Category: Pop Culture

Portland & Vancouver (BC) plans for HOWL CON orphans on Feb 4th & 5th

A. Quinton — Jan. 19th 2017

If you were attending the now-defunct Howl Con in Portland, OR on Saturday February 4th and Sunday the 5th and now find yourself without a way to hang out with werewolf people, may I humbly present you with two alternatives.

These are informal and rely on the good graces of private businesses, so please be prepared for details to change.

In the Portland area:

Friend of the site Nodnash is proposing a drop-in werewolf hangout at Portland’s Sizzle Pie West (926 W Burnside St) on the evenings of the 4th and 5th. The 5th is Super Bowl Sunday, so it might be a little crowded, but there’s lots to do in the area. Specifics are still coming together, so follow Nodnash for the latest.

Feb 4th+5th evenings! SizzlePie West! Werewolf meetup, art jam, and shenanigans! Pizza! Beer! Roaming! Hunting of man! Consumption of flesh!

— The Ugly Werewolf (@nodnash) January 19, 2017

In the Vancouver, BC area:

On Saturday the 4th, starting at around 1PM, Tandye and I (plus a few people who’ve already RSVP’d) will be at lelem’ Arts & Cultural Cafe in Fort Langley. That’s about 45 minutes west of Vancouver proper. We’ll be there for the afternoon, hanging out with any other werewolfy people who show up, and who knows what the evening will bring?

The plan is to make it an art jam, so bring your art stuff if you have any, but we may have games and other stuff going on, too. The cafe is rad, with great food and lots of space to sit and chat, and there’s lots to see and explore in Fort Langley – it’s right on the Fraser River, with a beautiful riverwalk trail, forests, and cool shops. Come on out if you’re in the area! As with the Portland plan, the details are subject to change, so follow me on Twitter for any updates (or @ me if you have questions, need directions, are crossing a border, etc).

See you around, werewolf people!

I’m done with HOWL CON

A. Quinton — Jan. 11th 2017

Update 2017-01-19: multiple reliable sources are indicating that the host hotel, Ramada Portland, is cancelling the convention’s reservation due to lack of communication with the organizer. I’m calling it: HOWL CON is off. I’m not going to edit the optimism out of this post, but if you booked flights or made other travel arrangements that you can’t cancel, maybe start looking at other things you want to do in the area.

I’ve been an enthusiastic proponent of Portland-area werewolf convention HOWL CON. I was a presenter in 2015 and had the time of my life. I wanted to go again in 2016, but through a combination of bad luck and disorganization, the event was cancelled three weeks before the big weekend.

Now HOWL CON 2017 is less than a month away, and once again the event has no announced guests, no programming schedule, and no buzz or recent organizer activity of any kind. It hasn’t been marketed anywhere other than two fan sites – my site, and PDXwerewolf.com. Its web site disappeared in May 2016. Contributors to its Indiegogo crowdfunding effort have not received any communications since the campaign ended in September.

It’s reasonable to assume that HOWL CON is still happening. In November, organizers were reassuring worried would-be attendees that the show would go on. Apparently the space has been paid for, or at least a deposit placed. If you dig through their Facebook page you can still find links to buy passes and submit applications to be a dealer or a presenter. You can even book a cheap hotel room. And if you do show up at the Ramada Portland Airport Hotel on February 4th or 5th, there might be other werewolf fans there.

I won’t be among them. Given the complete mystery surrounding “what the actual convention is, or will be, or will have for us to do”, I can’t justify the time off work, or the travel, food and lodging expenses. If you go, may my $150 “Attending Patron” pledge to the Indiegogo campaign help fund your enjoyment – especially if you’re going because you learned about the event from me. If we had plans to meet, please accept my apologies. Maybe we can catch up at West Coast Haunters.

I don’t know what’s happened with HOWL CON. The organizers have been running a steampunk convention with ostensible success for seven years now, so they’re not incompetent and they’re not crooks. Are they too busy to run two conventions per year? Are there extenuating circumstances? It doesn’t matter. It’s not okay to run an event this way, and I won’t give HOWL CON the benefit of the doubt any more.

“Interview with a Werewolf” talks to A. Quinton (that’s me)

A. Quinton — Sep. 12th 2016

I’m honoured to have been interviewed by author Stacey Leah Mewse as part of her ongoing “Interview with a Werewolf” series. The interview was conducted question-by-question over email and it took me the better part of the summer to complete, because I had (maybe too much) fun expounding on what I like, love and hate about werewolves.

It’s a long read, and definitely worth perusing if you’ve ever wondered what informs the Werewolf News / AQ “house style” of werewolf fandom. This bit about self-image and identity touches on something I’ve been fascinated by since I was a kid:

Are you still you if your hands are a different shape? If the scar you got at 14 by sliding into third base wrong is obscured by fur, or erased entirely by new skin? What if the temperament that informs your personality was merely a function of hormones that are now completely out of whack because the brain controlling their production decides that “eat ten pounds of living flesh ASAP” is more important than “re-write this buggy code so I can get a promotion”?

For more like this, plus a bunch of text-based hollering on the order of “I like werewolves because they’re fuckin’ nasty-ass monsters“, check out the interview. Thanks very much to Stacey for the opportunity, and for her patience over the summer!