Pokemon GOOOOOOO

Hi my name is Jenn and I'm an adult in my 30's who plays Pokemon GO.

I enjoyed playing Pokemon growing up. Between the two of us my sister and I played Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, and Crystal. We spent absurd amounts of time in Pokemon Stadium, printed our Pokemon Snap stickers at Blockbuster, and desperately (and hilariously) tried to befriend one in Hey You Pikachu. I still have my binders of Pokemon cards, and there's a box in my craft room that contains a ready-to-go deck alongside the gym badges I had earned at the Books-a-Million Pokemon League.

It was a whole thing.

My interest waned into gen 3 and beyond, though I did try again with Black and White. It just never hooked me the way the first 250 did. So, Pokemon became a thing I didn't actively participate in but still appreciated the roots of. I had collectibles, I kept my cartridges and card, but my engagement became passive for adulthood. It wasn't a franchise geared towards me, and that was fine.

And then Pokemon GO was released.

The nostalgia part of my brain embodied the Kool-Aid Man and burst through the rational walls of being a responsible adult and let the kid who loved Eevee and Ponyta to an absurd degree climb on through. There was a single Pokestop at the back of our neighborhood about a 5 minute bike ride away, so Geoff and I would spend our evenings after dinner with our phones mounted to our handlebars riding loops between home and those baseball fields catching the few Pokémon that appeared and hatching eggs.

I threatened to stop and sit in the middle of the road if I hatched "one more god damn Weedle". Cut to about 30 seconds later.

After moving to Austin, it took on a new life. There were stops and gyms close to us! Places to go walk around outside that had high densities of Pokémon! We met people to go raiding with! On afternoons where we just need a break we head to the Domain, grab an iced beverage, and just wander for 2 hours. On raid days we create 18 person caravans and pre-plan routes so we can hit at least 18 raids (our best day we did 30 but decided that was a little more intense than we wanted to be for future ones and scaled it back), and if someone misses out on a shiny variant people within this group are totally willing to trade their extras to make sure everyone is covered. I'VE MET SO MANY DOGS.

This year we went to the annual Pokémon GO Fest in Chicago. At first we felt like it was silly to essentially take a Pokémon-themed vacation, but judgment be damned it's something we genuinely enjoy. Since tickets are a lottery system we decided we'd apply for the lottery and let the universe decide. If we got in great, and if we didn't then cool we'd do something else with that time off. The great Pokémon gods saw fit for us to go nerd out and granted us tickets. So off to Chicago we went.

I wasn't sure what to expect going into it, but it was a really cool experience. The park was divided up into biomes where certain types of Pokémon would spawn, and the areas were decorated to each theme. The Fairy Garden had trellises covered in flowers and bubble machines. Buckingham Fountain served as the water zone and kept everyone cool with the water sprays. The Spooky Woods were straight out of the front yard of that one house in your neighborhood that does Halloween right. The Winter Forest had "snow" covered trees. We met a lot of people from all over the world, traded for some rare finds, won some exclusive merch, and caught an obnoxious number of Pokémon (including shinies!). It was an exhausting day (Fitbit clocked 42k steps for me), but wonderful. 

As an added bonus, there was increased Pokémon activity around the rest of the city too, so even on the other days we were there we could go hunting for more good stuff. We took advantage of that by spending time down on Navy Pier, and visited my penguin bros at the Shedd Aquarium (one of my favorite places on the planet). It was a short trip, but a unique way to wrap up a few busy weeks for us.

Nothing says "I'm an adult" like drinking rum while catching in inordinate number of Horseas.

I would totally go to the event again if we can get tickets. Each day had its own set of problems (system went down for a while for us, rained out on another day, etc), but that's going to happen when you've got tens of thousands of people cramming into a small area outside. Overall it was all handled really well, and we had a great time.

Did any of you go? How did you do? What was your favorite part?