24-MAY-2011 This past Sunday I was able to attend the last day of the Steampunk World’s Fair held at the Crowne Plaza in Somerset, NJ. New Jersey and Steampunk, you question? Why yes! Of course! This is where Thomas Edison made his home. Not to mention that New Jersey is also the Airship Capital of the United States (remember that whole Hindenburg thing?) Sadly, I was only able to be there one day because of my rather jam-packed schedule of concerts and oh, yeah, that whole Rapture thing that didn’t happen.

Well, we sure would like to change the image of New Jersey to give you new memories of good times, new friends and plenty of shenanigans.

Apparently because I missed the setup and premiere day on Thursday night into Friday, that meant I also missed the biggest of the disasters (No, not another zeppelin explosion). The organizers had been told that the vendors would be allowed to set up their rooms as vending boutiques. Many of the merchants elegantly decorated their rooms Thursday into the wee hours only to be told on Friday that the Fire Marshall was shutting them down. They had to dismantle everything! Then the organizers and volunteers had to find space for all those vendors. They were added to the salon rooms including where very loud musical performances would later take place making business discussions impossible; panels were moved to nooks and crannies of the hotel, even the fitness room; one artist who probably lucked out the most was relocated to the bar and considering he creates adult material, that was probably the only relocation which worked out. I hope there’s either a huge vendors discount next year or that the SPWF simply moves on to a better venue for what they require. The weather was rainy and cold so the folks that ended up outside couldn’t have been all that pleased with the debacle.

My main purpose of attending was to model for the incredibly amazing designer, KRISTIN COSTA in the fashion show. My partner in crime, Smashley was coaxed into modeling with me. There was one other woman that was roped into the experience by a friend. Suffice to say, most of the models were experienced whereas some of us were not and we managed to get up onto the catwalk, do our thing and not fall on our asses. Other models chatted away about Fashion Week and the last time they “did runway.” Um, yeah.. unless you count the fashion show I organized in high school and modeled in, I haven’t done runway work, ever. Babs from Event-ography has a magnificent gallery on flickr.

There are a fair amount of videos of the performances up on YouTube already at the parrygamepreserve channel. I know it can take a while for the photographers and video creators to edit their work but I’m on the look out for pics and coverage of the fashion show. I’d love to know what I ended up looking like up there. Jessica Lilley has a great gallery of the weekend on flickr. There was a steampunk Wonder Woman one of the days I missed but I found some pics in the Lilley flickr gallery.

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.