Philadelphia Tattoo Convention

Last weekend was another impromptu weekend travel for me. This time, I convinced a couple friends of mine to join me (Mike aka t3chdzyn, Alison, and Marke). The plan was simple: we meet up at 5:30pm in Chinatown to catch a $10 bus ride to Philadelphia, walk to the tattoo convention, meet friends, sleep, come back. Oh, and to party the entire time =)

That was also the fullest extent of our plans. Who was going to be there, where it was, what was going on, where we were going to sleep, and the how/when we were going to get home was all up in the air. I'm used to this, but I wasn't sure how well my friends were going to take it. I just kept telling them, "don't worry, I have it all planned out" Hahahaha!

Mike and I met up ahead of time to hit up J&R (an electronics store) to get some new toys for our cameras. He picked up a lens filter and I grabbed a new speed-flash, lens filter, and a Hi-Fi card. The Hi-Fi card is pretty sweet. It's an SD RAM card for cameras and the such that has a built in WiFi antenna and firmware, so when you take a photo, it'll automatically connect to a WiFi network and upload the photo to a computer on the network or the Internet. PIMP! I was pretty eager to try it out, but that's when it hit me.... FUCK! My point-n-click camera was in my leather jacket that just got stolen! Dammit dammit dammit!

ok... breath...

After hitting up J&R we grabbed some food then headed back to my place. We packed our things then jumped in a cab to Chinatown.

WAIT! I almost forgot the most importat part! FIRST, we filled our flasks with Jager, then did a couple shots to ensure an unsober state, THEN we got in a cab to Chinatown =)

Alison met us at the bus stop about five minutes after we got there. Marke was MIA. I gave him a ring and he said he was running late, so we bought tickets for the 6:30 bus. What an ordeal that was. Two little chinese women were trying to sell us the tickets on the street, both ringing me up for 4 tickets and screaming at me in what I think, THEY thought was english, but sounded more like a cat getting run over slowly. If you ever see two elderly chinese women fight for a sale on the street, it's quite an entertaining site. Especially when you have absolutly no clue what's going on.

Somehow, I got the tickets (i think). I got a piece of paper with some letters and numbers on it. She got $40. We'll find out later if the bus driver likes my piece of paper with letters and numbers! But for now, we have time to kill, so on to the bar! Fontana's (a kind of rock'n'roll bar) was just down the street. Perfect! We had a couple tasty beverages there until Marke showed up, then headed back to the bus stop and boarded the bus.

I won't get into all the shenanigans that took place on the bus, but the gist of it is that we now had a gang sign, we video taped most of it (Alison even followed mike to the bathroom at one point), laughed our asses off pretty much the entire way, and irritated probably everyone on the bus...a lot =)

We arrived in Philly sometime around 9ish and then walked a few blocks to the hotel where the convention was being held. We bought our wristbands to get in, and ran almost immediately into a friend of mine running a booth with some third-reich-esqu curtains (inside joke ;). She let us drop our stuff down there while we ran around (read: went to the bar).