When the drama is at low tide like it is now, our thoughts often drift back to some of the times when the stuff flowed like running water. Remember the "we're suing someone but we don't know who" giddiness of the Worker Bee lawsuit? Or the rampant speculation over the top secret "Columbus" project? Or Cube cracks and phantom power buttons sending Apple's stock price plummeting 50% overnight? Ah, good times... in some respects, at least.

But the drama-drenched plot line we just may miss the most was also one of our longest-running, and at one point it even seemed to hold the potential for actual physical violence. Granted, a steel cage match between Steve "Beantown's a Dump" Jobs and then-IDG World Expo bigwig Charlie "Come Over HERE and Say That" Greco never actually transpired, but when IDG announced that it was moving Macworld Expo from New York back to its home town of Boston (allegedly with Apple's blessing) and then Apple issued a statement the very same day indicating that it'd rather coat itself in Jif and charge a starving elephant than set foot once more in such a backwater burg, the sparks really started to fly. You may recall that at one point things got so goofy that Greco was actually threatening to ban Apple from the San Francisco Expo if it didn't also promise to attend the Boston show. Testosterone all around, and make it a double!

When the dust had finally settled, Greco was out, IDG had moved the Expo to Boston anyway (without Apple), and since both attendees and vendors stayed away in droves once Apple bailed, the show was clearly the smallest one ever, at least exhibit-wise. Personally, we were stunned that IDG didn't cancel the show outright, and most of the attendees we met and talked to-- especially the ones who had come in from out of town-- were about six shades past disappointment when they realized just how little they'd come to see. The truly incomprehensible bit, at least to us, was seeing that IDG had already started advertising the 2005 show as being in Boston again.

Well, here's the latest on that front: faithful viewer Jen Griffin informs us that IDG has officially announced that next summer's show will stay in Boston as planned, but will move from the city's brand-spankin'-new Javits-class Boston Convention & Exhibition Center to the much smaller Hynes Convention Center. Why? Well, the "why" is obvious, although IDG apparently hopes everyone's too stupid to notice; as quoted in a MacCentral article pointed out by faithful viewer Brett Chaffer, IDG veep Warwick Davies first tosses what little credibility he had straight out the window by claiming that "the 2004 show was a huge success, which is why we are continuing next year." Then he downplays the significance of the move to Hynes, insisting that "it's not necessarily a smaller venue"; instead, the reason why the show will move is because "the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center hall was great, but we want to have a more intimate setting, which the new hall gives us." In other words, it's, um, A SMALLER VENUE. Sheesh.

How much smaller? Well, Hynes has just 193,000 square feet of exhibit space, compared to the BCEC's 516,000. Now, here's where your daily recommended dose of irony kicks in: the main reason why the Expo moved to New York in the first place was because Boston didn't have a venue big enough to hold it, and the logistical nightmare of splitting the show between Boston's Seaport/World Trade Center and the Bayside Expo Center (with shuttle buses running between the two) was too much of a hassle to bear. Prompted by losing one of the world's biggest trade shows due its lack of a big enough hall, Boston started building the BCEC, and Macworld Expo's return to Boston was, appropriately enough, the new center's inaugural event. Unfortunately, due to Apple's absence, the show was so tiny it probably would have fit entirely within the old Seaport/World Trade Center, which has 118,000 square feet of exhibit space. It certainly would fit entirely within Bayside, which has 240,000.

Not that we're complaining about the move to Hynes, mind you; it's in a much funkier part of town, right off the subway and just a few minutes' walk from classy Copley Square and Newbury Street's odd clash of upscale boutiques, art galleries, overpriced eateries, and used record and book stores-- which means we'll have a lot more to do once we finish checking out the Expo show floor in about twenty minutes flat. Assuming we decide to go at all, that is.