More is all you need

Last Saturday we finally made good on the much-postponed plans to meet up with Vix and do something outside Motor City Fur[ry] Con, this barely a month away from the next MCFC. In our defense, it's hard to find time when we're all free, especially now that I have a day job that actually cares whether I'm there.

Not quite coincidentally we managed this at a local enough furmeet. We used to go to these, way back before the pandemic, but we lost track of them. The boards that used to list them evaporated in a flurry of drama while we weren't looking and things like Facebook groups that replaced them drifted into oblivion. Vix explained that most of the organization nowadays was done in Telegram groups; bunny_hugger, not on Telegram, had no hope of seeing them. I am on Telegram but I never go out looking for groups; I have enough trouble.

And the location was one we knew well: the Arcade, in Brighton. The place that had our second pinball league, the one that evaporated in 2015(?) when the owner sold nearly all his fascinating collection of games. The place continued, though, and rebuilt a collection of games, some pinball, many video. It hosts a lot of children's parties and is open weekends as a pay-one-price arcade, probably the best thing to do. This would be our first time back in seven or eight years.

We got there to find the place packed, eventually; we didn't recognize it the first time, in part because the sign outside had been taken down and was in back where a couple people had parked on it. We went in figuring it'd be easy to find a bunch of furries and ... goodness but it was packed. And we didn't see many that were obviously furry; it turned out, as we might have guessed, they'd gathered in the mezzanine. There were set up a bunch of long tables, like you'd have for parties, with a lot of people drawing or talking or sharing pizza or whatnot. Many with badges, some with costume parts.

And people started getting more obviously furry, putting on partial or full suits. A nervous guy who'd brought a huge fox plush introduced himself as Turbo, and we'd introduce him in turn to Vix (who missed bunny_hugger's text that we arrived because she sent it to the wrong person). We were not among the full suiters; I don't have one and bunny_hugger thought it would be too much trouble. We both had ears and tail, though.

After folks got into suit, though, hey went outside for a group picture. This included a march down the stairs that was longer than the fursuit parades of Anthrocon from 1997 through 2001. And then even though it was in the 30s and I for one didn't put my jacket on for this, a lot of us ended up hanging out outside and talking, long enough that bunny_hugger, less tolerant of the cold, went inside and had some good pinball and came back out to ask where the heck we all were.

When we'd had enough of the cold, though, we went in with Vix and Vix's friend Bean and started playing pinball. I would go on to a weirdly long string of extremely good games, including two in a row where I got on the high score tables although only one of those was the grand champion position. I am aware that (later on) during a game of Metallica everyone else got bored and played some video games during my turn, including one where bunny_hugger had her best-ever game of Q*Bert and put her name on that high score table.

Our playing went on for hours, interrupted only by bunny_hugger popping over to the new-built Brighton Market next door. They still had the homemade chips that we'd loved back in the day. Their good coffee brew was done for the day, though, and only Keurig was available. Apparently the new place looks considerably more respectable and grown-up, from the inside, although there's also a huge wall of liquor and a half-shelf of chewing tobacco, keeping it from putting on airs.

We ended up playing, in a trio or quartet, a lot of games and sometime when we weren't watching the furmeet broke up, most of the participants going to a nearby bowling alley for that side of things. Well, we successfully met up with one person we know and got to know by name two people we didn't before, so that counts as a very successful social outing. And I am now on the Telegram group that announces events like this, so we have a chance of making it to future pinball- or even just generally fun things that might be happening.

Though we had told ourselves we didn't have to stay until the place closed, we came awfully close; turns out they close at 11. In the event we were there too late to stop at White Castle for dinner, and would console ourselves with Taco Bell. And thoughts of getting back to play their decent, if not-as-good-as-it-was-in-2014, array of games. If we can figure out which is their slow day. (Probably Sunday, the day admission is five dollars cheaper.) Or new furmeets.

Trivia: When the message of President William Harrison's death reached John Tyler the Vice-President was at home, on a gravel walk, shooting marbles with his two sons, who were losing to him. Source: The Year We Had No President, Richard Hansen. Hansen notes that Tyler was teasing his sons, which makes it all sound just impossibly sweet a scene.

Currently Reading: Shakespeare's Library: Unlocking the Greatest Mystery in Literature, Stuart Kells.