April 28th–The streets of Downtown Tampa near the Convention Center are blocked off. People are walking towards the waterways; some with children in tow, some wearing masks, others in farmer’s hats to block out the sun. They’re looking towards the bridge out where the sea is; teams of 20 sitting on boats, while a drummer stands ready to set the pace for the group to follow. The bell rings, and the boats push forward with gusto–paddlers, young and old, from far and near, race to the end of the course, located near Tampa General Hospital!

The event described is known as the Dragon Boat Races, and it’s one of the big draws for the Tampa Asian Festival. It doesn’t celebrate just Japanese culture, but a vast number of cultures in Asia; to India, China, The Philippines, and more. This was a free event, where one could not only get a viewing of some of the shows, such as martial arts demonstrations, folk dances, and singing, but also take samples of the various foods and drinks brought by said cultures.

With any culture, you’ll find costumes. The two fearsome beasts depicted in this picture are probably not your typical one-person show; they belong to the Wah Lum Kung Fu of Tampa, who are known for their Lion and Dragon Dances coming from China. The heads for these two costumes are typically made from paper and bamboo; gravity simply opens and closes the dragon’s mouth depending on the movements, whereas the lion would have a more complicated scheme of pull-strings to articulate the eyes and the mouth. The costumes may vary among the region visited in China, as there are many versions of the Lion and Dragon Dances.
More information about the Wah Lum Kung Fu and their dancing can be found here: http://www.wahlum.org/dragon_dance.htm

Our next major event is MetroCon, boasting to be one of Florida’s biggest anime conventions. See you then!

This month’s big event featured Khaotic Kon, a premier first-year con in Tampa. What could be said about it? The guests were top notch, including members of Team Four Star and Chris Sabat.
How about the dealer’s room? It could be described as the Tardis; bigger on the inside. The artist’s alley was in high quality as well with plenty of artisans from local and afar.
How about the shows? Were there any main con shows? Why, yes! Two of our members participated in the Combat Musical; myself (as a stagehand), but the bigger props go to our Mur, playing the part of Falco Lombardi pictured here with her fight partner, Kurt (Fox McCloud) from the Star Fox series!  And without literally breaking legs.
There’s quite a few other things to address as well. Tora-Con will be this weekend, the Tampa Asia Fest will be April 28th in Tampa’s Channelside from 11am-2:30pm (free admission!), and there is also MetroCon in June. Mur will be hosting the Homestuck Trickster Panel at MetroCon as well.

Here are the websites for the upcoming events. Surely, we’ll be seeing you at one of these?
http://www.facebook.com/events/249054291840464/
http://asiafest-tampabay.com/about.html
http://www.metroconventions.com/control.cfm
Also, some of us at the TBACC would love to, and look forward to volunteering for charities. Please do contact us by our FaceBook page; we’d love to hear from you!

Speaking of volunteering, our friends from Time Lord Fest are needing some costumers for a music video they’re shooting.You can contact him by this e-mail: scott@kenspivey.com

Wow….we really weren’t expecting that Time Lord Fest would garner that much attention that we would be bustling over capacity! To all those who attended, thank you so much for making it! And a bigger thank you to the team at Time Lord Fest! May our next one be just as if not more-so!
For those of you who weren’t sure of what Time Lord Fest was, it was a mini-con for Dr. Who. But we weren’t just limited to Dr. Who; this was also a con for steampunk and independent writers as well. Even members of the Tampa Bay Steampunk Society were there, too!
We’re also looking for people to host crafting nights around the Tampa Bay Area. If you have any projects you’re working on, and you want some help–maybe even company, or perhaps you just wanna lollygag with us, we’d love to arrange something! Just check the FB page for more details.
Our next big event is at Khaotik Kon in April (13th-15th), which is being held at the Double Tree Hilton, near the airport.
Here are the links for the info of what I had mentioned earlier. As usual, can’t wait to see you next time!

http://timelordfest.com/time-lord-fest-tampa/

http://www.thesteampunkempire.com/group/tampabaysteampunksociety

http://khaotickon.com/

You know what sandwiches, cookies, fondue, brownies, nutella, and MarioKart tastes like? …..It is the taste…of ADVENTURE! We had a bit of a quiet Christmas party, which is probably a good thing, because it would be a bit odd to be arrested in cosplay for breaking the peace and decency of a neighborhood.
Now, what’s our next event to kick off next year? Ooooh, that’s right! We’ll be sponsoring the very first Time Lord Fest in Tampa, which is a mini sci-fi mostly focused on Dr. Who, and independent writers as well. There will be a life-sized TARDIS for photo ops, too! Here is the link if you would like more information: http://timelordfest.com/time-lord-fest-tampa/

With all that said, we at TBACC wish you all a Merry Christmahanzyulkwanakah (Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, Kwanzaa), or whatever you do or do not celebrate. See you next year at Time Lord Fest!

What a blast this was to attend! ShadoCon was in its’ second year, but that doesn’t mean it stops short of what any of the other cons can do!

Special guests who you could see there were, for example, EgoRaptor and Doug Walker (aka The Nostalgia Critic). ShadoCon is also the “brother” to a convention coming up next year called Khaotic Kon–and we do plan to be there as well.
Particular details to note:
1) A big congrats to our award winners Nienna and Megan!
2) Our panels were met with success, particularly the Hetalia Panel.
3) For those who participated in the King’s Game, a big “thank you for being wonderful sports” goes out to you!

Next up on our list is the Sarasota Medieval Faire. For more information, here’s the link: http://sarasotamedievalfair.com/

October’s meet was a success, and a frightfully good one, too! We met at the Congo River mini-golf location in Clearwater. The trails were fraught with gators, head-hunters, and more bones than you could shake a skeleton at! But we golfed as safely as possible, ensuring none would fall prey to being eaten, or worse–cursed by the unfriendly natives that lurked within the thickets!….And then we ate at Applebee’s. Delicious!~

The end of October gives us Necronomicon to look forward to, which is located Downtown St. Pete. Any information you may want to know is here in this link: http://www.stonehill.org/
November promises to be quite the busy month. We have ShadoCon; some of our members have panels, like one for amigurumi (Japanese crocheted, stuffed toys), a Star Wars Panel, and even one for the cosplayers geared towards theater. And after that is the Sarasota Medieval Faire!

And what’s this? Talk of  party for the winter season in December? You’ll just have to stay tuned to find out!

The nice folks at CGA Shows graciously had us host a panel on cosplay. We had a great time and a special thanks to everyone who came out. They did a great job of organizing and we hope we get a chance to do more stuff with them in the future.

If you were at the panel here are some of the links we mentioned.

Joann.com
Michaels.com
eyeslipsface.com

An extra special ‘thank you’ to our good friends over at New Lineage Films for taking photos of the panel for us

Organization 13 invaded Downtown Disney along with some friends and to no one’s surprise they attracted the attention of a lot of Kingdom Hearts fans.

Our Next Meetup will be at MegaCon in Orlando on March 26. We hope to see you all there. Even if you can’t make it to the con please feel free to come out for the Meetup! Check the forums and facebook for all the latest info.

It’s Cosplay at Mcdonalds day, it’s also America’s birthday. And yes that’s a burger cake

We had a great time in Ybor enjoying some time hanging out with friends and playing video games over at GameTime. Axel and Demyx drew quite a crowd on DDR.