Popular hobby expo stretches its legs at Wells Fargo Center

Thousands of people, many of them middle-aged men, packed into the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts on Saturday to size up models. They carefully zoomed in on the details - the mold seams, paint, decals and overall style - of the planes, ships and automobiles that were part of a plastic scale model contest at the annual Hobby Expo.

“What you’re looking for is attention to detail,” said John Carr, a San Jose police sergeant who served as the head judge at the event, put on by the Sonoma County chapter of the International Plastic Modelers’ Society.

“You’re striving for realism,” added Carr, 44, who has been into model building for more than two decades.

Using a flashlight, he hovered over the intricate pieces. Hundreds of them covered the tables lined down the middle of one of the wings on the northeast end of the building.

It’s not always about the best-looking model, Carr said.

“Sometimes it’s the subject matter,” he said. One of his favorite models at the event was a B-17 bomber set on a coconut base designed to look like a beach.

“People get creative,” said Carr, who entered into the contest several figurines he assembled, including one of a World War II German soldier and a U.S. Marine.

The expo gets about 350 contest entries each year, said Steven Elliott, owner of the Rohnert Park hobby store Fundemonium, which sponsored the event.

“Armors and aircrafts are the two biggest categories,” added Chris Zanella, president of the International Plastic Modelers’ Society.

Meanwhile, Elliott said the expo drew an estimated 3,000 attendees. Some came from as far as Phoenix and Reno for the superhero-themed event. To showcase local heroes, organizers also invited agencies such as Santa Rosa police, Redcom emergency dispatch and Vet-Connect to participate in the event.

For years, the expo has been held at the Petaluma Community Center. However, organizers decided to move it to the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts when the crowds started to grow, Elliott said.

“We were bumping up against the seams in Petaluma,” he said. “We needed a bigger venue.”

The center provided plenty of room to showcase all the hobbies, including outdoor space for the remote-controlled cars, helicopters and planes, some with 30-inch wingspans.

Sisters Alana Wiltshire, 23, and Aanjii Mitchell, 12, were excited about a pair of R2-D2 droids from “Star Wars” that made it to the expo.

“It moved when I touched it. It was exciting,” Mitchell said.

While they were as thrilled to see the droids, Sandy Yang and Julia O’Keeffe also were excited about the Bot Bash. Each equipped with a miniature robot, the Casa Grande High School students battled it out.

“I’ve never done it before,” O’Keeffe, 17, said.

“It was so much pressure with a lot of people watching,” Yang, 16, added.

You can reach Staff Writer Eloísa Ruano González at 521-5458 or eloisa.gonzalez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @eloisanews.