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INTRODUCTION
A lot of you may not realize this unless you pick up on the subtle subtext of past entries, but one of the highpoints of my year is the annual trip to the San Diego Comic-Con that I make with my sons Ben and Sam. If indeed you're unaware of my need to migrate south every summer, you can reference my previous 2008 and 2009 Comic-Con journals, which are lousy with subtext.
My anticipation didn't wane this year, although controversy has been brewing around the Con in recent months.
Since its inception in 1970, Comic-Con International (familiarly know as CCI to those of us who don't want to repeatedly type out the whole name) has steadily grown in both scope and attendance, and occasionally it's had to change venues to accommodate that growth. Since 1991, it's been at the San Diego Convention Center, located bayside near the Gas Lamp District and downtown San Diego. By 2004, it was using every square inch of the Convention Center... before then, it would share the space with some other unsuspecting Convention Authority client. Since the Convention Center includes 615,000 square feet of exhibit space and two very large program rooms (Ballroom 20 and Hall H, which seat 4250 and 6500 respectively), it takes about 125,000 crazed attendees (and about 9000 exhibitors and industry professionals) to max out the facility. And that's been happening every year. For this year's convention, held in July, tickets were sold out by the previous October.
This presents serious space and deodorant issues, and you may have seen news coverage of the possibility of relocating CCI to Los Angeles or Anaheim, both of which offer more convention space. CCI's contract with the San Diego Convention Center expires in 2012. Normally, by this time, a contract renewal has been announced. But as of this writing, CCI still hasn't yet decided where it wants to be after 2012.
There's a lot of money on the table... it's estimated that CCI brings about 163 million bucks into the San Diego economy, including 25 million in hotel revenues. And those figures only include the revenue generated by folks who stay in hotels while attending CCI, which is about half the total attendees. The City of San Diego is vying to keep CCI, but it's got to be a tough call. I'm sure there's some weary San Diego citizens' group that's funding local public service announcements showing the throngs of convention attendees along with a voice-over: "One annual comic convention: 163 million dollars. The prospect of a nerd-free summer: priceless."
Listening to the longtime CCI attendees weigh in on this controversy is very confusing. They used to complain that comics weren't appreciated by the mainstream media. That changed, of course... it was discovered that the CCI audience was representative of pop culture consumerism in general, and comic book publishers and properties were soon sharing the spotlight with movie and TV studios, toy manufacturers, video game publishers, and any other generator of a rabid fan base. This increased the CCI density to that of the sun's core, and the more common complaint now is that CCI needs to get back to its roots and generate some elbow room by getting rid of outsiders like those pasty-faced vampire enthusiasts.
My impression is that most of the hardcore longtime Con attendees don't want to see the convention move from San Diego. They just want less people to show up, and/or more room to be generated. They also want world peace and a machine that transforms water into Cheet-Os.
I don't know the solution, and for me, it's not a big issue. As I've said before, I enjoy sharing the experience with my sons; and part of that experience is encountering whatever challenges the Con throws our way.
We've repeatedly sidestepped two of those challenges:
1. No matter how early the tickets sell out, we always score ours by
buying them a year in advance while at the current convention. This only
works if you're prepared to etch the Con in stone in your datebook,
pre-empting less important events like a triple-bypass or your wedding.
Careful wedding planners can sometimes kill two birds with one stone by
making Comic-Con the honeymoon destination, as long as they don't schedule the
inevitable divorce hearing during the subsequent year's Con.
2. We book our hotel room months ahead of time, and at a location that's
not too close. This year, we used the Hampton Inn about 8 miles north of
the Convention Center and about a half-hour away by the time you
navigate the hedge maze that San Diego calls its surface streets.
I gather from the news stories that room availability is one of the issues causing CCI to consider relocating. There's always a block of rooms set aside at numerous hotels near the convention center for Convention attendees, and at a special "Con rate". These rooms become become available on a certain day... for approximately the 2.5 seconds it takes to book them all. After that, it's every fan for himself. For the days of the convention, most of the hotels adjust their room rates to match demand and require Krugerrands instead of credit cards at check-in.
Like I said, though, we usually book a modest room well away from the convention center and months in advance, before the feeding frenzy commences. At the time I book a room, the hotel is still counting the money it's taken in from the previous convention and hasn't had time yet to assign exorbitant rates for the next one.
All material copyright 2009 Chuck Thornton