The Observor: Winding Down in San Diego

As promised, I’m back this week with a final installation of stories from my trip to Pro Tour-San Diego. This time, rather than giving you my lead-in travel stories or my glimpse into the average day of coverage-types the world over, I’ve decided to share a few of the more interesting miscellaneous goings on from the last days of the event. As Saturday draws to a close, things get terribly hectic as we prepare all of the things required to provide Top 8 coverage, such as photographs, those lovely little player bios that I’m sure you guys all read intently as you’re going through the coverage, all of the Top 64 decklists (this one’s the real pain), and the like. It takes us for-freaking-ever to get done, but afterwards, there is calm that settles in akin to the gradual calming of the sea after a powerful storm. We have a significantly later start time on Sunday, and it isn’t as long of a day, so the last day is really the beginning of a whole different kind of fun.

The first great story from Magical Sunday comes near the end of the work day. The whole weekend, I had been ribbing Patrick Sullivan, New Jersey transplant, game designer extraordinaire, and Good Man of the Yearâ„¢ Nominee, about the fact that we always talk about playing basketball, but have never really had the opportunity to. Well, with us both in San Diego, him having a ball in his trunk, and there being a court just a mere five minute walk from the event site, it appeared the time had come. I immediately made sure that I covered the semifinals, which would allow me to have the finals off so I could finish my stuff early and get out for the game.

A quick aside. I am tall and skinny, which is the second-best build for basketball behind tall and athletic. Do not let my general lack of body fat trick you into assuming that I’m in shape. I am in fact not. I am so out of shape that the four-story staircase I had to climb to get over the convention center and back to the basketball court, combined with the general state of dehydration I worked hard to achieve over the course of the weekend, spelled muscle cramps before I even made it back down the other side of the staircase. Ominous.

Arriving at the court already out of breath, I was pleased to see some familiar faces. Pat, Gabe Walls, Carlos Romao, and That Guy I Don’t Know were already deep into the first game. I could tell this was going to be a good group to play with. I know Gabe like the back of my hand. He’s one of my ringers from back in Indiana, though he’s considerably more of a known commodity amongst these guys by now. Gabe is a bigger dude, though down considerably in weight, but he has a shot and quick hands that really belie his size. Carlos is an inch taller than me and outweighs me by a solid buck twenty. Luckily I play against a guy just like him at home all the time, so I know the type. As for That Guy I Don’t Know, we have a veritable farm-league of them back home, so I wasn’t going to worry too much.

Then there was Pat. Pat is tall, though shorter than I. Pat is in shape. Very good shape. Pat can dribble. Pat can also shoot. This was going to be a rough one.

After shooting around a little bit to warm up, I quickly realize that I haven’t played in about six months since, unlike San Diego, we actually have winter in Indiana. Considering all of these things, the game goes pretty much according to plan, meaning we lost. Big time.

Perhaps the most interesting thing that happened during the basketball game had nothing to do with the game itself. While we were running around doing our best Washington Generals impression, we failed to notice the gathering crowd of local hipsters amassing under a pavilion to our left. I think the first thing that actually grabbed my attention was when they started assembling DJ equipment at the back. Within about five minutes, we were under assault from a flash dance party. It was the strangest, most awesomest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Being a reformed hipster kid myself, I was a bit sad when it started raining and our basketball game broke up. If I wasn’t dead tired, in desperate need of a shower, and planning to head to our staff dinner in an hour or so, I would have loved to stick around.

Speaking of staff dinners, this brings me to the final ridiculous happening of pretty much every Pro Tour weekend. After every Pro Tour, all of the people who worked hard to make the event a success are treated to a group dinner at a nice restaurant to enjoy each other’s company and tell some of the more colorful stories from the weekend. This time, we went to a little Spanish restaurant in the Gaslamp district. More often than not, the coverage guys tend to occupy our own section of the table, and we can get pretty rowdy. After all, it’s our job to collect stories over the weekend, and we always love telling them, especially the ones that we can’t put in the actual coverage.

Anyhoo, this time, amidst stories of Magic stalkers, people at the Pro level apparently not understanding when a card isn’t in Standard (nice Damnations in the board), and the like, the ever-vigilant BDM brought Greg and I in close for a little huddle. In hushed tones, he revealed that he had found the holy grail: bacon-wrapped dates stuffed with bleu cheese. What originally was only available to gods, heads of state, and as last meals for sacrificial virgins had somehow made its way onto the menu of this humble Spanish restaurant in San Diego. Not ones to tempt fate, we quickly ordered a few, lest we find ourselves unable to ever find the delicacies again, wondering what might have been.

Sweet, merciful baby Jesus they were amazing! I mean, I’ve never had a food so rich. It was like eating Bill Gates soylent green. Eating it immediately put us into bullet time, and the sensation of sheer awesomeness seemed to last for years. After what has since been revealed to me to only have been a few seconds, we immediately decided that these should be kept secret, lest the unworthy find out of their existence. Only a select few, including our event manager Witney Williams (who gave us permission to taste the forbidden fruit), were allowed to have knowledge of them.

While we were all lost in a torrent of ecstasy, I noticed a hauntingly familiar melody emanating from the adjacent room. After blocking out all other ambient noise and focusing, I realized it was the Gipsy Kings’s “Volare,” which I absolutely love. Entranced by the dulcet tones, I stumbled into the next room to see from whence they came. Sitting in the other room, surrounded by a throng of admirers and willing women, two Romani sat belting out one rumba flamenca hit after another. After a few songs spent brainwashed in front of them, I went back to the table and sat with a huge grin on my face. Upbeat music like that always puts me in a good mood. Sensing the vibe, the Hagron informed me that there was supposedly a popular nightclub directly under the restaurant. Reasoning that if the music up here was this good, the nightclub had to do it one better, I immediately grabbed Rich and took off to the lower levels.

Upon reaching the stairs, however, I could tell that something wasn’t quite right. There was a ton of traffic in and out of the stairwell leading into the nightclub, which is usually a good sign. With this much patronage, one would expect a quality establishment. What we received instead was a horror beyond explanation. Compared to upstairs, where the two troubadours were playing intricate, passionate, flamenco guitar-fueled music, the lower levels were a descent into hell. For our curiosity, we were rewarded with the stereotypical horns, accordion, and giant sombreros of every Mexican restaurant you’ve ever been to in your life. I think just walking down there caused my eardrums to commit suicide. Some small part of my brain must have gone, too, because I couldn’t understand how this place could be more crowded than the upper area. There’s no accounting for taste, but when it comes to Latin forms of music, comparing mariachi music to rumba flamenca is like comparing a terrible garage band to Nirvana. Sorry man, they aren’t the same. Dumbstruck and bleeding profusely from the holes left where my sense of hearing tried to escape, I dejectedly lumbered back up the step to rejoin the party.

Little things like this are just one of the many reasons I love the Pro Tour so much. By this point, Magic has primarily become a social thing for me. I don’t play nearly as much competitively as I used to, but I still love the game and the things it affords me the opportunity to do. I love getting to meet new people and catch up with old friends. Pro Tours are a great place to do that, catch up on some gaming, and just simply create wonderful stories and experiences. I really hope that hearing about some of the interesting things I’ve gotten into at the Pro Tour inspires you to take a trip to one sometime. I interviewed a guy from DC who had made the flight out to San Diego to coincide his vacation with the Pro Tour. That’s part of the reason we schedule Pro Tours in interesting places, so you can make a trip out of it. Hopefully, the next time a Pro Tour rolls along in a destination you’d like to visit, you decide to make the trip. I promise you’ll come back with your own great stories and memories. Who knows, maybe you’ll even run into me there.

Regards,

Nate Price