In which we update the Gem

You, of course, have been wondering about Columbia. You are not alone.

Since the beginning of time, getting rooms has been uniquely burdensome at the Gem of Harlem. The administration has always kept the Gemmers waiting until the last minute, usually about two weeks before the event. This year, they wouldn’t even do that. No rooms would be available, they dictated, period, the first three weeks of school in January. Including the weekend of the Gem.

Oy.

Let’s face it. If the tournament isn’t its usual weekend, it probably simply isn’t. Every other weekend is booked till March, at which point it would be too late for TOC bids. Also, it’s just sort of too late. People have wound down from invitationals at that point. It’s the season for Districts and CFL Grands and prepping for NDCA and TOC and States. We talked about moving there for a while, but it was pretty much a nonstarter.

So the Gemmers took a backdoor approach, working with Barnard and whoever else they could buttonhole, and are in the process of getting a bunch o’ rooms, but not their usual number. The conclusion was obvious. Given the bid situation, go for debate, plus throw in Congress because, well, why not? And that’s the way it’s going to be, from Jan 25 to 27. We’ve told the Gemmers to get the word out. I’m pretty sure that’s also the weekend of Ridge’s big speech tournament, so it’s not as if IEs will be forgotten in the region. And it won’t be the first odd Columbia. There was that one year when they got blizzarded out and postponed, and somehow we made that one work, albeit on the cheap. I’m not sure yet the number of rooms we’ll have, but I would expect to host a healthy PF division and a not-too-slight LD division, given the traditional hunger for bids at any cost. That’s maybe the only good thing about the TOC. If a tournament does have bids, it gets customers.

Anyhow, when I went to look at something on tabroom today, it wouldn’t come up, and I remembered that it was down for maintenance. My understanding is that CP has flown to the lost city of Kor where he has to get past She Who Must be Obeyed to press the Mystical Reset Button and get everything back on track.

Time to pull out the index cards.