It's a wrap. Three days of non-stop events, seminars, guest speakers, and product presentation, and the annual Western Building Show has folded up its booths and not-so-silently stolen away. Held at the stunning George Moscone Center in the heart of San Francisco's downtown, promoters and attendees agreed that the Pacific Coast Building Conference's 2000 Show was all that it could be and more.

As a casual attendee and San Francisco native, I delight in doing my part as a new construction real estate writer by wandering the exhibit floor for one of the three days of the event, even though even a full day may not be enough to take it all in. I love to stroll through the eye-catching displays, stopping to ask questions, touch sumptuous building products, open and close elegant windows and doors, and glide my hand over shiny granite surfaces and gleaming jewelry-like bathroom faucets. It makes me realize why I write about the industry and gives me the shot in the arm that I need to write more.

The walk from the Mission Street Garage is a short one. For those of us who no longer live in the city by the bay, summers are met with a somewhat chilly surprise, realizing that we never noted the temperatures as children living there. People approaching and passing my friend and I on the sidewalk do so with event badges flapping in the ocean breezes from long cords around their necks and we realize we are getting close.

The exhibit hall is large and airy, with escalators descending through sun-filled expanses of overhead glass to the display floor below. Taking the ride down, one can't help but notice a 50's-themed café set up midway along the route on its own level, with plastic-lined booths, a soda bar and computers, called the "Cyber Café." A busy gathering place for attendees to meet informally and receive and send e-mails, USBuild.com went all out to make attendees remember their booth.

On to the exhibit hall floor. This is Disneyland for someone like me, who gets excited over the new, the innovative, the ingenious and the bold of the building world. Would I like information sent to me on their products? "Mais certainement!," I think back to my college French days, not knowing how more emphatically to put it in English. And instead of having to tediously fill out mailing list forms, I hand them a PCBC-furnished credit card-like piece of plastic that each exhibitor uses to "swipe" the information I had input into the PCBC online application site. (I have a feeling my mailman will not be pleased with how many times that card was used.)

To mention each and every exhibitor would take too much space here, so general impressions will have to do for this description. Some of the larger displays were set up as islands around which to navigate, with a labyrinth of custom doors, windows, and custom appliances, sinks, tubs and kitchen countertops appealing at every turn. Manufacturers' reps are eager to explain their products and how popular they have become, and eye our name badges with curiosity to strike up conversations after realizing where we have come from. "Oh we've built homes there," one would say. Several even recognized my name from these columns, absolutely making my day as a cyber-journalist. Other booths lined perimeter walls and created a patchwork quilt of products, colors, conversation and expensive marketing brochures.

After stopping at nearly every natural stone and granite display along the way and discussing the exotic surfaces' countries of origin, my companion and I decided we should hasten a bit to get through more displays. We wistfully passed nuts-and-bolts type exhibits, showing new types of HVAC vents, metal sheathing, and wood trusses, gathering information only, and lingered longer at the beauty of solid wood doors with cathedral-arched tops, period-clad custom windows for antique-laden homes, and fresco-painted bathroom sinks. Our surprise at one booth never seemed to quite prepare us for the delights at the next. When finally reaching the end of our yellow brick road, we were laden with brochure-filled cloth tote bags, pockets filled with Jolly Rancher candies, and lots of dreams for how we would someday outfit our million-dollar mini-estates.

Knowing that I will find even more to write about in my cache of take-away goodies, I watch as the somewhat weary-looking booth aficionados begin to pack up their wares for the trip home. I realize that the Western Building Show 2000, bolstered by an unprecedented building economy over the past five years, is about to end its first new millenium display and event-laden roster with smiles all around and hopes of even more good prospects to come. And that next year, I'll just have to come again and spend a lot more time.