business quick takes

As I type this I'm a few hours away from boarding a plane to Melbourne, Australia for WorldCon with some travel Down Under following.  I may not be able to do all the cross-linking and such I try and do usually because the Blogger site I post in is a little more cumbersome to use on an iPad. This post an example of that.  But I will try and do some posting.  

A few business things to mention before I go...

Borders is going live with their AreaE sites this week, and we've been watching them go from big red tables to more fitted out but I'll be away for the official launch. Not impressed. At some stores these big red tables are replacing and thus doubling as the information desk, so customers trying to test a Sony or Kobo will compete for attention. Can't wait to see how that works on 21 December. And even where the table is dedicated AreaE most of the table space is taken up with computer stations, not eReader display space. The center of the table will have room for a few display units of eReaders surrounding a riser with info posters like "download our app.". Nothing like what Barnes and Noble is doing with their Nook desks. I thought they had an intriguing approach of how to contend in the eReader space in spite of being late to the party, but the way AreaE is looking so half-assed it's like they think the war is lost and are fighting for appearance's sake and that alone. 

Andrew Wylie, a major literary agent who recently started his own ebook company, has settled his dispute with Random House over rights, rumor has it ceding the rights battle but getting a higher escalating royalty rate.  Well, those royalty rates have to start going up if agents and authors are to continue to do as much business with publishers, we'll see how many other circumstances Random may need to do similarly.  I spoke in more detail on these questions in a guest post I did for the Clarion blog, which I linked to in an August 17 post.

Barnes and Noble is in the middle of a proxy fight with an investor group having proposed an alternate slate of directors.  Their last earnings report didn't thrill, same store sales down a bit and profit taking a hit from digital initiatives. 

The Kindle 3 has gotten rave reviews from David Pogue in the NY Times and Walter Mossberg in the Wall St. Journal, both major people in technology reviewing. I am not a fan of E-Ink based devices like the Kindle vs iPad multitaskers, but no denying that the reviewer buzz for Kindle 3 is there.     

Funny Book Round-up

Wonder Woman 602 was a disappointment. First issue at least intrigued but instead of moving forward I thought this 2nd issue in the J. Michael Straczynski run became incoherent. Peter Brett and I were discussing if it's possible for anyone to do a good Wonder Woman because of the inherent flaws of the character herself, and this perhaps further proof it might not be. 

Better news from the Straczynski revamp of Superman.  This was a solid second issue, #702, at least to the extent that if you like what he's doing there's more to like here, and I still like the art by Eddy Barrows and JP Mayer which well suits e story. The larger lingering question is if the "socially relevant Supes" is the right direction. 

I just don't know what to make of the Paul Levitz run on Legion of Superheroes there and in Adventure. I liked the story in Adventure 517 more than the first installments, but was seriously disappointed with Legion #4. The last issue suggested a major new storyline aborning, but this issue picked up with Darkseid then jumped here and there without a lot of connecting tissue. I want really badly to like these but much harder than I had hoped to actually do so. 

Geoff Johns, I read, used to work as an assistant for Superman director Richard Donner. No surprise that his Superman: Secret Origin miniseries has updated a lot of the story from Superman: The Movie, which I continue to think is the best superhero movie we've seen.  Cary Bates, a long-time DC writer including on the Superman books 20 or 30 years ago, doesn't hsve to use Donner's movie as a stepping off point but does in his new Elseworlds series, Superman, Last Family of Krypton, El on Earth, but does. A lot of the movie has filtered back into the comics because the movie is so iconic. In this alternate version the entire El family is on Earth, not just Kal-El, but we still find new versions of things like Superman's flight with Lois where you you can hear the John Williams love theme. I kind of liked but also realized picking the book up after a few weeks that it had made little impression.  And in the final issue of Secret Origins, Johns has to go from lovingly saluting the movie to integrating it into current continuity.  Overall I liked the series a lot, and the final five or ten pages of the last issue are redemptive, but I wish we could have done without the first two-thirds of this final issue. But on balance a worthy project that I would suggest be checked out in the collected edition. I have a feeling the parts of this final issue I disliked will be less bothersome if the whole series is read in one sitting. 

I liked Ex Machina very much, over it's fifty issue run. The concluding issue #50 is OK. But... it came out late so my memories of issue #49 were faded. Which will not be a problem in the collected. There's some stunning, scary and wonderful stuff that spins the characters in ways that make you ask if there is a new interpretation of all that came before. But most of what comes before in this issue is an epilogue to the prior issues. Both this and Superman Secret Origins make an argument for collected editions and against the purchase of the monthlies as they unfold. On the whole this and Y: The Last Man are two excellent series, Ex Machina held up better over it's run and in the finale. Hard business, endings can be sometimes. 

DMZ 56 is a fill-in issue masking as part two of a story arc. 

I have been liking the Len Wein scripted DC Universe: Legacies with different artists as the run progresses but issue #4 suggests it could be a hard act to keep up over 10 issues in the context of an expanding universe. There's so much ground to cover that the story vanishes behind the box- ticking to get it all in. Every DC team in one issues.  Yikes!  The art by Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez is well-suited for the era. Next issue covers the Crisis on Infinite Earths era whichnI will want to see. I'm not sure if interest levels will hold after that.

Bongo continues to do good, consistent work month in and month out. In Bart Simpson #55 Bart and Lisa both compete in a princess contest to win a pony. In Simpsons #169 Bart has to contend with a doppelgänger. Both are close to torn from the scripts from a good or better episode of the TV show. Comic Book Guy #2 I liked even more than the first issue. Comic Book Guy died in the first issue though we can safely anticipate his resurrection. Lines in this issue like Bart standing at grave sight and saying "I hope God's a collector and that you're in his best Mylar bag.". The tombstone is inscribed "Quit reading my tombstone! This is a cemetery not a library!" And who turns The Android's Dungeon into The Android's Playground...   

Ashfall, Part 2

Window Shopping at the Louvre
So when we left off on this here, Eddie and I were collapsing in our hotel rooms after a very long day full of unexpected surprises on the way to London Book Fair.

One bank
I got a pretty decent night's sleep, and I had one goal for my morning in Paris before we headed off to catch the Eurostar. I wasn't in Paris if I didn't go to the Seine, which looked close enough for a round trip walk if I kept about my business. Down by the big department store and the opera house, stop at one chocolatier that's been around for 80 years then on next block see one that's been around for 90 years and realize you picked the wrong one. Down to the Louvre, walk along both banks of the Seine because I don't want anyone to think I'm slighting the left or the right bank or vice versa. Emerge near big old buildings and think "gee, I bet Benjamin Franklin visited some of these."

Another bank
It was a wonderful and delightful morning, in part because of the unexpectedness of it.

We then found our way to Gare du Nord and checked in at the mobbed counters for the Eurostar, with all services booked until some time the next day or day after at this point because everyone was trying to take the train. It was while reading newspapers in the departure lounge that some of the joy of the experience started to fade, as it became clear that the ash cloud which diverted us wasn't just a one day thing, and that I'd gotten a lot of chocolates to give away at our table at London Book Fair to people who might not be coming if things didn't resolve themselves pretty quick like. This did not make me happy.

Tilt your head; my luxury "tip up" seat between cars on the Eurostar

But there wasn't much time to mope with my eagerly anticipated first ride on the Eurostar about to begin. But we were in for a surprise, which explained why we had to go through a staffed check-in gate instead of the automated. Our very expensive first class seats weren't seats in the actual train. No, we were luck to get "tip-up" seats, the jump seats in the entry vestibule between cars. Kind of like being told that your first class seat on an airplane was the jump seat next to the galley door. It wasn't quite as bad as all that, because we did get to sit in actual seats for the first leg of the journey to Lille, where more people would be getting on and we'd be getting the boot. And it was a very nice meal service. And it certainly made for a train ride to remember.

Eddie enjoying the meal service on board the Eurostar in our first class accommodations
I've always been a fan of high speed rail in theory, and I loved partaking of it in practice. The train moved slowly until right around DeGaulle airport when it finally heads off on its own dedicated tracks, and then it speeds along, my does it speed along. In the US we're lucky to match the speed of cars on the interstate, here we just zoom by. The countryside was beautiful, the French landscape as full of churches as the British landscape can be of castles. And churches.

Peter V. Brett signing at London's Forbidden Planet
Alas, the Book Fair ended up being pretty much the debacle I'd started to fear it might be when I was reading newspapers at Gare du Nord. Peter V. Brett had come up a little before us, he was one of the last planes to land at Heathrow before it was shut down and we got to Europe just before the European airspace closed pretty much completely. My second employee Jessie Cammack was supposed to come out the next day and never made it. All in all, two thirds of our appointments cancelled. And we got to sit around the Fair during the downtime wondering if/how we might ever get home.

Thanks Emma/HarperUK for getting us the artwork and John Berlyne at Zeno Agency for designing these nifty signs, which more people will see on blog than at the ash-interrupted London Book Fair
Because Peter was out in support of the UK launch of his Desert Spear, which we knew would be big, and because the book has in general been quite big on a global basis, we decided to show the flag by taking out some signs in the Rights Centre, and also by having a meet and greet for our sub-agents and Peter's publishers in attendance at the Fair to meet with Peter at a Russian restaurant a short walk from the Fair. Hardly anyone to look at the signs, and we had 12 people for our big event instead of 35, which was very deflating. But those who attended had a very good time, and I would recommend Nikita's in London to anyone looking for some good Russian food and drink.

In the end, UK airspace reopened in time for Peter, Eddie and I all to return on time on our originally scheduled flights, but in ways good and bad it was a week to remember.

Young guns (tennis, pt 3)

After two days of bad weather, Thursday was wonderful for tennis, and the tennis was amazing. Good matches, good young players, epic struggles, an amazing day.

I decided to be somewhat monogamous for Court 10, which has nice seating and was having three straight matches featuring seeded players for the qualifying.

The first was the #9 seed Ricardas Berankis of Lithuania, just turned 20, against a 24-year-old Columbian Juan Sebastian Cabal. This was good, solid play, but Berankis, who is up and coming and around #120 in the rankings, clearly deserved his 7-5 6-3 victory. The second match also had some good tennis, but no real takeaway moments. The 25-year old #7 seed Adrian Ungur of Romania is at his career high rank of #122, but lost in straight sets to a 27-year-old Italian, Simone Vagnozzi, who is ranked something like 40 spots lower and has never gotten into the top 150. Bad tennis, no. But Vagnozzi's 6-3 6-4 victory seemed to be as much about Ungur not taking it as of Vagnozzi really earning it. In both cases, these were good matches, and I would say Berankis has some potential, but I also don't come out of either with any strong lasting memories.

That started to change with the third match. This one featured the #1 qualifying seed, a Turkish player Marsel Ilhan. 23, so can still have his best years ahead of him, and this summer he moved as high as #103, currently #108. His 7-10 career record in tour matches is not bad by qualifying player standards, not bad at all. He is playing one of the youngest players in the draw, a German-born Australian player named Bernard Tomic; and I hate to admit I'm happy to see he's German born because I was a bit puzzled to see the "Aus" after a player named Bernard Tomic! Tomic is still eight weeks shy of this 18th birthday, low 200s in the rankings, but worth noting that his 5-8 record is similar to his opponent's, and for the year 4-5 vs 5-7 for Ilhan.

Since I can't bring my iPad into the USTA grounds I can't look up all this stuff beforehand, so going into the match all I know is the names and countries and Ilhan's seeding. Maybe if I'd known more I'd have been less stunned that the #1 seed just gets blown away absolutely and completely in the first set, 6-0. And then when Ilhan takes the 2nd set by an equally lopsided 6-2 score there's this expectation that it was just one of those things and that Ilhan will assert in the third. Doesn't happen, not at all. But unlike two days ago when an anticipated third set became a complete fizzle, this third set is the best I've seen so far in the tournament. Neither player gives it away, they're both playing some good and exciting tennis and making their shots. I recall Tomic as trying successfully to really paint the lines and the corners in the third set, which is good when you're game is on and you make everything, not so good if you start missing. But he's making his shots, takes the third set and the match 6-3. The write-up on the Day 3 Qualifying calls this an upset. Well, yes and no. Ilhan might be the #1 seed, but he had the bad luck to come up against a very young player who might start to make some noise. And that being said, Tomic is still ranked down in the 200s, and there are no guarantees he'll even make it through the next two rounds.

Then it was off to the conclusion of the Begemann Farah match from the day before. Which became a completely different match overnight. Simply put, Farah was in the zone today. He was hammering service returns left and right, half a dozen more. He was making everything. He was seeing the ball like it was the size of a watermelon. It meant that the conclusion of the match was lopsided. The score had been knotted in the second set, Begemann loses the next four games of that set to go down 6-1. There isn't much Begemann can do in the third set, and final score Farah 3-6 6-1 6-2. But even though it was lopsided it was good to watch, because again it wasn't that Begemann wasn't playing well, he wasn't giving the match to Farah. It was that Farah was in the zone, taking it, having one of those days you dream of having as a player every day. I don't know if Farah will be in the zone every day!

This was just the first half of the day's excitement. But I'll have to talk about that later... I'm getting ready to go on a big trip, have to prepare for today, so I'll end and publish this post, but believe me, the best is yet to come!

white elephant by white house

When Borders started expanding nationally in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the DC market was a major one. Borders #10, #29, #45, #50, #89, #112, an overrepresentation of their best stores. Borders #50 at 18th and L Sts. in downtown Washington was probably for a very very long time one of the best Borders in the country, maybe even one of the best bookstores in the country. An incredible depth of selection, sold tons of books, lunchtime at the store was like a gold mine five days a week.

So ten years ago, when Borders opened up a new store in downtown DC around a mile from their downtown flagship and right by the White House, big things were clearly expected. Huge store on two main levels each with one or two mezzanine levels, filled with books in all shapes, sizes, varieties.

And it was a white elephant.

It just never sold the quantity of books that you'd expect from a store that was clearly designed to be a major store. Not even close. Maybe it was because it was a downtown location that looked nice but really wasn't. One block from the White House meant the store could only be approached from one direction, so even though it was in the middle of downtown it was at the same time on the edge of downtown, with less ability to draw the day crowd from a radius.

And now the white elephant is closed. Noticed on that last trip to DC that they were having a going out of business store at that location. I did some math and asked an employee if it was a ten-year lease that was up, which is kind of what it was. Twenty year lease, but some kind of buyout option or such halfway through, so Borders is gone and a local restaurant chain will turn the space into a downstairs night club and an upstairs restaurant, which might give you an idea of the space that the downstairs could become a night spot. You can read about the plans in the Washington Post article here.

This is in keeping with a pronouncement during a conference call earlier in the year that Borders would try and be more aggressive in getting out of bad leases, so this is a good thing and a sad thing. I mean, I'm never entirely happy to see a bookstore close, but I can't imagine with the rent this location must have carried and the volume the store was doing that Borders ever made a dime at this location. And when you have to start taking a big space like this that was designed to have a big music and movies department, only there aren't any sales in music and movies any longer, and start renovating out the music and movies and still making the store look somewhat filled with merchandise... part of me wishes they'd known 18 months ago the store wasn't long for the world and not spent whatever they spent on the last round of renovations, same thing at the West Hollywood Borders that closed at the start of 2010.

And yet as happy as I kind of am to see that Borders will no longer be allocating resources to this white elephant, I remember the excitement I felt on my first visit ten years ago, exploring every nook and cranny of a huge space lovingly designed to be a showplace for the printed word.

The 18th and L store is still there, and still good, but will never be as good as it was. After three rounds of renovation most of the character was renovated out of it. And in the cash flow crisis two years ago, the depth of selection at the truly great Borders stores was one of the things that was foolishly sacrificed and can never be regained.

Borders alas has a lot of legacy real estate like store #412 in downtown DC, very big boxes that were designed for selling categories of merchandise that no longer exist to sell profitably.

Other Borders news, I did see a big red table at the Columbus Circle store that will be the home of their AreaE space for selling e-book readers in a Borders the same way B&N has been devoting space to the Nook. I'm curious to see how that will go.

it's like watching courts dry

The weather was even worse on Wednesday than on Tuesday. Rain all morning. Instead of a cameo appearance at the office I worked a full half day, then went into Manhattan for Wednesday comic shopping (the bright side of the dreary day) and visited a couple bookstores before heading out to tennis. Got there 3:15-3:30 and court drying started 3:40ish.

Court drying for qualifying is not done with the same speed as what you might see after a main draw rain delay on a show court. Not near as much manpower put on the task. Several years ago armies if squeegee people were put out. Now they have zamboni like machines to suck up moisture and modified leaf blowers which are incredibly obnoxious to be near. A few minutes quicker than with the squeegees but so unpleasant.

Drying starts on the larger outside courts then outward to the most outlying where the least interesting matches have been put. I started out watching a women's match on Court 7 because it was dry and going around 4:40 and I could see when the match I wanted to see on Court 5 was ready. Which ended up being 40 minutes later a full set in on Court 7.

While watching on Court 7, I look a few feet away and see a man who looks just like Patrick McEnroe. Can't be, can it. He's in civvies and Patrick is always wearing a suit on TV. Was Patrick. I sneak a peek after at the credential of one of the people he was talking to and it says Jose Higueras, who is one of the coaches working with the USTA on player development, which is one of the things Patrick works on. This is one of the nice things about going to the quallies, that you never know who might pop in to the seat next to you. But enough about Court 7, neither the 20-year old American, Madison Brengle, or the 24 year-old French woman Claire De Gubernatis, figure to be lasting parts of the Open. Over on Court 6, which doesn't have a lot of seating, you've got two Americans playing, Amer Delic and Michael Yani. If you've got two Americans and they're not playing on Court 7 or 11, or maybe 10 or 13, that's a clear sign that great things are not expected.

Court 5 was chosen because I'd heard of neither, a player for Portugral by the name of Leonardo Taveras, and from Spain, Guillermo Alcaide. An epic battle of the Iberian peninsula. Check out the stats, the two are very even, 24 and 26, 115K or 135K in career prize money, 30Ks this year, ranked 200 give or take, career high ranks very similar. It is a fairly tight match, I do think it's Alcaide who is the better player, and who wins, 6-4 and 6-2. Neither seems really great, it's one of those decent first round matches that reminds you often can't cast judgments until later rounds when you see two players that look good playing someone very similar going against someone 80 spots higher in the rankings. On the next court over, there's a 22-year old from Belgium, Ruben Bemelmans, playing against another of those QSF (Qualifying Since Forever) guys Thiago Alves from Brazil, who may be better than either person on Court 5, even though he's maybe 20 ranking spots better and 2 years younger. Alves makes a Frank Dancevic from yesterday seem like Federer. 28 years old, pro for ten years, never above 88 in the rankings.

I stick around to watch Italian Simone Bolelli against Hungarian Andreas Haider-Maurer. Bolelli I've heard of, he'd gotten as high as #36 in the world. But he's no great shakes, I even think the 24 years old from Hungary may be playing better even if he isn't winning. Bottom line, I"m really bored by the match. I don't do this often, but I decide to leave. Haider-Maurer does stage a comeback to win the match in three sets, and maybe it would have been interesting to watch but I kind of think not. No regrets. But I can keep Haider-Maurer in mind, maybe, for round 2.

It's been a long time I've been in the area of courts 6/7 and 4/5 so I wander a bit, end up settling a few games in on the other side of the grounds, Court 15 for Hungarian Attila Balazs against Italian Matteo Viola. Hadn't heard of either,don't get to see many Hungarians. If you're clicking links to the bios or reading in detail you'll notice that a lot of the players in the qualifying aren't 18 year old prodigies, like several years ago when I saw QSF Jeff Salzenstein drummed out of the quallies by Marco Baghdatis. You hope to see that future top 10 player, most of the time you don't. So on Court 15, you've got a 21-year old and a 23-year old. I think there's more life in watching Attila at 23, but he also seems a little loose in his playing and goes down to the slightly older Italian. Today's results aside, Balazs may be going into the top 100 some day, I'd be surprised if Viola is going to go far beyond his current rank of 264.

The next match aborning of interest is on Court 9, with Andre Begemann of Germany against Robert Farah of Columbia. I think I've vaguely heard of Farah, though looking at his ranking or his Google results I can't figure why. Solid USC player but I don't follow the college game. Begemann is a German journeyman whom I don't think I've seen before. It's somewhat a tight match, and not bad to watch. And then... a little after 8, drops start falling. Begemann isn't happy when the chair umpire takes them off the court when he has a chance to break back early in the 2nd set, having won the first. but the lines are dried, players go back on for a point or two. But the rain, extremely light as it is, keeps coming. Players sit down again. Rain still light but getting heavier. And the problem now is that it's just heavy enough that it isn't just the lines that would need to be dried, because now the courts are wet. Not very wet, hardly wet at all, but wet enough that it would be a bit drying them. Players go back to locker rooms, they ain't coming back. Frustrating. The very light rain stops before I'm three or five minutes away, you can see the skies are clearing, even see a star or two, but in the quallies if the players go back to the locker room after dark, they're not coming back. That's a difference between the main draw just about anywhere where you've got way more money at stake, here not really.

Vanilla chip at at the Lemon Ice King, and unlike last night there's a bocce game going on which I watch while enjoying my ice. My vanilla ice is so, so, so good I want to have another, but I tell myself I can't, haven't worked off the calories near enough. Tomorrow is another day...

You can go deep into my August 2008 archives and maybe one in September for posts on my last visit to the quallies. I wasn't much excited about anyone then, let's hope for better this year...

Tennis, anyone? 2010 Pt 1

The forecast kept getting worse and worse as the day approached but I was still excited, after missing event in 2009, to be hitting the USTA National Tennis Center on Tuesday August 24 under cloudy skies for the first day of qualifying for the US Open.

But which match to see. It is nice to see players I've seen before but not nice to see players who have been qualifying since forever. Nice to see new faces but not nice to spend three hours watching #203 vs #258 while both adequately demonstrate the correctness of their rankings.

I ended up going to Court 7 to see American Ryan Harrison against a Frenchman Jonathan Dasnieres de Veigy. Him I knew nothing about. Harrison had received a wild card two years ago as a top high school player. He looked very young then, had lots if baby fat, but played impressively for his age. Now 18, Harrison is noticeably thinner and very collegiate.

Alas, drops started to fall not very long into the match and then more than drops and there was a rain delay no more than a half hour in to the match. Didn't rain too hard or too long but by the time they're sure it's OK to start drying the courts and then dry and then get the ball persons and lines judges and players back out... it was three hours before play resumed. Harrison did come out early for a quick practice hit.

How is Harrison? Who knows. The French guy wasn't good enough to test him. Harrison was up 5-1 in the first set when the rains came. After the delay, a few games into the 2nd set, the wind really picked up. Harrison didn't deal well with the bad conditions, got frustrated, then angry. But he settled down, adjusted a bit, the wind died down a bit, he won handily in two sets.

I had invited a Canadian to join me, so for the next match I violated the rule on not watching people who've been qualifying forever and went to see Frank Dancevic. He peaked three years ago, but just barely high enough (#65) to just barely make the draw without qualifying, behind an appearance in the finals of the Indianapolis event in 2007. That year, he had a winnable first round match in the Open against Marat Safin, but he lost. The difference: Dancevic's lack of experience in those moments. Today he outplayed a Czech journeyman Ivo Minar, who also had a peak ranking in the 60s, and both Minar and Dancevic born in 1984. Talk about your evenly matched players, though on this day Dancevic looked in considerably better form. Straight sets victory 6-3 6-4.

We stayed nearby to watch Aussie Greg Jones play Frenchman Edouard Roger-Vasselin, the #4 seed in the qualifying. I do not often pay much attention to the 5-minute warmup before each match, but I noticed here that Roger-Vasselin had a deer-in-headlights aspect to his at-net volleying. Jones seemed much more assured. This was the highest quality tennis, with Roger-Vasselin taking the first set and Jones the second. I was expecting a tight struggle for set #3 but it was not to be. Jones went up early, Roger-Vasselin started acting like he had a plane to catch, and it was done. Jones has an 0-1 record in main tour events, nonetheless the better player won. Jones also stares very intently at his foot before each serve.

On Court 13, Kei Nishikori had taken the court to play the forever-qualifying Paul Capdeville of Chile. He was having a hard time closing out Capdeville. Ahead by a set and up 5-4 in the 2nd set, he lost the next three games and the two were early in their 3rd set as Jones was winning on Court 14. We went next court to watch the final set. Nishikori had emerged atop 5-3 after some back and forth in the early games when the rains came again, and the day ended at around seven.

I did a brief tour with my guest of Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Plenty of late-night soccer action still going on in the gloaming. New since my last visit skateboard park by the LIE overpass so no need to skateboard pn the overpass itself. The New York State Pavilion is still rotting away. But the fountain beneath the Unisphere has just been refurbished and was at its full glory for the first time in a decade. Off to the Lemon Ice King of Corona (medium mint chip for me), good Indian at Mehfil in Jackson Heights, and the day was done.

Considering the forecast, no complaints to have seen three full matches. First round rarely has great matches, a lot of journeyman, or mismatches of #103 vs #303, but I so love just being there. And the things you see in the first round help to build the story-lines.