My Accidental Stumbling Upon A Star Trek Convention

One night during the summer of 1993, my friend Jeff and I decided we wanted to get away to East St. Louis. For those of you not from the area, East St. Louis is a dirty, rundown, and crime ridden area directly across the Mississippi River from St. Louis on the Illinois side. Now for whatever reason, right in the middle of East St. Louis is a huge gay bar called Faces. The big thing about Faces is the fact that it stays open until very late. I remember leaving that place at 6 or 7 the next morning quite a few times....and the bar wasn't even closed yet!

On this hot summer night, we arrived late as usual (the place doesn't get busy until after 1am usually). We were having a few drinks, dancing and having a good time. At sometime during the evening (or morning), I met a guy (Paul) who was also from out-of-town. Somewhere around 3am, Paul was getting tired and was wanting to leave the bar. He was traveling through the area and didn't have a place to go. I was about 3 hours from home, so I couldn't just offer for him to spend the night at my place. I was also losing interest in the bar that night (mainly knowing that Jeff would want to stay there until 7am at least). So I agreed to go with Paul and get a hotel room.

Remember that this was the summer of 1993, which was also the great flood of the Mississippi River and we were at this bar which was located about 1 or 2 blocks from the river. I gave my car keys to Jeff and told him that I would call his answering machine (this was before cell phones were everywhere) to let him know which hotel we went to. We took off and drove for hours! We tried all the areas on the Illinois side of the river. We drove up to about 45 miles away before we turned around and headed back to St. Louis. Finally one of the Holiday Inns we tried was completely full but offered to find us a room at another Holiday Inn in the St. Louis area. The only room available was on the far west side of St. Louis. By the time we had arrived at this point, it was now about 6am. When we finally arrived at the hotel, got checked in and into the room, it was almost 7am. I will say that they were super nice at the Holiday Inn. They charged us less than half their normal rate since we checked in so late.

We ended up sleeping in until 11am (checkout was at noon). Still half asleep, wearing the clothes from the night before and very hungry, we made our way down to the lobby to check out. When the elevator doors open up, the lobby was packed full of people. Thinking it was odd for a hotel to be this packed, we made our way to the front desk to check out. I was walking backwards talking to Jeff (who came to pick me up) and Paul. They both grabbed me to keep me from running into somebody. I turned around to apologize but was speechless when I realized I had almost ran into Data (Brent Spiner). He was in full makeup/costume. He also didn't look very happy. It was then that I realized that the hotel lobby was being overrun by a Star Trek convention. But Data/Brent Spiner was escorted off into a private room and I was left speechless. Neither Jeff nor Paul knew anything about Star Trek, so it meant absolutely nothing to them. They thought Data looked stupid. LOL

I was being honest about this rambling on and on and on. Oh yeah, and it is about a Star Trek convention too!