg and sank. No, I made that up. It in fact endured, both unburnt and unsunk, until the mid-1920s, when it was replaced by the current humongous yet spiffy structure. Which stands today, all shiny in the middle of the amazingness that is Chicago, and yes, the hotel was one reason I accepted the invitation! Very good choice, Chi-Fi. Well played.

Chi-Fi's guests also include the historic and swanky talented and peculiar Paul and Storm, who I so recently saw at JoCo Cruise Crazy 5. Well, here we are, together again, in a venue with (possibly) an even nicer ballroom, but (definitely) fewer palm trees. There will be a lot of other guests, none of whom I know well enough to make fun of in this report. I'm looking forward to meeting them, and perhaps we can change that! The Guest of Honor page is kind of easy to overlook on their site, so I'm going to cheat and link it here so you can read about them.

Yes, I know that most of that website is in eye-searing ALL CAPS. Forgive them; they know not what they do. My advice is to pick somebody you don't like and get them to read it to you.

Come see me in Chicago and we shall celebrate geekdom amidst really neat Gilded Age surroundings, and if you say "This is sooo steampunk!" nobody will wonder what you mean.

-- Steve Jackson