The Library Conference in Boston, Saturday & Sunday

On Saturday, we both had to be at the conference pretty early. We took the T to South Station, and started over the bridge to the Convention Center. I peeled off and took the stairs down to Flour, a little bakery where we’d gotten lunch (bacon sandwiches, basically) the day before. Well, seemingly little – the one we were going to is one of four Flour locations, and seems to be part of much larger restaurant/catering chain, Myers+Chang. I had to wait 10 minutes for them to open up, along with the usual loud, bossy librarians you always see during conference. Flour is known for their sticky buns, so I got one, and an almond croissant, and a coffee for me in my to-go cup, and a mocha for Mark in a cardboard cup. They gave me the pastries in a box, and I was worried that they’d be too sticky and hard to eat, but I got an extra sheet of waxed paper and a bag, and divvied everything up. I took the bag and gave Mark the box. I delivered Mark’s to his meeting, and proceeded on to mine, and both of us enjoyed the pastries several hours later. They were still good.

Then it was just meetings, meetings, meetings, until about 4:30. Here’s the mischief I got into at my early meeting.

This is what happens when I go to 8:30 Sat. AM session #alamw16 pic.twitter.com/243tSrmhTg

— Debra Shapiro (@DebsLunch) January 9, 2016

@DebsLunch Harvard eagle-i & John Lusis

— Debra Shapiro (@DebsLunch) January 9, 2016

I had signed up for a speed mentoring thing, because I thought it would be different from all the metadata/linked data/ org. of info stuff I’d been in – and it was. I walked to the Hyatt Regency, which was about 15 minutes away from the Convention Center, towards our hotel at Copley Plaza, so after the mentoring – which was kind of fun, and at least very different from everything else I’d been in all day – I walked the rest of the way.

There was a big reception at the Boston Aquarium, lots of librarians wandering around  up and down big circular ramps in the dark – the place was kept dark so as not to disturb the penguins. There was a lot of food there, but we had made a diner reservation at No. 9 Park, one of Barbara Lynch’s restaurants, so we held off from any food at the reception, although it looked and smelled good. Pasta, sliders, open bar with beer and wine.

Good thing, too, because although we remembered No. 9 Park as a bistro, it has become a prix-fixe with two choices – a three-course menu, for $75 each, or the chef’s six-course tasting menu for $120 each. We went with the three-course option. For starters, we had Mixed Greens, goat cheese, pepita, honey crisp apple and Buckwheat Francobolli, yukon potato, sage, taleggio (which seemed a lot like biggish ravioli to me). For mains, we decided on the Pork Belly, rock shrimp, treviso, maitake – the shrimp was fried; the pork belly was delicious; and the Faroe Island Salmon, purple potato, sesame, sauce crème fleurette – nice crispy salmon skin and the purple potato was basically a latke. For dessert, Hazelnut Semifreddo, coffee, caramel, chocolate and Cranberry Upside Down Cake, lemon, olive oil, almond. It was all delicious, but it was all a LOT of food. Probably we should’ve gone to Sportello, which we walked past every time we went to flour.

On Sunday morning, when I woke up and looked at my phone to check the weather, the New York Times told me David Bowie had died. All day I heard people talking about it from ALA staff to my favorite conversation, a couple on the street where the woman was saying but Bowie was so young to die, and the guy was saying, “Well, but think about it, in Jerry Gracia years, Bowie was really old.”

 

I could’ve gone to an 8:30 AM meeting – but I didn’t. Mark didn’t feel very good, and it was raining, so we cabbed to the Convention Center, and I walked back to a little Starbucks on Summer St. that I liked and got coffee and a Kind Bar. I’d been in there on Saturday, and it reminded me of the last thematic section of the big Dutch show at MFA Boston – places where the classes mingle. All the crashed out street people were at tables along a wooden banquet, while everyone else was at the freestanding tables. I had to go essentially right past Flour, so I got Mark a mocha and a blueberry muffin on the assumption that food would be a curative.

Then I got all battened down to walk across the other bridge to get to the Renaissance for a meeting. Just my luck, it started raining harder as I started over the bridge, but not nearly as hard as it was raining when the meeting let out, and about 40 people wanted to get on the shuttle bus back to the Convention center. The bus filled up, and I started asking who wanted to split a cab. Ended up with five others in the hotel van, driven by an off-duty Uber driver, $4 each – and the last guy who got on felt bad, and paid for us all.

Sunday evening there was a happy hour at a Mexican place, Mijas Cantina in Faneuil Marketplace. It was a fun event, well attended. It had stopped raining by the time the happy hour was winding down so we decided to walk back to the Copley Plaza area, across Boston Common, and down Boylston, and get sandwiches at the Parish Cafe. Instead of sports, the Golden Globes were on TV.