Greetings from California

[blargh]

Hello all, I'm blargh, coming to you from the Bay Area in California.

I've been a big LEGO fan since I got my start in ca. 1985, with Castle making up the bulk of my collection, but a fair bit of everything else as well. I was active on the rec.toys.lego newsgroup around 1997-98, as well as some of the early days of LEGO-CAD with the original LDraw. Other activities prevailed and my LEGO efforts fell (mostly) dormant, although I'd occasionally pick up a small set or two when I happened to pass the LEGO aisle in a store. Now that I have a bit more space, time, and disposable income to work with, I've been getting back into it... although I have yet to go back and recover the thousands of bricks and dozens of assembled sets that are still in storage at my parents' house.

I'm still wrapping my head around how the online LEGO community has exploded since the last time I was paying attention, but from lurking around Eurobricks here it seems like a great spot.

I just realized that a couple of ancient LEGO webpages I had are still online; I had a few micro-scale Star Wars ships, with LDraw-created build instructions (although I know that the micro-scale building state of the art has far surpassed these ). I also have a baseplate-floorplan of my massive castle layout, although unfortunately no pictures. I believe it's still mostly intact (stored under a bed), but it hasn't seen the light of day in about a decade, and is probably buried under a solid inch of dust by now.

[Brickdoctor]

Welcome to EB, blargh! Great that you're doing LEGO more now. Enjoy the site!

[buddy]

Welcome to Eurobricks blargh, I hope that you enjoy the forums!

~buddy~

[Zeya]

Welcome, blargh!

I live in San Jose. I see other people post on here about our area as well. You can usually spot them when they mention the Lego store in Santa Clara (it's inside Valley Fair mall). There's also a Lego store in San Mateo, but I haven't been to that one (I'm sure it's just as good though).

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Welcome aboard!

[Rook]

Welcome to the best multi-theme fan forum on the planet (Well English speaking one that is. ).

[blargh]

Thanks everyone for the welcome.

Welcome, blargh!

I live in San Jose. I see other people post on here about our area as well. You can usually spot them when they mention the Lego store in Santa Clara (it's inside Valley Fair mall). There's also a Lego store in San Mateo, but I haven't been to that one (I'm sure it's just as good though).

Yeah, I was just looking those both up this morning; I haven't actually been to either (yet ). The only LEGO Store I've been to is the one in the Mall of America in Minneapolis, when I was there on a business trip a few months ago.

[Zeya]

Yeah, I was just looking those both up this morning; I haven't actually been to either (yet ). The only LEGO Store I've been to is the one in the Mall of America in Minneapolis, when I was there on a business trip a few months ago.

Right on. They're kind of a zoo, especially on a saturday or during the holiday rush, etc. Lego stores are kind of like the Apple store in a lot of ways. The big draws are:

- The pick-a-brick wall. A wall of drawers, each with a different brick/element. You can fill cups with whatever you want from it. (Stack the elements to compress space and get more for your dollar.)

- Essentially all current sets are available.

- One of the few (only?) brick-and-mortar stores that will have exclusive sets on the shelf (e.g. Imperial Flagship, Grand Emporium)

- Build-a-minifigure bins (hit and miss for the cost)

Sometimes Toys R Us might have exclusives on the shelf if Lego is trying to clear them out of inventory, but I have yet to see it around here. Online vendors will sometimes have exclusive sets. But they rarely go on sale so 9 times out of 10 you end up buying them from the Lego store, or through Lego online.

I really want to swing by the Santa Clara store for the long weekend here and get myself a Fire Brigade, which will be my first modular building. Bills kind of hit me hard this month though, so it might have to wait.