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One of the reasons we went to Argentina was to attend the first ever furry convention in the country, ArFF. Fox Amoore was the guest of honour at the event and he had first suggested we attend back in November, when we saw him and Pepper play at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. We delayed the decision largely due to Brexit, but once the threat of a No Deal was postponed until at least October, we saw no reason not to attend. This meant we had to book all of the flights and accommodation quickly, and it resulted in us staying at the Hotel Mundial just down the street rather than the con hotel proper, which had sold out in the interim. This, like most of the buildings on Avenida de Mayo, was resplendent in its faded glory, with the hotel dating back to the turn of the twentieth century, which was very much Argentina's boomtime. Since then, the city has faded a little, and this could be said of both the Mundial and the Castelar, which is where the con took place. Our hotel was rather basic, with single glazing meaning that the noise from the busy road was an issue. It also meant that the room was rather cold, what with this being the middle of the Argentinian winter, but despite these gripes, the room was a reasonable enough base and we spent most of our time in the Castelar anyway. Wolfie was not a fan of the sheer drop down five floors though, while the mechanical lifts where you had to manually shut two doors for them to operate did take some getting used to.
The con itself was fantastic, with the tone being set from the start with the Opening Ceremony. The highlight here was a ten-minute roleplay-style video game clip starring Gecko, who was sent on a mission to Fortress Castelar. This was very cleverly done and I was told took three whole days of filming in various locations across Buenos Aires. It ended with Gecko gatecrashing the ceremony, enabling chairman Polichio to get proceedings underway. Everything was conducted in Spanish, but I understood enough to get the gist, even if South American Spanish is pronounced quite differently to the Castillian version I learned ten years ago. Indeed, towards the end of the con, I was acting as something of an unofficial interpreter for Wolfie and Fox Amoore, which did boost my ego somewhat, despite my Spanish being generally ropey.
The Ceremony went on for about an hour and a half (which felt longer as we had had our beer confiscated as the furry specific bar had not yet opened and we weren't allowed to drink beer in the main hall, even if it had been purchased in the hotel bar). The only hiccup during the ceremony was the Chilean flag being left off the presentational slide - a point rectified at the Closing Ceremony, with huge cheers from the Chilean contingent when their flag popped up on the very same slide, after Poli had initially given the impression it had been forgotten again. Interestingly, Wolfie and I were the only British contingent there, what with Fox specifically claiming Scottish heritage, which is something which would have interesting consequences deeper into the con (I also wished I had thought the same to be honest). Being the only Brits did give us an element of exoticism though and it was quite good being the sole representatives of our country here, despite my current antipathy towards it.
We spent a great deal at ArFF in Fox Amoore's room chilling and sampling beers we had bought in Carrefour. His room was quite large, with a separate yellow-walled sitting room which resembled one of those places where press conferences between two Soviet leaders took place in the 1980s. Indeed, when it was just Fox and I occupying the oversized plush chairs, it felt a little like that. We were mostly with Fox's friends though, many of whom he had met at last year's Brazil Furfest, including Koga who was to become our closest new friend at the event (indeed I regret missing his participation in the dance competition, with me only able to catch the second half of this panel). He and Fox kindly introduced us to the main organisers of BFF, an event we are now going to attend either this year or next, while it was great to spend time catching up with Fox too, at one point even sharing some cone shaped local chocolates that looked a little like buttplugs with him. Usually at bigger cons he is so busy performing or selling at the Dealer's Den that we often miss each other, but ArFF was considerably smaller and much more relaxed, meaning it was much easier to spend time together.
This was particularly the case on the Saturday night, which all got rather messy. The fulcrum point of the evening was Fox's performance, his first in Argentina and one of the showpiece events of the con. However, the keyboard was not compatable with the cabling and thus he was forced to perform on a mini Casio keyboard on the floor, with the audience huddled in a semi-circle around him. Not one to be deterred, he put on a virtuoso performance, even if he did occasionally sing 'cock' instead of 'clap' in one of Foxes and Peppers' more infamous songs. At one point he also played the keyboard behind his head. The highlight of the hour long set of course was Hey Jude, a guaranteed singalong number, although splitting the singing down by country meant that Wolfie and I, as the only two Brits, were effectively duetting it at one point. Fox refused to join in for some reason, despite my prompting and him having a microphone, but we gave a good account of ourselves considering there were at least twenty furs from all of the other countries nominated for the singalong. Fox later admitted to us that this was one of his most memorable gigs, while I had to confess that I had now seen him on three occasions live - on the floor, in a corridor and at the Cavern Club, with the latter being the most incongruous.
After the gig, well it descended into alcohol-fuelled anarchy. We ended up at a room party where someone had thrown a sock on top of a curtain rail for some reason and where I was hoovering up any booze I could find - some creamy eggnog stuff, some 'high quality' tequila that I simply couldn't drink and the ubiquitous beer - before we were turfed out at 1:30am to go to the rave. With a furry bar next to the main stage and Fox amongst our party, we ended up being given a wide array of drinks including some rum-based hell that must have had at least four shots in it. We also had the unpalatably named 'furry drink' which actually tasted quite nice, before Wolfie surprised us all with his excellent dancing to hardhouse music, a side of him I had never seen before in over twelve years of furry marriage.
Saturday was always going to be our main party night as an early start on Monday morning meant a reasonably early night on the Sunday. And with Saturday being the main day of the con too, much of the action was condensed into this day. I decided not to do any fursuiting, partly because Fox had kindly agreed to let me use his room as a base and I didn't want to disturb his peformance preparation and partly because I had agreed to run an impromptu Snack Exchange with Narumi in the middle of the day. Narumi is an Argentinian fur currently living in the Czech Republic and she had kindly brought a load of produce from there over. I had done the same from Britian, largely responding to the requests that the Argentinian furs had given me on the ArFF Telegram chat, while I also decided to bring some Marmite for a laugh. Indeed, I do enjoy inflicting Marmite on the furries of the world, so much so that I am starting to gain something of a reputation for it, but watching people's reactions to this strange salty foodstuff is priceless. Alas, we didn't get chance to revisit our Marmite Oreos escapades from Gdakon, but with a packet of breadsticks, we certainly got loads of people to try it. We definitely made an impression as we featured on the end of con round-up video in the Closing Ceremony, although watching my corpulent frame on the big screen did give me significant body issues for the next seventy-two hours or so. This is not to distract from the Snack Exchange though, which also had salt and vinegar crisps, liquorice allsorts, rhubard and custard boiled sweets and Pontefract cakes. We got to try a range of Mexican, Czech and Argentinian foods too and we found the whole thing a real ice breaker, getting to meet a lot of new furs through this sharing process.
I had known about eight furs heading into the event and had spoken to a number on the ArFF Telegram chat in the six weeks prior to the con. I had done this in Spanish, perhaps giving the impression I was far more fluent than I actually am, but most people spoke decent English so we did not have many communication issues. We also knew Crash, who it was a pleasure to get to know better too, as he too is someone who is in high demand at the bigger cons due to his general awesomeness. Further to this, we had met some furs in Buenos Aires on the Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday before the con - I'll detail those days in a later post - so we weren't entering the con alone. Furthermore, everyone was really friendly and genuinely interested in the UK, meaning making friends was very easy indeed. One such example of this was the Fox Amoore gets introduced to Argentinian Culture panel on the Sunday afternoon, where Fox got to try a range of local delicacies. I was sat with the Cordboa furs about four rows from the front, specifically with the larger than life Markov, who insisted that I try the vast majority of things Fox was trying on stage. This meant I got to try fruity party balls and Alfajores, a snack cake of two layers of sponge held together with jam or dulce de leche, with the whole thing being covered with icing and tasting rather sweet. We had sampled one at the ferry terminal going to Uruguay the previous Thursday (I'll write about this later too), but this one was a lot better. Once done, Fox also gave me some Manaos to sample, the local cola drink which was pleasant enough although it was hard to judge as it was rather warm. He was somewhat besotted with it though.
All of this had taken place after the Fursuit Walk, a pleasant yomp around the streets near the hotel, which ended up outside a water fountain on the main Avenida 9 de Julio. The walk itself was alright although it did necessitate the crossing of a number of busy roads, meaning I couldn't act up as much as I would like. I can be a terror when fursuiting and I did have an argument with a bin and pretended to be electrocuted when I saw a corresponding warning sign, but knowing how difficult it is to arrange a fursuit walk near busy roads, I decided to be vaguely sensible. The photograph was taken with a drone, which was a good idea as there was no raised area to enable the suiters at the back to be seen, while the obligatory put your paws in the air pose inevitably meant I was hidden behind a huge furry arm. At least with the drone, this did not happen although I was conspicuously absent in the pictures taken at ground level. Still, it was a nice little soujorn, as was the half hour wait outside the hotel before the walk began, which drew quite the crowd of locals. This local interest continued in the rather tight-fitting Fursuit Lounge as I noticed the window was at the right height to be able to wave at people on the top floor of the tourist buses which frequently parked outside the hotel picking up and dropping off tourists.
Beyond that, there isn't too much more to report. The con was very similar to FURUM in layout, occupying one floor of a largeish hotel, with most of the hotel being occupied by normies. We had our own contained facilities meaning we could all largely hang together. At registration, we were all divided into teams and we had the option of receiving quests from each team leader, but I didn't get any time to do this, which was a shame. The Dealer's Den was small and I didn't spend too long in here, although I did buy a T-shirt of the ArFF dog DJing from Con Ops, which I found quite sweet (incidently, Con Ops was called Coon Ops and had a picture of a racoon on the banner advertising it - I am not sure they were aware of the racial connotation of the word). I was also indebted to Fox Amoore for letting me use his room as a base for fursuiting and indeed for storage ahead of the Snack Exchange, as well as his ability to secure an ArFF branded mate cup and tea packet for me after I forgot to upgrade to Sponsor (I messed up the timezone differences and was a day out). Chatting with Fox about fame in the Fandom and observing how he deals with it was also fascinating, while it was also great making future travel plans with him as it's highly likely we are going to be doing a lot more touring together.
Ultimately then it was a great little con, with all of the organisers putting their hearts and souls into the event. Indeed, the outpouring of emotion and the genuine distress that the con was over at the Closing Ceremony bore testimony to the meticulous nature and care that the staff put into it. Furthermore, the heartfelt joy from the Bacalan charity representatives upon hearing we had raised ARS$80,647 for their cause (Poli deliberately mislead them initially, telling them it was ARS$40,385), a figure with which they were delighted too) was truly heartwarming and affirming, marking a really positive end to the convention. Everything ran smoothly aside from a few timing issues and the aforementioned keyboard mix-up, while it was great to make a great number of new friends on a new continent. We'll definitely be back in South America before long.
The con itself was fantastic, with the tone being set from the start with the Opening Ceremony. The highlight here was a ten-minute roleplay-style video game clip starring Gecko, who was sent on a mission to Fortress Castelar. This was very cleverly done and I was told took three whole days of filming in various locations across Buenos Aires. It ended with Gecko gatecrashing the ceremony, enabling chairman Polichio to get proceedings underway. Everything was conducted in Spanish, but I understood enough to get the gist, even if South American Spanish is pronounced quite differently to the Castillian version I learned ten years ago. Indeed, towards the end of the con, I was acting as something of an unofficial interpreter for Wolfie and Fox Amoore, which did boost my ego somewhat, despite my Spanish being generally ropey.
The Ceremony went on for about an hour and a half (which felt longer as we had had our beer confiscated as the furry specific bar had not yet opened and we weren't allowed to drink beer in the main hall, even if it had been purchased in the hotel bar). The only hiccup during the ceremony was the Chilean flag being left off the presentational slide - a point rectified at the Closing Ceremony, with huge cheers from the Chilean contingent when their flag popped up on the very same slide, after Poli had initially given the impression it had been forgotten again. Interestingly, Wolfie and I were the only British contingent there, what with Fox specifically claiming Scottish heritage, which is something which would have interesting consequences deeper into the con (I also wished I had thought the same to be honest). Being the only Brits did give us an element of exoticism though and it was quite good being the sole representatives of our country here, despite my current antipathy towards it.
We spent a great deal at ArFF in Fox Amoore's room chilling and sampling beers we had bought in Carrefour. His room was quite large, with a separate yellow-walled sitting room which resembled one of those places where press conferences between two Soviet leaders took place in the 1980s. Indeed, when it was just Fox and I occupying the oversized plush chairs, it felt a little like that. We were mostly with Fox's friends though, many of whom he had met at last year's Brazil Furfest, including Koga who was to become our closest new friend at the event (indeed I regret missing his participation in the dance competition, with me only able to catch the second half of this panel). He and Fox kindly introduced us to the main organisers of BFF, an event we are now going to attend either this year or next, while it was great to spend time catching up with Fox too, at one point even sharing some cone shaped local chocolates that looked a little like buttplugs with him. Usually at bigger cons he is so busy performing or selling at the Dealer's Den that we often miss each other, but ArFF was considerably smaller and much more relaxed, meaning it was much easier to spend time together.
This was particularly the case on the Saturday night, which all got rather messy. The fulcrum point of the evening was Fox's performance, his first in Argentina and one of the showpiece events of the con. However, the keyboard was not compatable with the cabling and thus he was forced to perform on a mini Casio keyboard on the floor, with the audience huddled in a semi-circle around him. Not one to be deterred, he put on a virtuoso performance, even if he did occasionally sing 'cock' instead of 'clap' in one of Foxes and Peppers' more infamous songs. At one point he also played the keyboard behind his head. The highlight of the hour long set of course was Hey Jude, a guaranteed singalong number, although splitting the singing down by country meant that Wolfie and I, as the only two Brits, were effectively duetting it at one point. Fox refused to join in for some reason, despite my prompting and him having a microphone, but we gave a good account of ourselves considering there were at least twenty furs from all of the other countries nominated for the singalong. Fox later admitted to us that this was one of his most memorable gigs, while I had to confess that I had now seen him on three occasions live - on the floor, in a corridor and at the Cavern Club, with the latter being the most incongruous.
After the gig, well it descended into alcohol-fuelled anarchy. We ended up at a room party where someone had thrown a sock on top of a curtain rail for some reason and where I was hoovering up any booze I could find - some creamy eggnog stuff, some 'high quality' tequila that I simply couldn't drink and the ubiquitous beer - before we were turfed out at 1:30am to go to the rave. With a furry bar next to the main stage and Fox amongst our party, we ended up being given a wide array of drinks including some rum-based hell that must have had at least four shots in it. We also had the unpalatably named 'furry drink' which actually tasted quite nice, before Wolfie surprised us all with his excellent dancing to hardhouse music, a side of him I had never seen before in over twelve years of furry marriage.
Saturday was always going to be our main party night as an early start on Monday morning meant a reasonably early night on the Sunday. And with Saturday being the main day of the con too, much of the action was condensed into this day. I decided not to do any fursuiting, partly because Fox had kindly agreed to let me use his room as a base and I didn't want to disturb his peformance preparation and partly because I had agreed to run an impromptu Snack Exchange with Narumi in the middle of the day. Narumi is an Argentinian fur currently living in the Czech Republic and she had kindly brought a load of produce from there over. I had done the same from Britian, largely responding to the requests that the Argentinian furs had given me on the ArFF Telegram chat, while I also decided to bring some Marmite for a laugh. Indeed, I do enjoy inflicting Marmite on the furries of the world, so much so that I am starting to gain something of a reputation for it, but watching people's reactions to this strange salty foodstuff is priceless. Alas, we didn't get chance to revisit our Marmite Oreos escapades from Gdakon, but with a packet of breadsticks, we certainly got loads of people to try it. We definitely made an impression as we featured on the end of con round-up video in the Closing Ceremony, although watching my corpulent frame on the big screen did give me significant body issues for the next seventy-two hours or so. This is not to distract from the Snack Exchange though, which also had salt and vinegar crisps, liquorice allsorts, rhubard and custard boiled sweets and Pontefract cakes. We got to try a range of Mexican, Czech and Argentinian foods too and we found the whole thing a real ice breaker, getting to meet a lot of new furs through this sharing process.
I had known about eight furs heading into the event and had spoken to a number on the ArFF Telegram chat in the six weeks prior to the con. I had done this in Spanish, perhaps giving the impression I was far more fluent than I actually am, but most people spoke decent English so we did not have many communication issues. We also knew Crash, who it was a pleasure to get to know better too, as he too is someone who is in high demand at the bigger cons due to his general awesomeness. Further to this, we had met some furs in Buenos Aires on the Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday before the con - I'll detail those days in a later post - so we weren't entering the con alone. Furthermore, everyone was really friendly and genuinely interested in the UK, meaning making friends was very easy indeed. One such example of this was the Fox Amoore gets introduced to Argentinian Culture panel on the Sunday afternoon, where Fox got to try a range of local delicacies. I was sat with the Cordboa furs about four rows from the front, specifically with the larger than life Markov, who insisted that I try the vast majority of things Fox was trying on stage. This meant I got to try fruity party balls and Alfajores, a snack cake of two layers of sponge held together with jam or dulce de leche, with the whole thing being covered with icing and tasting rather sweet. We had sampled one at the ferry terminal going to Uruguay the previous Thursday (I'll write about this later too), but this one was a lot better. Once done, Fox also gave me some Manaos to sample, the local cola drink which was pleasant enough although it was hard to judge as it was rather warm. He was somewhat besotted with it though.
All of this had taken place after the Fursuit Walk, a pleasant yomp around the streets near the hotel, which ended up outside a water fountain on the main Avenida 9 de Julio. The walk itself was alright although it did necessitate the crossing of a number of busy roads, meaning I couldn't act up as much as I would like. I can be a terror when fursuiting and I did have an argument with a bin and pretended to be electrocuted when I saw a corresponding warning sign, but knowing how difficult it is to arrange a fursuit walk near busy roads, I decided to be vaguely sensible. The photograph was taken with a drone, which was a good idea as there was no raised area to enable the suiters at the back to be seen, while the obligatory put your paws in the air pose inevitably meant I was hidden behind a huge furry arm. At least with the drone, this did not happen although I was conspicuously absent in the pictures taken at ground level. Still, it was a nice little soujorn, as was the half hour wait outside the hotel before the walk began, which drew quite the crowd of locals. This local interest continued in the rather tight-fitting Fursuit Lounge as I noticed the window was at the right height to be able to wave at people on the top floor of the tourist buses which frequently parked outside the hotel picking up and dropping off tourists.
Beyond that, there isn't too much more to report. The con was very similar to FURUM in layout, occupying one floor of a largeish hotel, with most of the hotel being occupied by normies. We had our own contained facilities meaning we could all largely hang together. At registration, we were all divided into teams and we had the option of receiving quests from each team leader, but I didn't get any time to do this, which was a shame. The Dealer's Den was small and I didn't spend too long in here, although I did buy a T-shirt of the ArFF dog DJing from Con Ops, which I found quite sweet (incidently, Con Ops was called Coon Ops and had a picture of a racoon on the banner advertising it - I am not sure they were aware of the racial connotation of the word). I was also indebted to Fox Amoore for letting me use his room as a base for fursuiting and indeed for storage ahead of the Snack Exchange, as well as his ability to secure an ArFF branded mate cup and tea packet for me after I forgot to upgrade to Sponsor (I messed up the timezone differences and was a day out). Chatting with Fox about fame in the Fandom and observing how he deals with it was also fascinating, while it was also great making future travel plans with him as it's highly likely we are going to be doing a lot more touring together.
Ultimately then it was a great little con, with all of the organisers putting their hearts and souls into the event. Indeed, the outpouring of emotion and the genuine distress that the con was over at the Closing Ceremony bore testimony to the meticulous nature and care that the staff put into it. Furthermore, the heartfelt joy from the Bacalan charity representatives upon hearing we had raised ARS$80,647 for their cause (Poli deliberately mislead them initially, telling them it was ARS$40,385), a figure with which they were delighted too) was truly heartwarming and affirming, marking a really positive end to the convention. Everything ran smoothly aside from a few timing issues and the aforementioned keyboard mix-up, while it was great to make a great number of new friends on a new continent. We'll definitely be back in South America before long.
