The rest of Harvey night was a little bit crazy. The night was set up for triumph — after the taxing San Diego party circuit, everyone was looking forward to just sitting down and catching up, in the much loved, laid back Baltimore atmosphere.
Unfortunately this goal was not shared by the freaked-out bartenders at the Hyatt bar, dealing with a Comic-Con crowd for the first time. With about 100 people descending post-Harveys into the already busy bar area, an already stressed out staff went into total freak out mode. One guy was basically having a nervous breakdown, trapped between Jim Shooter and Joe Jusko at opposite ends of the bar.
After a bit of this panic, the bar manager came in and looked around the scene with what can best be described as terror. It sounds odd for someone to be shocked that people were in a bar and wanted a beverage, but there you go. And it wasn’t a rowdy drunk crowd, at all. It was just a bunch of friends who wanted to sit back with an adult beverage and talk to pals.
However, the noise from the bar evidently was bothering some guests above, so at about midnight everything got shut down, sending all the Harvey folks and the rest into a late night wander around Baltimore.
Not the safest thing.
But I think everyone got home in one piece.
The real fail was going to the hotel bar when you have Fells Point right around the corner, just a short cab or ferry ride away, or any number of other bars in the immediate vicinity. If there’s one thing Baltimore has no shortage of it’s drinking establishments.
I just have images from The Wire going through my mind.
Next time – message me. I’ll gladly provide you with a list of bars you should be drinking at instead of hotel bars in the tourist part of town.
If anyone is interested, we can even help set up an awards after-party next year.
Sorry you didn’t wanted the mile to fells point and my bar. We only had 2 people from the con come in all night. And I’m never scared of a crowd!
Hey, I know those cowboys. (Matt Fillbach on the left & my partner Joe Linsner on the right.)
I think we’re agreed. Ditch the hotel bar and meet up at any of the hundreds of other bar areas in Baltimore. Federal Hill is great, Fells Point, Power Plant, Canton, inner harbor, up Charles Street…
I feel like my brother and I hit every bar in every one of those areas. Baltimore has an excellent bar scene, which is probably why the hotel wasn’t prepared. By the way, this was the best con I’d ever been to. Very cool!
Lots of hotel bars around the country shut down around midnight. New York, New Orleans, and Vegas being the big exceptions. I remember the promoters of Wonder Con making a special deal with the hotel to stay open past midnight in the late 90’s.
If I were to venture a guess, the hotel has the bar as a place for guests to unwind, maybe meet with friends, but not for people to party all night. Even if the hotel has convention guests often, most business people have had enough by midnight and the hotel just doesn’t expect to do much, if any business after a certain hour. They’ve got people who do studies on that sort of thing, and they know what to expect each night. A bunch of comic creators can throw off that research for sure.
Last year, if I remember correctly, a new comics store had a private party in a bar south of con. Another con, there was a gathering to remember Mike Wieringo a fe blocks north.
The Harveys have a bar before the show. Why not have someone sponsor an after party at the hotel or elsewhere? If hotel, then that’s the catering staff, leaving the bar to handle any normal business.
As for being inundated, yeah, I’ve experienced that, when the hotel restaurant filled up in fifteen minutes with returning tour buses.
If you’re looking for scenes from the wire, I’m afraid you’ll have to venture a little further away from the plasticland of the Inner Harbor. Unless you’re counting “The Block”, and even that’s just gravy.
Hello All,
My name is Brad Tree and I help organize the Baltimore Comic-Con.
Thanks for the kind words about the show and the Harveys. We work hard to make them as good as we can.
We too were very surprised by the situation with the bar and the way it was handled on Sat night. I am sorry that happened.
We reinforced to our hotel contacts repeatedly in meetings throughout the planning process the importance of the bar at the hotel, and even with all of that discussion, it was not understood or addressed properly.
We will work with the Hyatt, or any partner hotel, in the future to make sure this does not happen again.
Thank you for your support.
Best,
Brad
I never got to have a second cosmo, dammit! The Hyatt made a damn strong cosmopolitan.
One might also need to take into consideration of a hotel that has over 400 rooms on a very busy Saturday night in Baltimore with Comic Con, Raven’s pre-season game, and numerous Weddings (since it is wedding season and all).
A hotel in general has strict rules and regulations that need to be followed such as fire code, which by the look of the picture could have possibly been over???
or you could try “the nest” or ‘olivers” on the corner of pratt and hopkins. those joints never seem to be crowded (especially the nest), but they don’t seem afraid of a noisy crowd.
The bar in the Marriott has handled the crowd from the Harvey’s quite well in the last three years that I’ve seen. They stayed open later as well. The staff at the Hyatt were panic stricken with the crowd and for a while the hostess looked like she was going to have a meltdown – clearly she was not used to the clientele.
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