Riverside Iowa is the future birthplace of Captain James T Kirk of the Starship Enterprise. While the storybook Kirk won’t actually be born until 2228, his birthplace is gearing up for a Star Trek festival, named TrekFest.
The 25th annual event begins this Friday and a huge turnout is expected for the two-day event. Expected to attend, in addition to untold numbers of trekkies are Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols, and George Takei.
Wonder how many hotel rooms there are in Riverside Iowa?
Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science. ~Edwin Powell Hubble, The Nature of Science, 1954
The Tulsa based TrekExpo has come a long way, baby. Back in the late 80’s Starbase 21 (a Tulsa comic book store) launched the first TrekExpo in Tulsa. The first one was held at the fairgrounds and featured George Takei and John DeLancie.
1990 saw the convention move to an empty storefront and in 1994 they moved to the Marriott.
We attended one of the conventions held at the Marriott. It just happened to be the same weekend as an oil group meeting. The lobby was filled with tuxedos, star fleet officers and klingons. The expressions on the faces of the upper crust tuxedo wearing crowd was priceless!
In 99 the Tulsa event was big enough to attract Nimoy. In 01 Tulsa got to visit with Doohan, Adam West and Kevin Sorbo.
In 05 TrekExpo continued to show it’s growth by moving to the UMAC Hammons Arena and 06 brought the first Star Trek clad wedding.
This years event is sure to outshine all the previous events. This year you can expect to see Leonard Nimoy, Avery Brooks, Mirana Sirtis and MORE!
“I would not recommend anybody holding their breath Quite apart from the movie question, I think there’s a parable to the whole STAR TREK thing that’s going on right now and people’s disappointment in Enterprise’s premature demise. When you have a field, and you plant the same thing in the field year after year after year, there’s a certain point where the crop just begins to weaken. You have to let a field go fallow for a while. And I think that’s what we’re seeing right now … It’s not the end of STAR TREK, but I think there will be a period now in which it lies fallow. And then hopefully, because of people like you who keep the dream alive, it will come back. And hopefully it will be strong and vital.”
Rene Auberjonois
The US Navy Seals are a small elite maritime military force conducting unconventional warfare. They conduct clandestine, small unit, high impact missions and more.
Imagine the excitement that Cmdr Chris Cassidy feels knowing that he’ll be the 2nd Seal to launch into space. The first was Capt. William Shepherd in ’92.
Cassidy is a mission specialist and will working as part of the STS-127 crew upgrading the International Space Station.
Bet he can’t wait to hear, “We have lift off!”
“The miracle is this – the more we share, the more we have.”
Leonard Nimoy
A while back I shared with you some ST finds on Etsy. Well those crafters on Etsy are certainly crafty! One of them has created Star Trek USB drives created from Star Trek pez dispensers.
Cool! They run $25 a piece and are sure to delight any ST fan.
Unless of course, they were your ‘in the original box’ ST pez dispensers… …
st etsy
I heard “Livin’ on Tulsa Time’ this morning on the radio. Made me think ‘duh’ of Tulsa. Which made me think of the upcoming Trek Expo. Which made me think of Leonard Nimoy as ‘Spock’ two-steppin’ in Tulsa…
tulsa
Wonder what Nimoy actually does in his downtime at a Star Trek convention?
Hmm, wonder if there are any decent TrekExpo tickets left? Wonder if www.starbase21ok.com of Tulsa is gifting any to bloggers? HEY StarBase21 – what do you say?
Email me!
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There’s a ST convention coming up later in the month in Oklahoma. It’s in Tulsa at JOHN Q HAMMONS UMAC ARENA
6836 SOUTH MINGO TULSA OK. And dh is raring to go!
We don’t get to attend these functions very often and it looks like we might have to pass up this one too, and it’s so close!
The current guest list includes:
Leonard Nimoy
Avery Brooks
Marina Sirtis
John DeLancie
Cirroc Lofton
Garrett Wang
Anthony Montgomery
Corin Nemec
Mira Furlan
Luciaana Carro
Phil Morris
Denise Crosby
A real astronaut (unnamed)
And more!
Course, it would be a great place for me to acquire some additional inside trek info…. Wonder if we can swing a trip…
http://www.trekexpo.net
The Franklin Institute, in conjunction with WMMR-FM is giving away…
A STAR TREK WEDDING
The winners get their dream trek wedding on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise!
Enter online at www.fi.edu/startrekwedding by June 24th. The couple with the highest number of votes on July 20 will be determined as the winner!
happy couple