Month: June 2025 (Page 2 of 4)

Mel and Rudy at The Shop

The PopCulteer
June 20, 2025

Last night your PopCulteer and his wife did something that we hadn’t done in a long time.

We went out to hear a local band play, and we didn’t shoot any video and just took the time to appreciate the music and enjoy ourselves. And we had a great time.

That may not seem like a big deal. Back in the heyday of the Radio Free Charleston video show I used to go out four or five nights a week to record bands in various local venues, and then I’d turn those trips into bits of the show, but when I was diagnosed with Myasthenia Gravis back in 2016, the meds they put me on sort of put an end to staying out late bar-hopping to capture video.

Hello June’s Sarah Rudy, who is the reason we made it out last night

Last night was a perfect storm of events that got me out of the house. First, the venue was The Shop, in Dunbar…a mere ten blocks or so from my house. I’ve been curious about this place since they opened a few years ago, but never had the time to check them out.

Second, I’ve been a big fan of Hello June since the late Lynne Sandy turned me on to them years ago, and they’ve been mainstays of the RFC radio show on The AIR ever since, but I’d never actually met them in person. When their frontwoman, Sarah Rudy, sent me a Facebook message inviting me to go see them, it was a bit of a no-brainer.

Black light art at The Shop

The bonus third factor is that The Shop has not fallen into the late-starting trap that bedevils most of the Charleston music venues. We were able to go hear three terrific musical acts and still made it home before 11 PM. That’s about half an hour before the first bands tend to go on stage in Charleston.

This was the first time we’d been in building where The Shop is located in probably more than a dozen years. Back in another life it was “The Tank” and we’d go there after IWA East Coast Wrestling shows to hang out with our friends, and meet the guest wrestlers like The Blue Meanie, Spike Dudley, Eugene and Johnny Fairplay.

Nolan Ellis Collins

The building has been completely redone and looks nothing like it used to. It’s a pretty great performance space, with black light, cool wall decor, a fantastic stage and sound system, and actual seating…which is a big selling point for your aging blogger.

The show it’self was a blast. Nolan Ellis Collins, whom I’d never had the chance to hear before, despite me plugging him several times in STUFF TO DO, is a great singer/songwriter, and his slacker/stoner between song banter had the crowd in stitches. He offered up some clever originals and choice cover or two to a very receptive group of fans.

Later in the show he was harrassed by the audience for not having any merch for sale.

June Swoon, redefining “bar-hopping”

June Swoon is a Los Angeles based singer and songwriter with a killer band, and you will be hearing them in the future on the Radio Free Charleston radio show on The AIR.

Her backing band was incredible, and sounded to me like the classic  early 1980s Pretenders line up of James Honeyman-Scott, Pete Farndon and Martin Chamers. Swoon’s songwriting and voice is powerful and original and I’m looking forward to hearing the new music they have in the pipeline for release later in the year.

They made it to the show and captivated the audience despite having a flat tire in Kentucky eariler in the day. June even hopped on the bar near the end of her set.

June Swoon and band

I was already a big fan of Hello June. Sarah Rudy is a true WV original, on par with the best songwriters this state has produced, and a powerful singer and guitarist. Hearing her perform live is quite a treat, and I recommend anybody see Hello June if they get the chance.

The headliners, Hello June

It was wonderful to finally get to meet Sarah in the real world, even though my annual summer cold has me going around telling people “Hey, it’s great to meet you…this is not my real voice.”

I sound sort of like a cross between the old Men’s Wearhouse announcer and Lurch. If that doesn’t clear up in a day or so, this year’s Marx Toy Show video will be narrated by my lovely wife, Mel Larch.

Back to last night’s show…it probably reignited my desire to shoot video of bands again. To be honest, that never really went away. Whenever I hear live music, I feel sort of naked without a video camera. Last year when we went to Chicago to see Thompson Twins Tom Bailey and Thomas Dolby I couldn’t resist whipping out the phone, and that resulted in the apocryphal “Radio Free Chicago” episode we did.

Even Mel spent much of the night thinking about the logistics of where we’d stand if we were shooting video at The Shop. I think it’s a safe bet that we’ll be going back.

It does feel weird not have shot any video last night, though.

Cool event in Huntington

Coming in over the transom too late to be included in STUFF TO DO this week is a show happening during Huntington’s Art Walk, tonight from 5 PM to 8 PM. Our old friend, Douglas Imbrogno, has a new musical project with Jim Probst and Ray Garnett: Through The Trees: An Electrified Folk-Chamber ensemble.

You can hear them at The Gazebo at Heritage Station, with the details in this handy graphic…

And that is this week’s PopCulteer. Check back for our regular features and fresh content every day, even when your humble blogger is bedeviled by vocal issues.

Next week’s radio shows should be really interesting.

Originally I had planned to bring you a massive photo essay and the annual Marx Toy Show video today, but the fates conspired to delay that a few days.

Today we’re bringing you ten quick photos, and the plan is to have the video ready on Sunday, hopefully after my power stops going out every five minutes and I regain enough of my voice to narrate it. Three weeks of ducking in and out of air conditioning finally caught up to me and I have the type of summer cold that drops your voice three or four octaves. If this doesn’t clear up by the weekend, expect the Marx video to sound like it’s narrated by Thurl Ravenscroft.

We had a lot of fun at this year’s Marx Toy Show at Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum, and we’ll be sharing much more of it with you this weekend.

I did remember take plenty of photos of the folks at the event, as well as the toys, plus we’ll have our usual video recap.  after that, with any luck, I can dig into the huge backlog of cool stuff I’ve done, photographed and shot video of over the last month.

For now, here’s ten random pics from the event, carefully selected and captioned while your humble blogger is coughing his head off and chugging Ale 8 One.

It’s always cool to catchup with Dave Roth and leave him with some of my money in exchange for cool vintage Johnny West Stuff. This photo was swiped from his FB page.

Just a fraction of the cool toy trains for sale.

A candid shot of Allen, from the Kruger Street Museum, in conversation with Jay Horowitz, the current owner of Marx Toys, in the Johnny Room at the show.

A small part of Dave Roth’s Johnny West goodies.

Rick Provence created these incredible “Ghost Johnny” figures, animals and accessories.

A look at the contents of Glen Ridenour’s Cape Canavral playset.

Another cool train set

A tiny sliver of the cool stuff Mark Hegeman had for sale.

Things to ponder when you have unlimited money and space.

We leave you with an impressive stack of playsets. We will have a much more extensive photo essay and video on Sunday.

There’s a bunch of cool events happening this weekend, between Juneteenth, West Virginia Day, Charleston’s ArtWalk, the Summer Solstice and tons of other Summer-beginning gems, so here’s a few cool things you can can find this weekend if you’re looking for STUFF TO DO  in and around Charleston, West Virginia.

Things start out big on Thursday. It’s Juneteenth and despite our backwards Governor refusing to give State Workers the day off, there will be observations all over the place, and some will also bleed over into West Virginia Day the next day.  Charleston’s ArtWalk begins at 5 PM, Thursday.  Then at 7 PM, it’s a show I plan to attend at The Shop, in Dunbar…

As always, you should remember that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments. Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky , Spoutible, Instagram or Twitter.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote. Note that some links look like they shouldn’t work because they have lines through them, but that’s just a WordPress glitch, so click on them anyway. They should still work.

We are also very happy to remind you that Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

City Center Live at Slack Plaza in Charleston has announced their schedule for the summer. You can find it HERE.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most Fridays and Saturdays you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they don’t have anybody listed for Friday, but Saturday Minor Swing will bring Hot Jazz to the Taylor Books coffee shop. Sunday there’s bonus music from 1 PM to 4 PM from Jazz duo, Ray + Jon.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights. On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam. I hear that last week’s jam was epic.

Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.

Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, regularly brings in local bands on weekends.

In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.

The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to comedy to burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late bring in live musical acts as well. I tend to miss a lot of these because, being a non-drinker, they fly under my radar.

Clendenin Brewing Co is a microbrewery with 4 themed lodging rooms in a 1920s bank building on Main St Clendenin, WV. They’ve been host a lot of musical acts lately.

Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings. You might also find cool musical events at Route 60 Music in Barboursville and Folklore Music Exchange in Charleston.

To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side. This Friday at 7 PM you can hear Better From Here, Roy F. Bush and McKenna Hope.

You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment. This Friday at 7 PM  Coal River Coffee features Minor SwingI am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues. The Huntington Music Collective has recently started hosting all ages shows at Event Horizon.

For cutting-edge independent art films, downstairs from Taylor Books you’ll find the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema by WVIFF. Each week they program several amazing movies in their intimate viewing room that you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.

Please remember that viral illlnesses are still a going concern and many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out. And if you’re at an outdoor event, please remember that it’s awfully inconsiderate to smoke or vape around people who become ill when exposed to that stuff.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events that I was able to scrounge up online…

We are back from our third trip in three weeks, and returning home to a fried computer (due to power outages) means that you fine folks get a hybrid new/rehashed Frankensteined-up Radio Free Charleston  that you can hear today on The AIR.  To listen to The AIR, you simply have to point your cursor over and tune in at the website, or you could just stay here, and  listen to the cool embedded player found elsewhere on this page.  

You can hear Radio Free Charleston Tuesdays at 10 AM and 10 PM, with boatloads of replays throughout the week.

It’s a free-format extravaganza as we open this week’s first hour with a tribute to Brian Wilson. We close the first hour with a tribute to Sly Stone, since we lost both of those legends last week.  In between the tributations, we bring you some new tunes from Brian Diller, The Settlement, Vinto Van Go, and The M.F.B. The music is great. Yours truly is a bit off his game and rambly.

After the first hour we jump all the way back to an episode of Radio Free Charleston Volume Three from 2015. This was one of a handful of episodes that I produced during a time when Voices of Appalachia was beset by technical problems and wasn’t broadcasting. This show was briefly hosted on their website, but then evaporated into the ethernet, never to be heard again until now.

And it’s a fun show. The first half was our usual mix of local and regional music, while the second half (now our third hour) is devoted to Horror Punk bands, including three local favorites, The Jasons, The Big Bad and The Renfields.

Your somewhat frazzled blogger/radio host was able to put this together after bringing back this PC from the dead. However, I’m running late, so we’re only going to give you links to select local and regional artists in the first hour of the playlist this week. You can Google the rest.

RFC V5 228

hour one
Brian Wilson “Love and Mercy”
Catherine Campbell “In My Room”
Wall of Voodoo “Do It Again”
Nick Punti “Hang On To Your Ego”
Johansson “Good Vibrations”
She and Him “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”
Dukes of Stratosphere “Pale and Precious”
Brian Diller “Big Ground, Big Sky”
Paul McCartney & Elvis Costello “So Like Candy (demo)”
The Settlement“Days Go By”
The M.F.B . “Bro Embryo”
Gloria Gaynor “Every Breath You Take”
Vinto Van Go “Hot Pants Boots”
Sly & The Family Stone “Thank You (Falettenme Be Mice Self Agin)” “Every Day People”

hour two
Mark Wolfe “Promise”
No Rain “Don’t Come Around”
Jack Griffith “Everything It Takes”
Dina “Pies”
Todd Rundgren “Rise”
The Heydays “Shady Grove”
Bud Carroll “Mistaken Identity”
Out of Nowhere “Rise Above”
Tape Age “Worst Night Of My Life”
Superfetch “Level 1”
The Laser Beams “Eden By The Fire Escape”
Shedlon Vance “Don’t Walk Away”
Miss Mousie and The Rigamarole “Dumpsters and Divebars”
Neil Zaza “Take On Me”

hour three (Horror Punk)
The Cryptoids “Mysteria”
The Cyptoids “Amityville”
Argyle Goolsby “Kristen”
The Voodoo Organist “Vampire Empire”

The Jasons
“Another song about Saturday”
“Stalk and Slash Summer”
“Welcome home (Camp Crystal Lake)”
“Camp Arawak ”

Big Bad
“Luna Rage”
“Fright Night”
“Prom Night 1957”
“Cabal”

The Renfields
“Night of the Creeps”
“Transylvania Fight Song”
“Machete A Go Go”

You can hear this episode of Radio Free Charleston Tuesday at 10 AM and 10 PM on The AIR, with replays Wednesday at 9 AM,  Thursday at 2 PM, Friday at 9 AM, Saturday at Noon and Midnight, Sunday at 8 PM and  Monday at 11 AM, exclusively on The AIR. Now you can also hear a different classic episode of RFC every weekday at 5 PM, and we bring you a marathon all night long Saturday night/Sunday morning.

I’m also going to  embed a low-fi, mono version of this show right in this post, right here so you can listen on demand.

After RFC, stick around for encores of the most recent episodes of  MIRRORBALL at 1 PM and Curtain Call at 2 PM.

At 3 PM we give you an encore of two recent episodes of The Swing Shift.

 You can hear The Swing Shift Tuesday at 3 PM, with replays Wednesday at 8 AM, Friday at 10 AM and 8 PM and Saturday afternoon, only on The AIR . You can also hear all-night marathons, seven hours each, starting at Midnight Thursday and Sunday evenings.

Okay, I have to be honest with you. This week’s art is a digital piece I did years ago and had stored on an external drive, unused.

I did this back when my undiagnosed Myasthenia Gravia made it nearly impossible to make physical art. It’s a composite of three photos, run through a primitive filter to make it look like a line drawing.

The reason it’s here is because I came home from a wonderful trip to The Marx Toy Show to discover that a power outage had taken out my main, but obsolete, PC, and when I rebooted it…the mouse didn’t work.

At the very least, I’m going to have to fight to get that restored. More likely, I will have to finally get around to setting up the new PC, and installing all the programs I need to produced this blog, and the programming for The AIR. I’m writing this post on my laptop, which has no video or audio editing software.  So new content in the form of audio and video might be torpedoed for a few days, barring a sudden reawakeing of the mouse driver.

So…keep your fingers crossed that a computer miracle happens. I need one. In addition to this mess I got randomly locked out of Twitter, and have had my link-sharing ability severely restricted by Facebook.

UPDATE: Monday Morning—A miracle happened and the computer and mouse are back on speaking terms.

Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM an also classic edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM.

At 8 PM you can hear a classic episode of The Comedy Vault.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we bring you ten hours of random stuff that I haven’t programmed yet because I’ve been back home two hour and have don’t nothing but fight with the computer.

This weekend I ran up to Wheeling for the Marx Toy Show at The Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum, and you’re going to get to see photos and video from my trip in the coming week.  However, I thought it might be fun to revisit the first videos I shared in this blog from the Marx Toy Show, almost exactly ten years ago. I’d posted tons of photos before that, but these were the first videos.

Above you’ll see a video dedicated to a special Johnny West project celebrating his fifitieth anniversary. This was created by Suzanne Hackett-Morgan, and it’s a load of fun.

Below you’ll see video I shot of Scott Stewart’s presentation, at the Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum, of the history of Johnny West.  Scott is the man behind Stewart’s Attic, a key resource for collectors of Johnny West and The Best of the West. It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years…and that means that Johnny West is now 60!

For the past several and weeks The RFC Flashback has gone back to the most ambitious run of episodes in Radio Free Charleston history.  In June, 2011 I decided to try and do something sort of crazy. I’d managed to crank out Radio Free Charleston on a weekly basis before, which was no mean feat since the show was basically produced by me alone, with camera help from my now-wife Mel Larch and occasional help from other friends. For FestivALL 2011, I managed to produce eight episodes of Radio Free Charleston in under two weeks. This week we bring you the penultimate entry in this intense run of shows, and next week we wrap it up.

“Anything can happen day” on Radio Free Charleston included music from Holy Cow, The Boatmen and Miss Behavin’; with wrestling from XMCW and a Sword Dance by Jenna Brooke Swanson. This seventh of our eight-part show was an attempt to clear the decks of A-grade material that we’d accumulated in advance of our big finish. Next week you’ll see the big finish.

Gimme Dat

The PopCulteer
June 13, 2025

Okay, so by all rights, I should’ve posted these pictures well over a week ago. I mean, they were taken two weeks ago tomorrow, but the hustle and bustle of being a PopCulteer on the go meant that something had to give, and in this case it was timeliness.

Two weeks ago Saturday we were in Louisville for WonderFest USA. It’s a great show, filled with amazing guests, well-stocked vendors and tons of exquisite model kits built by hobbyists from around the world. This was our fifth time going, and it may well have been the most fun.

But we had to leave in a hurry because the next day we had to hop the Amtrak to Chicago for yet another wonderful experience, this time with nearly a week of perfect weather, grand theatre, quirky gastronomic adventures and just plain fun.

And you’ll be reading about that next week (and likely beyond). The return trip left us exhausted, and a mere four days after our return, we are hitting the road once again, this time to attend the Marx Toy Show in Wheeling that I told you about Wednesday.

So today you get a pretty gigantic photo essay from WonderFest, and at some point very soon, I will tell you all about our other travels. We should have a blog that’s jam-packed with content over the next few weeks as I play catch-up before we start heading out for more toy show adventures in July.

Below, with some sparse captions, you will see the people, the cool toys and the amazing models we saw at WonderFest. So let’s dive in because I need to finish getting packed for Wheeling…

The People

Dennis Prince, Greg Nicotero and Joe Alves, jawing about JAWS.

The Masked Director, Sam Irvin

Master Model Maker, Nick Tate, of Space: 1999 fame

The man, the myth, THE Rocko Jerome! Go look for his new Kickstarter campaign for GHOST Agents

Continue reading

Father’s Day is Sunday, and if your father is still living and you don’t know what to get him, here’s a few cool things you can can find this weekend if you’re looking for STUFF TO DO with him in and around Charleston, West Virginia. Imma be in Wheeling for The Marx Toy Show.

As always, you should remember that THIS IS NOT A COMPLETE LIST OF EVENTS.  It’s just a starting point, so don’t expect anything comprehensive, and if you feel strongly about me leaving anything out, feel free to mention it in the comments. Also, if you have a show that you’d like to plug in the future, contact me via Social Media at Facebook, BlueSky , Spoutible, Instagram or Twitter.  I dont charge for this, so you might as well send me something if you have an event to promote. Note that some links look like they shouldn’t work because they have lines through them, but that’s just a WordPress glitch, so click on them anyway. They should still work.

We are also very happy to remind you that Cristen Michael has created an interactive calendar that is way more comprehensive than this list of STUFF TO DO, and you can find it HERE. Just click on the day and the event and you’ll be whisked away to a page with more details about loads of area events.

You can find live music in and around town every night of the week. You just have to know where to look.

Most Fridays and Saturdays you can find live music at Taylor Books. There is no cover charge, and shows start at 7:30 PM. This weekend they don’t have anybody listed for Friday, but Saturday it’s a big deal as The Carpenter Ants will be Tayloring it all up.

You can find live music every night at The World Famous Empty Glass Cafe. Mondays feature open mic night. The first Tuesday of every month sees the legendary Spurgie Hankins Band perform. There’s both Happy Hour music and local or touring bands on Thursday and Friday, and live bands Saturday nights. On Sundays when there’s a new Mountain Stage, musicians from the legendary WV Public Radio show migrate to The Glass for the Post-Mountain Stage jam. I hear that last week’s jam was epic.

Live at The Shop in Dunbar hosts local and touring bands on most weekends, and is a nice break away from the downtown bar scene.

Louie’s, at Mardi Gras Casino & Resort, regularly brings in local bands on weekends.

In Huntington, local institution, The Loud (formerly The V Club), brings in great touring and local acts three or four nights a week.

The Wandering Wind Meadery holds several events each week, from live piano karaoke to bands to comedy to burlesque.

The multitude of breweries and distilleries that have popped up in Charleston of late bring in live musical acts as well. I tend to miss a lot of these because, being a non-drinker, they fly under my radar.

Clendenin Brewing Co is a microbrewery with 4 themed lodging rooms in a 1920s bank building on Main St Clendenin, WV. They’ve been host a lot of musical acts lately.

Roger Rablais hosts Songwriter’s stage at different venues around the area, often at 813 Penn, next door to Fret ‘n’ Fiddle in Saint Albans and also at The Empty Glass many Tuesday evenings. You might also find cool musical events at Route 60 Music in Barboursville and Folklore Music Exchange in Charleston.

To hear music in an alcohol-free enviroment, see what’s happening at Pumzi’s, on Charleston’s West Side.This Saturday at 8 PM you can hear The Awesome Lady D, as well as The Mark Price Band.

You can also visit Coal River Coffee in Saint Albans for live music in an alcohol-free environment. This Friday at 7 PM  Coal River Coffee features Minor SwingI am looking to expand this list, so please contact me through the social media sites above if you know about more alcohol-free performance venues. The Huntington Music Collective has recently started hosting all ages shows at Event Horizon.

For cutting-edge independent art films, downstairs from Taylor Books you’ll find the Floralee Hark Cohen Cinema by WVIFF. Each week they program several amazing movies in their intimate viewing room that you aren’t likely to see anywhere else.

Please remember that viral illlnesses are still a going concern and many people who have very good reasons are still wearing masks, and many of us, understandably, are still nervous about being in crowds, masked or not. Be kind and understanding  while you’re out. And if you’re at an outdoor event, please remember that it’s awfully inconsiderate to smoke or vape around people who become ill when exposed to that stuff.

Keep in mind that all shows are subject to change or be cancelled at the last minute.

Here we go, roughly in order, it’s graphics for local events that I was able to scrounge up online…

Continue reading

Your humble blogger is still not quite recovered from his week in Chicago (and day in Louisville right before that), and it’s already time to hit the road again. The Marx Toy and Train Collector’s Show is happening again this year, and the dates are this Friday and Saturday at  The Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum in Wheeling.  Your PopCulteer is thrilled to be going back to this toy show, which is one of the most enjoyable in the country and something your humble blogger and his lovely wife look forward to every year.

This year, we’re planning on sticking around for both days of the show, and then meandering back home in some as-yet-undecided manner on Sunday.

I’ve been covering the Marx Toy Convention for fifteen years, and you can find an index to most of that coverage HERE. You can see our coverage of2021’s show HERE and HERE. 2022’s coverage was spread across a few posts, HERE, HER E, HERE, and HERE. Likewise, our 2023 coverage can be found HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

You can expect a lot of photos and video from this yea’rs show next week in PopCult. We are also playing catch-up with other stuff, so the plan is to bring you our regular guide to STUFF TO DO tomorrow, then hit you with a massive WonderFest photo essay on Friday. Chicago photos are coming next week, too.

Anybody who grew up with Marx Toys, or anybody interested in West Virginia industries, or just folks who love toys, should make it a point to go to this show and check out the wonders of The Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum. It’s a real gem.

Here’s the video from last year’s show…