The Old School Otaku Lounge

A collection of anime clubs, founded in 1992 by Steve Pearl and Chet Jasinski. (^_^) Not quite sure what role they played... there seem to have been a few community-based clubs, suggesting maybe they were trying to fill the gap left by the C/FO, but the majority were the new college-based clubs, which makes me think it was like an East Coast version of Cal-Animage.
The founding club was Rutgers Anime, which started in 1988. Does anyone have any info?

I was corresponding with Jasinski around this time, and as I recall their goal with the AAA was an attempt to build a quasi-C/FO, an organization of anime clubs. Since most anime clubs had been there and done that, the benefits of such a structure were not immediately obvious to those of us already running our own clubs.

Speaking for myself and the groups I was involved with, there was some derision on our part. We'd been in the anime club game for five or six years, and here comes some guy from out of nowhere, without any experience in anime club organization and without any prior communication with the extant anime fan community, telling us how we ought to be doing things. Really? See you after you've run a local club for a few years, and we'll talk.

I believe that situation highlighted the gap in anime fandom between the 1980s C/FO - EDC crowd who were still writing letters and fanzines and APAs, and a newer group of university-club fans with easy access to email and electronic networks like GEnie and Compuserve. One group was organizing its fandom one way, the other was organizing itself another. In a few years things would merge nicely, but there was some friction at first.

Jasinski was one of the people behind Anime East, and that imploded kind of spectacularly. It was a while before that part of the East Coast got its own anime convention again.

hah, just found out today what happened to one of the main guys behind Anime East, the guy that pretty much absconded with the gate from their second year and vanished, Martin King. He had vanished for years after his little disappearing act, but he later reappeared, and he's since passed on. From what I understand Chet Jasinski was left holding the bag for some money that he never saw again. All part of the "con game", I guess