I recently moved back to Seattle and found out that since I've been a couple states away they've opened a freaking furry owned queer bar called Slightly Furry, and I saw that on a random day that a few artists I knew were gonna be there for an event including the Father of Us All Steve Gallacci. I'm a massive fan of old school/proto-furry stuff and fandom history so I had to stop by his booth.

It was so cool!! He had a bunch of sketchbooks that he was letting people flip through, and they were filled with his jet plane practices and some fanart of his peers (spotted an Usagi Yojimbo :D) as well as MLP and zootopia fanart from recently! He was also selling some comics backstock of his comics Albedo and Beatrix at COVER PRICE which I thought was INSANE. I grabbed a prototype issue zero and he said "Oh, careful, thats not sticker price, that's... ten dollars" and I kept quiet that I was ready to pay way more than that for any of these. I've been looking for this Beatrix comic since I was 14, I'm not joking.

But the coolest part was that he was soliciting questions about the early days of the fandom!! So I whipped out my mental rolodex of names and asked for stories about every one. A lot were predictably friendly (Eric Schwartz? Nice guy, we were booth neighbors a lot. Michelle Light? Yeah she's great." And then I remembered the name I'd seen parodied a lot in old convention art, so I asked about Red Shetland creator/gun safety advocate Jim Groat, and dude lit up. "Oh THAT guy. How much time you got?" and of course the only answer was "ALL THE TIME PLEASE". I got a personal sketch related to that story too!

All in all a fantastic night, and a great first IRL furry event to start with. This place is definitely gonna be a frequent haunt.