Social Events in San Diego For ACL26

Second Impressions of San Diego

After the five-hour flight from Orlando's MCO airport, over the American heartland, to land on the single, short runway of SAN and after I checked in to the Comfort Inn hotel at 660 G Street and carried my luggage into the room, I tread tiredly forward through the busy streets of San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter, bustling with the activity and hype of the 2026 World Cup, which had just entered its knock-out stages. I ate at The Melt, a location that I could not resist in my previous trip to San Diego, and returned to my hotel room for long night of rest.

The next morning, I enjoyed the hotel's complimentary breakfast and watched the news. On the screen, there was a countdown showing how much time remaining until the massive fireworks display near the USS Midway the next evening, July 4th. Then, I left for the conference in the Manchester Grand Hyatt, a 40-story hotel that features prominently in San Diego's skyline as viewed from Coronado Island. It stands next to the corner of Harbor Drive, near where it turns to pass the USS Midway and the Star of India. It was a decent walk through the Gaslamp Quarter and past several tall skyscrapers further north and west, but in 20 to 30 minutes, I ambled into my first day of the conference on the morning of July 3.

That day, I took part in the Advances in Language and Vision Research Workshop (ALVR) in the morning and through the presentation of my work on the Mixtec Codices of Precolonial and Early Colonial Mesoamerica at the 2pm poster session in the hotel's Grand Ballroom, which the ACL had converted into the conference's poster room. More on that in other posts. In the afternoon, I attended the 6th Workshop on NLP for Indigenous Languages of the Americas (AmericasNLP), which I also write about extensively in my ACL26 academic post. It was there that I confirmed my invitation to a joint dinner between the AmericasNLP conference and the 9th Workshop on the Use of Computational Methods in the Study of Endangered Languages (Comput-EL 9).

Pictured below is a plate of World Cup waffles, with pentagonal and hexagonal impressions of a soccerball's surface on one side, that the hotel's waffle iron made in its breakfast area. I enjoyed them each morning of my stay and thought to grab a picture of them one morning.

AmericasNLP-Comput-EL Joint Dinner

I drank tea at the dinner and took up conversation with Curtis Forbes and the Antti Arppe about their work with the Plains Cree language. Arppe spoke extensively about revitalization and documentation efforts taken by his Alt-Lab at the University of Alberta. He spoke about field work at a Cree school where students utilize a syllabic orthography for the language. Aashish, lead author on our winning submission to the AmericasNLP shared task, spoke with other authors and workshop organizers through the course of the dinner. Forbes suggested a research direction for the UF Data Studio to pursue in collaboration with the distinguished linguists at the conference, and we discussed the possibilities as but one topic of conversation among the other directions of linguistic research for endangered languages and languages with little data available for conditioning machine learning models.

We continued until about 9PM and then Aashish and I left to eat ourselves at a Kansas City BBQ across the street from the conference venue. It was decorated in celebration of the holiday the next day, with a giant, inflatable statue of Uncle Sam standing in front of and dwarfing the building. We sat outside, and the sea breeze chilled as he and I sat just beside a wooden cut out of Tom Cruise and love interest from Top Gun. That restaurant had been a filming location for the famous movie and wore it proudly on its sleeve. Multiple times, people stopped to ask us to take their photos through the cut outs, and I contemplated getting a snapshot for this post but ultimately decided against it. Aashish had wings, and I had spare ribs with cole slaw and onion rings. Apologies for not getting a photo of them for this segment.

Fireworks on July 4th

July 4th, or Independence Day, is one of the most important holidays in the American consciousness. In the year 2026, however, it has been magnified to even larger import by the fact that 2026 marks the 250th anniversary, the semiquincentennial, of the Declaration of Independence. It was for this reason that the annual fireworks show at the USS Midway was so enlarged and for that reason that the local news maintained a countdown to what would be the largest 4th of July fireworks show the Midway Museum had ever hosted. On the news that morning, I heard how there would be a veteran's benefit concert on the vessel, with many famous rock-and-roll acts performing.

That night, after my attendance at Comput-EL through the intervening day, I stood on the corner of Harbor Drive looking up at the massive vessel, the CVT number 41 lit in white and shining with the rest of her outline through dark night sky. I stood there, backpack still on from the conference, waiting for the display to begin. At a little past nine, music on the ship stopped, and I thought that the show would start as scheduled. Then, distant fireworks lit up the bridge in the distance, so far away that I could not hear them. I walked in that direction along the harbor, behind Seaport Village, but I knew that walking that far would be fruitless. I would tire myself too badly to return to the hotel, and I would not get near the display in time. I went back out to the street, disappointed and believing that I would miss the display.

Then I heard something from the street and felt an overwhelming disbelief. I ran out through the Seaport Village area and stood at the back of the bark there near a bench. I wondered what could be going on and whether the fireworks could possibly be meant to go off so near the crowd of spectators. Given the similarity of what I witnessed to another incident on July 5th, I am given to believing that it was an unauthorized display in the street. Whatever the cause, it made me pause long enough for the real show to start, and I watched for over thirty minutes as fireworks of every color and strength lit up the sky beside the USS Midway. I stood until my legs were tired capturing snapshots and short clips of the fireworks, and then I joined the multitude as they sifted onto Harbor drive from every egress that led to the bay and rushed back to my hotel, almost too exhausted to eat, but not before enjoying a cone of chocolate hazelnut gelato from Chocolate.

Lunch at Hodad's

On Sunday, July 5th, The UF Data Studio's Dr. Grant; Chibuzor; and I went out for lunch. When deciding where to go, I remembered another suggestion from my mother in the weeks leading up to the conference. A big fan of the Food Network program Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, Mom had told me about Hodad's in San Diego weeks before I arrived there. She said they served massive burgers, and I thought that it would be the perfect place for lunch.

After a conversation on the way about US's overturned red card in the World Cup, following its Round-of-32 match, we arrived to the fanfare of punk rock emanating from the speakers above us. A host showed us quickly to our seats and disappeared. Then, a waitress took our orders. Dr. Grant had a grilled chicken sandwich while Chibuzor and I had double cheeseburgers, and to round out my impression of the food there, I tacked on onion rings to my order.

We sat, spoke about events and publications at the conference, and waited for our food. Then, we started watching the Round-of-16 World Cup match between Brazil and Norway. The score was tied and Norway pressed into Brazil's side of the field, and I predicted that Brazil would lose given the way they were playing.

The food came, and seeing the size of the burger, I put my glasses on the table before I started eating. I knew the glass lenses would rub against the burger, which scaled from my chin to forehead, and would get messy. The burger was oversized, just like my mother said, and I found it impossible to open my jaw wide enough to bite through all its layers at once. There were two third-of-a-pound patties topped with melted cheese, a thick slice of tomato, and moist lettuce. The burger dripped with some grease and a thin mayonnaise. I tasted pickles after a few bites and, at last, sighted them in the burger's cross section. I enjoyed it immensely and ate gripped tightly in my hands despite recommendations from Dr. Grant to the contrary.

When about a quarter was left, I turned my attention to the side of onion rings that came with my burger in the plastic basket. They were ready-to-eat, a delicious golden brown, hot and had a pleasantly rough texture on their exterior; and the waitress had even asked me if I would like ranch to dip them in without me bringing it up.

She'd placed the ranch next to the basket, to be almost forgotten by the time I put down the burger. The game continued as I ate up the rings one-by-one, dipping them into the thick, creamy sauce and enjoying tart and meaty accent added onto the seasoning and zest of the onion ring beneath it.

At last, I finished up that quarter of the burger, we paid, and the three of us left. Before I tore into the delicious meal, I had the forethought to snap this picture of the burger and the rings. I was very pleased with the restaurant overall and glad that I took another one of my mother's recommendations. Please go to my recent CVPR travel blog to read more about when I previously ate a Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives location.

Dinner party on the USS Midway

The conference continued, and it was nearing its close the night of July 6th, when everyone with Full Conference registration was invited to take part in a massive dinner party on the flight deck and hangar of the USS Midway, which has been permanently docked in San Diego's harbor and converted into a museum dedicated to the history of US naval aviation.

When academic events for the day were finished, just before 6PM, we filed out of the doors of the Grant Hyatt and descended onto Harbor Drive, following its corner around highrises to the USS Midway. We passed the stern, whose impressive visage is the cover image for this blog post, before turning to walk toward a stairwell that ostensibly served as the entrance of the vessel. The doors were set to open at 6:30PM, and there was already a considerable line waiting to enter the ship. Volunteers stood by and asked to see both sides of the conference placard with the stamp that signified our right to enter for the dinner party, and I spoke with a couple of other researchers as we waited.

Dinner consisted of sliced roast beef and cod with a white sauce; steamed asparagus; and eggplant rollatini. During the meal, I met several researchers from around the country, including University of Pennsylvania and University of Michigan and we discussed America's defeat in the World Cup during the Round-of-16 at the hands of Belgium. I left them and, after a second plate and another pleasant conversation over it, I rose and went down to the hangar to start inspecting what was on that deck.

Then, I got into contact again with Dr. Grant and Chibuzor. We met up on the flight deck and tried to join the line for a docent tour through the lower decks, only to be turned away at the end of the line. The elderly man informed us that they were not accepting any more people for the tour because too many people had lined up. We quickly rushed down to the hangar, where I'd seen a second line for the tour, but we found things were the same there. Somewhat distraught, we started making our way back to the flight deck and met the first PhD that Dr. Grant graduated by the door. She and Dr. Grant immediately struck up a conversation, and I left them in time to return to the flight deck and see the planes and helicopters that were parked on the edge of the massive runway. You could even climb inside of some of them.

Here are some of the pictures I snapped. We see a pair of helicopters and a jet, as well as a control panel. I looked at the helicopters for a long time, and we could even climb into some of them. There were mannequins in place to give us impressions of what pilots in the helicopters would look like, and thick plastic between the cabins cockpits to prevent guests from meddling with the controls. Viewers may note a plate and bottle of beer on the floor of one of these helicopters. These were disrespectfully left by other conference-goers, and I reported the litter to museum staff.

Special Thanks

Overall, ACL26 was an incredible conference. From the atmosphere of San Diego during the knockout stages of the 2026 World Cup to the festivities of Independence Day, and the final crowning event that was the dinner party on the USS Midway, the conference was packed with numerous new and interesting experiences that I am happy to have had.

Special thanks to the Association for Computing Linguistics for organizing the conference, to the city of San Diego for hosting the conference-goers through July 4th weekend, and finally to the USS Midway Museum and the San Diego Grand Hyatt resort for hosting the events of the conference.

For more information about our research, return to our homepage: ufdatastudio.com.