It's now been two weeks since Pico Day 2024, and it's about time I blurted out my thoughts about it and share my experience. In short, it was GREAT! I did not take as many pictures because of how in the moment I was.... But by the end of this post I hope to convince you to buck up, and go to a NG meetup if you haven't already!

For reference, I attended the 2022 meet up in Toronto which was a great time, but that was about 45-50 people. This was about 342 total attendees! I am impressed with how well it was managed and how civil everything was with that large group. So first, big kudos to @Tamag0, @brandybuizel, and @coby for organizing the whole thing, thanks to those who helped set up the venue and backstage crew, and of course thanks to @TomFulp and other key NG people for all your service. Thanks for making this event so great!

Rooming with the Crew

I stayed with @Spootulu @KOLANI @BeeMoonflower and @ShowaFlow in a spacious, but incredibly old BnB in Jersey. Like so old the outlets did not have ground ports, and the gas stove would not ignite without a hand lighter. It was also in the ghetto... which looked sketchy and dirty but turned out not as scary as anticipated.

I met Kolani back at the Toronto 2022 meet up when I roomed with him and @Crashtroid, it was a great to see him again and to meet his friends Holden and BeeMoonFlower, who were awesome people! Kolani drove to NJ so we had access to a car -- thanks for driving us bro, New Jersey traffic is crazy! He also brought his Gamecube with him and we all played a few classics here and there. Holden (for reasons beyond this cosmic plane) brought several copies of Windows XP with him lmao. I decided there was something very special we should do with them.

The Day of Pico

We arrived pretty much on-time at 3:00pm. The area by Williams Center was very nice and clean, with lovely shops and restaurants around. By then the courtyard outside the venue was blooming with Newgrounders, and speaking of the venue -- what a theatre!!! It must've been a very old place, I hope I wasn't the only one who appreciated the architecture. First thing we all got when we entered was the TRADING CARDS. What a fantastic idea that was, I'm very glad I submitted a design. The prints came out great and the edges were cut very crisp and sharp. Trading the cards around was a great way to start talking to people and break the ice. There was the "box" area above the theatre seats where tables were most of the mingling happened, and tables placed for stickers, signing sketch books, flags, merch, sticky note doodles, etc.

I had the pleasure of meeting some very established people there, including (but not limited to):

@TomFulp, @Krinkles, @SrPelo, @Luis, @MindChamber, @cleod9, and some very talented game developers! A whole end of the Box was dedicated to showing off games on CRTS and I had no idea games were even going to be shown there!! Next year, I hope I can get in on that. Poop Game was my favourite of them all. Fantastic controls, and looks well on its way to being finished. There was even a contest for a game to get the high score and a prize was given out!

Here's the swag I snagged during the event! I made my own shirt with sharpies lol

This was by far the funniest sticker -- whoever made it please tell me who you are, you are amazing.

I even got Tom and Luis to sign a copy of Windows XP!

I was also able to say hello to some familiar faces I met back in Toronto! @Droid, @ConnorGrail, @ninjamuffin99, I think there were more but I'm forgetting!!

The Cantina

B4 the cartoons got showing, our crew went for grub at a very nice mexican place nearby. For a bit we were the only ones there, then suddenly another bigger group flooded in and were like "yeah, we're with them!" Suddenly a bunch of newgrounders took over a whole end of the restaurant lol. We chatted up the new people who sat next to us and thanked the servers for putting up with us. Not that we were rowdy, but going from quiet to about 20 orders is a little sudden. Food was fantastic and the service was awesome.

The (silent) Cartoons

Around 6:30pm everyone shuffled to the theatre seats and prepared their eyes and ears for an epic 2 and a half hour reel of Newgrounds Films. Brandy gave a very heartfelt and inspiring speech! HE ALSO SHIT HIS PANTS LIVE! (you had to be there) Unfortunately, the audio was out during the first few minutes. But MAN, the crowd kept the energy alive with chants of ONE MORE TIME, ONE MORE TIME, as crew kept replaying this masterpiece trying to fix the problem. The energy was hilarious, and bought the crew sometime.

I know how stressful a situation like that is for crew, so I decided to get up and help as much as I could, feeling that maybe my 7 years of setup help for concerts could be of service. But diagnosing what the hell is wrong with audio is pretty difficult when you don't know the building, or the particularities of the sound equipment, and the main audio engineer is not working that day, AND the crowd is live dubbing an animation with screaming and yelling (lol). The most I was able to offer was buying the crew some silence by making an announcement on mic. Luckily they got it semi working shortly after that. I don't know if they did a sound test that day, its possible there was and some unforeseen strangeness caused the panic. But I recommend a thorough check to discover any weirdness about the equipment or building for the next hosts of a NG theatre screening.

BACK TO THE CARTOONS, the lineup was awesome!! Most of the movies I have not seen, but some I heard about. Seeing them blind was a treat, and WOW a lot of those films were top quality! It really was an amazing experience to see so much talent on the big screen. I had to go back to the playlist and rate them all afterwards. It was honestly very inspiring and someday, I hope to be involved making a cartoon or film worthy of being up there....

The rest of the night was spent mingling some more and getting last minute signatures and last minute doodles. Man... what a night. Meeting so many new people and getting a chance to tell some of my favourite content creators how much I like their stuff was just amazing. Long Live Newgrounds!!

Bonus: The Next Day

was our last full day in NJ, and we decided to hit up some local shops for retro games and New York Style Pizza. So off we went to Digital Press, I didnt buy anything, but the crew snagged some good stuff. I recommend the store to any locals! They got lots of cool stuff and you can play games in the back.

Then we went next door for some delicious pizza. This is where I was informed by text by Coby that Digital Press, the store we just wandered around in for like half an hour, was the SAME store that AVGN and Nostalgia Critic did their famous confrontation.

Whats so wild is that he deduced where we were from THIS picture, which is Kolani playing Alien Hominid in the back of the freakin' store.

And finally, the most important meal of the day:

The Villainous Mac and Cheeze

That night we got cookin' a mac so mythical, listening to MF Doom tracks so lyrical

Hyped from the start, we knew we had to make this shit. The recipe was pretty good and was fun as hell to make in a dinky kitchen with the awesome crew :) Kolani also realized he lost a sketch book that was found by Tamag0. Coincidentally, she was able to come and share the meal with us! We all made a villainous mac doodle in her book lol.

Anyway, I had quite the adventure and I'm glad I got to share it with such nice people. The venue was amazing, lots of cool things happened, and I'm inspired to create more and contribute to this wonderful community. I hope more people decide to go to meetups and meet the talented people of this great community. Cheers!