Updates from a Brick Fanatic (Part 2)

Last Sunday I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Bricks Cascade, a wonderful Lego show at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland. I had never been in the convention center, so after navigating the MAX line to the center, I came to the massive building with its iconic spires on Martin Luther King Jr. boulevard, bought my ticket, and was greeted with this once in the showroom:

The hustle and bustle of the showroom was amazingly busy: kids, adults, vendors, and builders, all in one place, showing off their creations and creativity. Here are some of the highlights I found as I circled the area:

 

Many of these pictures are pretty self explanatory, but the original brown sky scraper is a Portland landmark, but I'm not exactly sure what it is called. It reminds me that I am still very new to this place, and that I haven't even explored much of the city which is right across the river from me.

There was a micro-scale series, which I really love to look at and see how builders can create understandable scenes with very little, minimalist bricks. Here are some examples of the micro-scale creations.

The micro-scale sets led to some of the oldest Lego pieces I have ever seen. These are some pieces which are from the 1930's, when the idea of the interlocking brick was just beginning to take shape:

Finally, to show the ultimate creativity of the people showing their builds, there were many movie theater creations which actually had either tablets or portable DVD players built into the "screen" part of the theater. I thought this was genius, so I snapped a couple of pictures:

All in all, the Sunday conference started an uptick in my attitude and mental state which has led me into this week feeling some of the best I have felt in a while. A lot of it is probably the new found sunshine, but a lot of it is also the warmth which visits the region during the day, along with the increasing sense that there is more to explore and to discover, especially when it isn't grey and rainy for months. But more on that to come later. For now, enjoy the Lego pictures, and maybe even take out some of your old sets and build some yourself!