MacWorld SF

The nerdom of the Sinclair days was as nothing to the nerdom of the early Mac days. For years the highlight of my year was the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco every winter. It’s always been held at Moscone Convention Center (originally just the south hall) which is an underground facility. There is a transitional space inside the front entrance but overlooking the convention floor. I remember crowding in there with thousands of other dweebs on opening day, marking up the program and planning the next several days of my life, until they finally opened the doors and let us rush in. I would be there from opening until closing each day and then there were parties and friends to meet after. At the time, BMUG (see Programming & Tech Writing) had one of the most active booths at the show (because they sold games and fonts and utilities and god knows what on thousands of 3.5” floppy disks. I helped set up and staff the booth for a number of years.

In ‘93 Moscone almost doubled in size with the opening of the north hall, connected to the south hall through a tunnel under Howard Street. (The car accident in the movie Basic Instinct was shot in the construction pit for Moscone North -- I watched the filming from the bus coming home after late shifts in Multimedia Gulch.) Ten years later Moscone was expanded again with three smaller, but still quite large, floors above ground to the west. I honestly don’t know if it’s been 10 or 15 year since I was last at MacWorld.