“This group almost restores my faith in humanity. And that’s saying alot.... I think we can honestly say that it won’t expand too much too rapidly, I mean look at us. We paragons, we know Lego is the coolest thing to hit earth and everyone else just thinks it’s a silly plastic building block. They may never catch on. Which is fine because it means more Lego for us!!!!!” Jeff Hunt wrote on August 26, 1995.
But as it became more popular, RTL also became unwieldy. The posts were all kept on a single page, and the board was self-policed. Many fans seeking to talk about LEGO were frustrated that buying and selling now dominated the discussion. So adult fans Todd Lehman and Suzanne Rich Green launched a new online forum, the LEGO Users Group Network. LUGNET went live on September 28, 1998, and was specifically targeted to adults.
“We’d like to see an alternative area on the net that people can call home, and where they can have the opportunity to return to smaller focus groups but still be able to wander out into the greater community for a fresh change of scenery. I love RTL, but I think it’s outgrown itself,” Lehman posted the day after the launch.
LUGNET was the first community explicitly for AFOLs online. Members had to be over eighteen, as opposed to the earlier open message boards, which featured comments from computer-savvy pre-teens alongside those of older adult fans. LUGNET offered users the opportunity to create individual pages where they could display structures and sculptures they had built free-form. These constructions were not based on sets provided by LEGO, but were instead called my own creation (or simply MOC). The site was also broken down into user groups, so fans could find information based on their interests in building or find fellow users in their area.
Today LEGO estimates that there are a hundred active user groups with twenty thousand registered fans online. From them has sprung a proliferation of blogs and forums based on building themes such as space or castles. LUGNET is no longer the center of the adult fan universe, but the threads it contains read like a history of the important moments in the community’s development.
The Internet is where the heart of the AFOL community initially was found. But as users began to organize, they discovered fellow fans in their local areas, and they started to connect offline, often forming LEGO user groups (LUGs). Social events led to collaborative displays, where several fans would combine their structures to build, say, a Christmas scene in a mall or a local library. Groups also began to form around members’ building interests. LEGO train enthusiasts formed LEGO train clubs (LTCs). These were similar to model-train clubs in that the track was modular and fans were able to build together in the same scale.
As various groups began to meet regularly, their discussions turned toward organizing a convention for AFOLs. In 2000, Christina Hitchcock, a member of the Washington Metropolitan Area LEGO Users Group, decided to organize BrickFest. And that August, sixty people came to the first convention, held on the campus of George Washington University in Arlington, Virginia, to talk about their love of LEGO.
Nearly eight years later, all of these resources were available to me when I began searching for upcoming LEGO events in February 2008. I found Duane’s Brick Bash within ten minutes, and was booked to go out on a plane not a week later. I was on my way to Ann Arbor before I even really knew what to expect.
“You ready for the convention?” I ask Duane, a question I’ve asked myself several times already.
“It’s not actually a convention, it’s a public display,” he corrects me. When I raise my eyebrows, he continues. “Conventions are for adult fans. We get to interact and learn outside of being around the public. Public displays are about educating the public, showing them what we do.”
There is a bit of “us” and “them” in what Duane says—something I don’t immediately realize, as I still fall into the “them” category. Conventions, like BrickFest, are about getting together with other fans, learning new building techniques or debating the state of the community during lectures and seminars. Some feature “display” days, when the public is invited in for a few hours. This is often done to subsidize the cost of the event space, to please sponsors like LEGO, and to let adult fans (those who want to) have a few hours to show off to the public. Brick Bash, on the other hand, just focuses on the public and so doesn’t fall under the rubric of a convention, although a few adult fans have come to set up a display or help Duane organize.
It’s Saturday morning, and the function room at the retirement community downtown has been transformed. Underneath fantastic gold chandeliers straight out of Tony Montana’s mansion, close to fifteen hundred people will come to see LEGO sculptures and let their children build something out of the giant piles of bricks that rest atop six-foot-long folding tables. A ring of buildings and MOCs are set up around the room.
The doors to Brick Bash open at 11 a.m., and within fifteen minutes the room is filled with more than a hundred visitors. LEGO pieces hit the red floral rug immediately. The boys I see in the ballroom at the Courthouse Square Senior Apartments look like I did when I was thirteen. They are too serious and wear glasses and have atrocious haircuts. They don’t talk. They’re too busy snapping together LEGO bricks.
The bricks have been put out for a simple reason. When you see LEGO pieces, you want to play with them. And since adult fans don’t want people touching what they’ve built, it’s often easier to provide an open play area. It seems to be a concession to the fact that although AFOLs have put together the show, the main audience seeing their creations and playing with the toys is children. Plus, this is a family event, in part designed to attract the next generation of adult fans.
As I watch the kids build, I notice that they tend to stack bricks directly on top of each other. That’s a sensible approach to building. It’s what I’ve done to start. The nubs on top of the LEGO bricks, known as studs, fit directly inside the tubes, the hollow cylinders on the bottom of each piece. That’s how the design works; it’s the reason that LEGO bricks stick together. But when I watched Duane and Joe build the night before at Duane’s house, I noticed that they staggered and overlapped bricks to form new shapes or create a more stable creation.
I start snapping bricks together. I didn’t think building would be hard, but the moment I realize that I’m stacking bricks like a two-year-old, I begin to rethink my method. A lot of time has passed since I last built, and I am reminded of the time my wife took me skiing. I hadn’t been on skis in a decade. As tiny children in parkas snowplowed past me lying in a heap on the bunny hill, I began to think I had passed my prime.
Here there’s a table where the kids will have a chance to display what they’ve built, along with a small card giving the description and their name and age. A blond teen who looks about twelve gets up and fills out his card. His creation is a mechanized robot in yellow and white with translucent yellow eyes and triangular yellow limbs that end in claws. It’s very cool. I’m screwed.
Two mothers in their mid-to-late thirties stand a few feet away from the table. Their conversation naturally turns to LEGO.
“She’s just turning three, she doesn’t play with LEGO anymore,” says the shorter woman in a blouse and jeans.
“Ourwhole basement is LEGO,” says her counterpart in a green sundress. I don’t think she’s exaggerating.
“It’s like that when they’re in that creative stage of their childhood,” says the shorter mom.
“Well, he’s an artist, or he will be.”
This is why mothers and fathers never throw away the LEGO bricks that their children loved. It occurs to me that those bricks might in some way represent the potential that you always want to see in your kid. The possibility that he or she will be a famous artist or politician grows smaller as they get older, but a part of that dream can be kept if you just don’t give away the tub of primary-color blocks. Thinking about my own potential is mildly depressing, but I latch on to the idea of possibility because I need to believe that I can become better at building.
Some parents are doing more than just watching. A father is enthusiastically handing his daughter DUPLO bricks. She is determined to build a tower as tall as his lanky, six-foot frame. Halfway through the process, she has to stand on a chair to continue stacking. With one hand on her waist, the father steadies her and helps her build. They finish the tower, and they hug. I suddenly understand why my wife wants to have a baby. I like the idea of building with my daughter, experiencing the joy of watching her succeed with my help. And I wonder if there is ever tension for people who don’t have kids and yet are playing with a toy that is firmly in the world of children. I don’t have to wonder long.
It’s around this time that I spot Purple Dave for the first time. Dave Laswell is a member of the Michigan LEGO Users Group. Dave has a Batman minifig on his nameplate, the tiny cape custom-built in Australia.
He is tall, but not imposing. A thick brown beard makes it hard to follow his words, and he absently touches a black fanny pack when he talks. He likes attaching strategy and story lines to what he builds. He is also a founding member of the Web site Mask of Destiny, a LEGO Bionicle fan site. True to his nickname, he is wearing a purple shirt.
He’s standing in front of the Millennium Falcon—the LEGO set with one of the highest piece counts and prices of any set built to date. It is a Star Wars collector’s dream and something Dave is likely to own, considering that he remembers falling asleep in the theater during the first Star Wars movie as a kid. Dave tells me about the build. He took Friday off work to run errands and take delivery of the set. It weighs forty pounds, shipped. That left Saturday and Sunday to snap together over five thousand pieces. Eighteen hours, forty-five minutes of building.
A man standing near the table leans over to talk to his son at a volume that I’m sure Dave can hear: “These are the kinds of guys that move their LEGOs one piece at time.” The man is bronzed and wearing loafers without socks below expensive jeans—Ann Arbor’s version of George Hamilton. He ignores a small hand-lettered sign that asks people not to touch the ringed binder of instructions. I want to slap his hand.
“Please, don’t touch that,” Dave says, a bit of strain creeping into his voice. Dave addresses his next comment to me. “It was already creased in the mail and I don’t want it to get bent further.”
The bronzed man moves away with his son, and I’m glad for Dave. This is the first bit of tension I have witnessed, and it’s made me uncomfortable. I can see that Dave is struggling with wanting to display what he has built and yet not wanting someone to ruin all his effort by carelessly snapping off a piece or devaluing what he sees as an economic investment.
LEGO tends to make people happy. There is a pleasant buzz of conversation in the room.
But this interaction stands out. It’s what sometimes happens when adult fans of LEGO come into contact with the public. Builders are faced with an endless litany of the same questions. In fact, every time I walk by Dave, I hear someone asking one of three questions.
How many pieces is the Millennium Falcon?
5,195 elements.
How long did it take you to build it? Two full days. How much does it cost?
Five hundred dollars.
This is the holy trinity, and it would drive me crazy. How many? How much? How long? I immediately resolve to stop asking those questions right off the bat. In time, I’ll learn that the number of hours in a build doesn’t really mean anything, and not all pieces deserve equal weight.
At the end of the day, the convention is all but over and most of the crowd has left. Duane’s wife, Allison, is absentmindedly grabbing bricks off the floor and tables while Duane wanders the room like an attentive maitre d’. Underneath the DUPLO table, a sandy-haired four-year-old pushes a train that is ten cars long along the floor. He keeps getting it stuck around one of the table legs. I want to help until I realize that’s the game.
The Michigan Lego Users Group is breaking down their town and train set. Train tracks ring the building display, which features landmarks from downtown Detroit as well as Pepsi and ACME manufacturing plants. Car models are removed and placed in storage tubs with streetlights, but the buildings are kept intact when possible. Chris Leach, the group’s treasurer, has helped plan the layout of the club’s display. He has close-cropped hair and an easy laugh that he lets go as he wheels a handcart full of train tracks. I offer to help Chris, and pick up a section of his four-foot tan building. The piece covers most of my chest.
“I wouldn’t carry that down,” says Joe, watching from a few feet away. “It has no internal bracing.” LEGO buildings operate just like real skyscrapers. The higher they’re built, the more support they need. As with any construction project, those internal bricks still cost money, so these buildings have been built without support beams. They can be broken down and built back up faster, but as a result are a bit wobbly when taken off a baseplate.
As if in response to his words, I feel the building sway inside my arms and realize that I am very close to dropping somebody else’s creation. Even worse, I would have no idea how to rebuild it. I take short steps and tilt the building back slightly on my chest while riding downstairs in the elevator. It doesn’t drop, but I don’t volunteer to help carry anything else.
I walk back upstairs and see Joe standing next to a folding table near the front entrance. He’s casually tearing apart the Bionicle creations from the day. I rip the head off a red figure and toss it back into the tub by Joe’s feet. Everything has to be cleaned up before Duane can go home for the night.
I find Duane next to his oversize white bridge sculpture, carefully filing away the papers that explain the history and construction of the Veteran’s Glass City Highway.