(Above, 2008 Eisner Award Winners)
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed this bit at the end of the Finger Award PR we just ran:
The awards will be presented during the Eisner Awards ceremony at this summer’s Comic-Con on the evening of Friday, July 24, at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront.
which is a new location for the Eisners, which have been held at Ballroom 20 for the last few years. With the Convention Center itself closed at night, this venue tended to give the Awards and post-Awards cocktail party a kind of “remote” feeling. With the biggest collection of actual comics stars at the Eisners each year, this should be the “must do” party for the comics crowd…hopefully the new venue, in a spanking new hotel, will help that.
OF course, a new locale will probably make it harder for us to camp out in a dark corner and plug in our laptop so we can live blog, too…so…we’ll probably be nostalgic for Ballroom 20 in no time.
Wow. I havent’ gone to the Eisners since they were in the Hyatt or whichever hotel it was down the strett.
Checked out the Hilton San Diego Bayfront when I was in SD a couple of months back. It is pretty confusing to get to from the Convention Hall… if you can believe that. You have to go around a corner and up some escalators as the main entrance is on the 2nd floor. Very weird design. Curious to see how the foot traffic works with this hotel. I could be wrong… but I don’t think the hotel is well suited to take advantage of foot traffic from the Convention Center.
I haven’t received this PR yet but it occurs to me that one advantage to moving the Eisners could be that the afterparty would flow more naturally out of it if it’s in a hotel. Standing around the convention center after the Eisners always felt like one of those weird times when you were a kid and there was some sort of nighttime event in the gymnasium of your elementary school.
From the Bayfront website, for those attending Bar-Con:
Odysea
Odysea, “A Liquid Adventure”, a waterfront destination featuring uber-modern twists of new American Dim Sum and hand-crafted organic cocktails and beverages. Odysea’s perch beside the water – including outdoor terrace – is a main gathering place for hotel visitors. Key features include table-side cart service, providing instantaneous flavor gratifications, a comprehensive absinthe program and distinctive flights of both popular and one-of-a-kind drinks.
While your dedication to your work is admirable, I’m sure many of us are all for you not being chained you your computer for one night. All work and no play, and all that, you know. Believe me, I do.
Tom, yeah, it kind of eerie standing around the empty con center at the Eisner post party…I used to take the shortcut to the Hyatt through “under the sails” and down the back stairs before they shut those down, and it was always so dark and quiet as opposed to everywhere else.
BTW, ya’ll, the Hilton Bayfront is Beat HQ during the con! “A comprehensive absinthe program”, eh? I remember when you had to drink that out of a paper cup at the beach party! And we loved it!
The Bayfront also has a spa.
Chip,
I can’t speak about how much foot traffic the Bayfront Hilton will see, but the Fox Sports Grill (and won’t THAT be an interesting sight during Con) and Starbucks should do pretty well.
Zeitgeist is a terrible, terrible writer.