Comic-con San Diego (or Comic-con International as they prefer but I am just going to refer to it as SDCC from hereon) is the holy grail for anyone that enjoys comic conventions. Why or how this happened is anyone’s guess. Maybe the proximity to LA and all the studios? The year-round garden of Eden weather? Possibly the local government that has bent over backwards for the convention for decades? Who knows, but it is so. For anyone into pop culture a ticket to SDCC was a Willie Wonka golden ticket, rock concert backstage pass, and Superbowl ticket all rolled into one.
How it started for me
Every February on a Saturday morning for the past five years I would go through the ritual of trying to get tickets. Due to the popularity of the show and the size of the convention hall only 130 thousand tickets would go on sale and SDCC developed an online lottery to distribute tickets on that one day. You would log in and sit with literally hundreds of thousands of other people watching a little blue circle spin on a webpage indicating that the lottery was under way. The waiting was punctuated every 3 minutes or so with a lottery update or reminder not to try and double or triple log into the lottery as that would invalidate your entry. About thirty minutes into the lottery the tickets would begin to run out. First the VIP passes, the all event passes for all 5 days and then the single days. I would wait until the Friday or Saturday tickets ran out and logged off as those days were the main days and at least in my mind it wasn’t worth the effort to go for just one day.
So here I was in February 2017 going through the ritual for form’s sake. I was totally certain this was a waste of time but after all what’s 30 minutes? I was probably browsing some news article online when suddenly the SDCC webpage changes and I’m in a checkout page.
It took me a moment to realize what had happened and I just stared at the screen. Then panic.
“I can’t go to this. Log off the page!“
“You have to! This might be the only chance you get!“
“Who is going to take care of your parents?“
“but how?“
The clock was ticking, and I only had 10 minutes to make a purchase and in the meantime other people were literally buying thousands of tickets a minute. I looked round frantically for my credit card and then had to go through a stack of my emails looking for my SDCC ID name.
So what days? I had totally lucked out and had a full range of choices.
Sunday? Definitely not. All convention (con) veterans know that Sundays are the lazy end days of a convention and attendees are focused on packing up and getting out. But you couldn’t buy the preview Wednesday night without buying Sunday as well. As preview night was $30 and Sunday was an additional $60, I opted to save some money and just buy Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
The rest of the process was a standard online checkout and with a confirmation email I had done it. Now I had to make it work.
Time off
My dad had a hypoglycemic attack in late January 2017. He had refused to eat dinner one night after receiving his customary insulin shot and his blood sugar had dropped.
If I had known that he had refused to eat I would not have given him his daily dose of insulin. My mother woke me in the middle of the night saying that he had fallen out of bed. I ran down and found him raving and thrashing around. I thought he might have had a stroke. The paramedics arrived and took him to the emergency room where the attending doctor confirmed it was low blood sugar. He stayed in the hospital for a couple of days and came out of the hospital walking and joking with the nurses. I ended up with a week-long case of insomnia.
My boss noticed what a wreck I had become and offered some days off, but I told him I would hold onto them for later.
Wildcard: The other trip
My mother got spooked by the January event and declared that we needed to close out any pending business in Chile. My parents had some bank accounts and some other legal arrangements that we had let slide but she decided we needed to make sure that everything was tended to so she declared that she would go down there for a week in the summer with one of my brothers and deal with any pending issues while I stayed and tended my dad.
At first, I was sure this would kill off SDCC as with my luck both trips would be on the same week and I was fine with it. Two hundred dollars gone but hey it had been nice for a moment, right? As it turned out her trip got postponed for one reason or another from May to June, and finally to August. Bullet dodged but I had to arrange care for my parents and manage the biggest headache for SDCC; lodging.
The hotels
California is of course ridiculously expensive, but the big coastal cities are doubly so. Normal lodging prices are high but go insane for conventions. SDCC had somewhat sidestepped this issue by reserving a block of rooms for the con at lower prices but again you had to go through a lottery system to get them. Here I am sitting and looking at a spinning blue circle in late March but this time no luck. I would have to scrounge up a room. Just for fun I look up the pricing for nearby convention hotels. Two grand a night for one room wasn’t going to work.
Camping out on the travel websites (Expedia, kayak, orbit, etc.) I mapped out the decrease in prices the further away you moved from the convention center till I got to what I found was (for me) a reasonable rate of $250 per night and further reduced this down using some travel miles which, huge shock actually worked and got the total price down to about $350 for all 4 nights.
Air tickets were of course no real problem as San Diego is a major airport.
So, in total I’m in for about $700. I figured that I could still cancel and recoup a few bucks here and there and still not feel too bad if the trip fell through.
It gets real
June rolls round. My dad has been doing alright since January. We had gone to Galveston to an airplane museum and he strolled round a B-17 bomber. He shuffles round the old plane and he seems to enjoy seeing it or at least I tell myself that he’s enjoying it. His mind seems somewhat detached from what was happening in the present. He can still answer questions and is lucid but he’s more quiet these days.
The next day a manila envelope arrives. The package is totally nondescript except for the address from San Diego California. I go to my office and using an X-acto knife I do some careful surgery on the package and reveal the box inside.
For a moment I forget that I’m a 46-year-old salesman with an elderly father and I become a fanboy wondering at the ticket badge inside the box. This was now real. Not an email confirmation but physically real.
So, I ask for a mini 3-day vacation in July. All my boss asks is that I do my regular customer contacts each morning.
Next the hard part. I talked to all my siblings and told them I was going out of town for a few days and to check in on the parents. The insulin issue turned out to be the hardest part. I had to train my siblings how to take readings and give shots. Unfortunately, this didn’t work. Everyone else in my family seems to be averse to seeing even one drop of blood. My sister came through with a nurse friend that would drop in every day to give him his insulin.
Finally, I talked to them. My mother was a bit resistant at first. She wasn’t sure she could cope with him for those few days but then I told her everyone else would be checking in on them and reminded her that in August I would have to spend 10 days alone taking care of him.
With that settled, the trip was on. That Wednesday afternoon I typed out my last work email, shut down the computer grabbed my suitcase and went to San Diego.
First night
San Diego is just nice. I was first here back in 2000 and it was ridiculously cute back then and it still is. The weather can’t possibly get better. The sun shines but isn’t oppressive as it is in Houston, the air is moist but somehow not humid.
The scenery with the mountains in the East and the desert and the dark blue Pacific Ocean? I have to agree with the main character from Joe vs the Volcano, “It looks fake. I like it.”
The airport was plastered with SDCC posters. My first hint that this town knew how to host a party. My Uber arrived and we headed to my hotel. We drove into the Gaslamp district and caught the SDCC traffic already in full swing. As we sat in traffic, I opened my window and found the outside air was more pleasant than the air conditioner.
Somewhere in that traffic jam someone had their radio playing this. This exact version in fact and it took me awhile to find it again. We sat in that traffic jam and I listened to the whole song.
I leaned forward grasping my forehead breathing hard.
“You okay, buddy? You gonna be sick?” asked the Uber driver
“No. Just tired. Long trip”
Thankfully this set him off into a “talkie cabbie” mode and he started talking about the con and movie stars and how he was an ex-Marine and had done stunt work on some TV shows I’d never heard of.
I was half listening and mainly wondering what about that song had triggered me.
Maybe that line “I’m in California dreaming about who we used to be when we were younger and free”
Maybe I was remembering what my life had been like before I took on so much responsibility. Was I that much of a stranger to myself these days?
The traffic finally let up and we got moving. We arrived in the North Park district of San Diego to my hotel, The Lafayette Hotel and Swim club.
The Lafayette
This had been one of those swell places back in the 30s and 40s and the management made sure to remind everyone of its heyday by posting pictures of movie stars and celebrities that used to come down from Los Angeles to take in the gorgeous weather. To be honest it was…worn.
Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a dump or anything, but it had seen better days. The carpets were a bit frayed and the paint somewhat scuffed. Besides a formal restaurant the hotel had a small tavern attached to it. A deep dark musty bar straight out of the 1970s. I peeked in and decided I would never again enter that place for the rest of my life.
The local neighborhood wasn’t that great either, but across the street some new construction signaled that some local investor had already begun the gentrification process.
The lodgings really didn’t concern me. As long as the door lock worked, and the bed was reasonably soft I was happy. The general rule for conventions is that the hotel room was just for sleeping. You would try to stay at the convention site as much as possible. I put my stuff away and hailed an Uber to head to the Gas lamp district.
The Gas Lamp
Every city has a gas lamp district. Some have several depending on how many urban renewal schemes that the local government had tried. The old buildings get gutted out and rebuilt, the old tenants get chased out and new tenants move in and instant prosperity.
I first saw the gas lamp back in 2000 when I first came here for a work conference and I found a nice Persian food restaurant which I was determined to find again. Surprisingly I did. The food was still good as was the service, but I found it a little stuffy and formal. I told the waiter I had been here before years ago and he just shrugged and went off to serve a party of six.
I idly listened in on the other table’s conversation and again they were discussing movie deals, scripts, and acting classes. This was getting ridiculously stereotypical.
After dinner I wandered over towards the convention hall to join the throng wandering up and down the streets looking at the almost completed displays. Across the trolley tracks the preview night patrons were wandering round the convention halls looking at the displays in the building and collecting their swag bags from the registration booths.
Here and there a few costume players (cosplayers) posed for photos here and there. Street hawkers handed out flyers to offsite parties or nearby bars. San Diego was fully invested into convention mode.
I just enjoyed the walk among the crowds. I had a sense of vibrancy and life here. The enthusiasm, the creativity, the drive to put all of this together. Sure, most of it was done for commercial entertainment purposes but it was the common fans that gave this life. Everything from 8-year olds with their parents in tow to 40 or 50 somethings like me. I didn’t feel out of place here as I normally did in most of my life. The feeling I had was that here at least I was free to do or go where I pleased without having to answer to anyone.
Then a preset alarm went off on my phone and reminded me to call home and check in and see if everything was okay. It was.
The sunset cliffs
Before relating this story, I have to explain sci fi conventions. I’ve been to enough to know how they operate. Preview nights are for people with extra money to spend. Some will pay more to meet the guest stars. The main convention is divided into the big halls featuring movies or tv series. The smaller convention rooms are taken up by panel discussions, and of course then there’s the dealer’s room. Sundays are for the die hards and locals that don’t have to travel home.
I’ve been to so many I knew enough to know that some things I could skip, and I didn’t have to spend all my time there. I wanted to see something besides a convention hall while I was in San Diego so before I left, I looked up some local attractions and found the sunset cliffs. Some sandstone grottoes next to a public beach.
Sunset would probably be packed with people and besides I would probably be doing other things, so I settled on a sunrise visit instead.
So, after the Uber driver dropped me in the wrong place and drove off, I hiked cross some high-end neighborhoods an got to the shore.
I had to imagine that the sun setting over the Pacific would be lovely at nightfall. The grottoes were roped off as they were collapsing so I sat over the grottoes and looked in as close as I could get.
I sat on the edge and watched the waves slowly grind away at the grotto and at a group of surfers off in the distance sitting on their boards waiting for a good wave to come in.
7 AM on a Thursday morning and these people were out surfing. Meanwhile back home I would already be into hour two of my workday and probably 20 or 30 emails deep.
Why had I never tried for a life like this? Back home I knew people that took off midday to go golfing or take their kids to a baseball game on a workday. Meanwhile I’m sitting in an office plowing through documents year in and year out.
I know there’s people out there that have it worse. People that work 10 or 12 hours working heavy manual labor and never get vacations, but I wasn’t thinking about their lives at this point I was thinking of what I had done with my life.
My butt was getting wet from the damp sand I was sitting on and so I decided to dust myself off and walk up the hill to the roadside and hail an Uber.
As we sped towards the Gaslamp the driver told me that back in the 60s and 70s this area had been a squalid corner of San Diego where hippies and druggies hung out. Many of the houses had been refurbished 1930s bungalows. Now you couldn’t get a house this close to the shore for under 1.5 million and it showed. Kudos to them, I guess.
Predictably we hit traffic about 10 blocks from the convention center, so I cut my driver loose and walked the rest of the way.
Lines and more lines
I mean I can’t say I was surprised, after all the cons that I’ve been to, though I expected that the big convention that everyone aspires to attend would be more organized. In fairness however all of these conventions are run by volunteer staff so a little mayhem is to be expected on day one.
I roamed from one end of the hall to the other looking for the one line to get my “swag bag” with all the free loot that the sponsors included. I finally got in line and about 90 minutes later received the bag and immediately headed to the hall H line
Hall H is where they hold the big discussion panels with all the big-name stars. The rules for Hall H are simple. Get in line on Thursday and never leave the line till Sunday.
Each panel last an hour and a half. The hall accepts about 6000 people per panel but those that got in early can stay all day long so towards the end of the day people tend to stay even for panels that they don’t care about.
I moved through the line fairly quickly and found myself at a panel for a movie I didn’t care about, “the Kingsman”, and I decided to duck out early. I reasoned that it had been so easy that surely it would be easy to get back in later. The next day I found out how wrong I was.
I roamed the other halls and made my way to the vendor’s hall and found yet more lines in here. Some vendors were selling convention only memorabilia and people were desperate to buy before the vendors ran out.
As it was past lunchtime I decided to find something to eat and rather than try a 10 dollar convention hot dog, for which I would have to line up, I decided to leave the convention and find a local delicacy.
Local flavor
I had no idea that the fish taco was a San Diego creation but the waitress at a bar near the convention informed me so. As I sat on the outdoor porch enjoying my fish tacos I looked over at the convention and I took in the throng of people roaming round. A good mix of families and adult nerds going about their business along with media crews doing reports on the convention.
The sun was hot but not unpleasant. I hadn’t felt this free and easy in a long time. At that moment I had no place that I had to go or thing that I had to accomplish.
If I had wanted to I could have taken a cab to the airport, bought a ticket across to Japan and just kept going West till my bank account was empty and then picked up a word or two of the local language and gotten a job washing dishes for the rest of my life.
But then I realized that I didn’t have my passport with me so that wouldn’t work, and I snapped out of my reverie. After finishing up the local brew that the waitress assured me was made special for just this bar but tasted like Heineken, I looked over to the convention hall and decided that was enough convention for today and headed back to the hotel.
Back at the hotel I began looking at the after-hour parties that were being held that night, booked a couple and then had an afternoon nap.
Waking up around 4 in the afternoon I decided to take a jaunty little hike across interstate 8 to the nearest In N Out burger and found out it really does get hot in San Diego.
The burger was okay but the neighborhood I crossed was quaint. Little 1930s bungalows with small enclosed front lawns. I was really getting to like San Diego. Back to the hotel for yet another nap. Home never strayed far from my mind, so I called in to check and see how things were. Yes, he had his insulin, and everything was okay. No, don’t worry about anything. Okay.
That night…
Waking up after it was dark, I found the least wrinkled and most presentable clothes that I had brought and went out.
The first event was at a high-end nightclub where a TV celebrity was DJing. This turned out to be more for the professional party crowd and I immediately felt out of place. Even back in my party days back in the mid-90s I had never been too comfortable with those type of dance clubs where people went to be seen. After about an hour or so I felt the need to leave and headed to the second event.
The second event was being hosted by the SYFY channel. This was being held at a museum that had been turned over to the SYFY channel for the duration of the convention.
The crowd here was more casual and relaxed. Some professional club people had shown up in their spiffy attire but there were also conventioneers wearing shorts and t-shirts and wearing their swag bags as backpacks. An eclectic crowd.
The inside of the museum was decked out with science fiction show memorabilia in every corner. One end of the museum had a music stage and of course there were 4 bars serving alcohol. I wandered round and round as people arrived. I felt somewhat underwhelmed and I decided that I would down a few more drinks and go home and sleep off the alcohol.
An hour or so later the band arrived. It was one of those 80s revival bands. Maybe that’s what hooked me and kept me there or maybe it was the 3rd or 4th drink. In any case I gravitated towards the stage closed my eyes and started slowly swaying with the music taking sips of my drink. The music washed over me and suddenly I felt myself unconcerned. Have you ever seen me smile? It’s as rare as an eclipse but it must have happened because when I opened my eyes a woman was smiling back.
She must have been in her 30s and looked like a Japanese Betty Rubble from the Flintstones. I learned a few words of Japanese back in college but right then and there I didn’t have a clue as to what she was saying. Remember, this was international comic con and people came in from all over the world. She was there with 3 other Japanese girls and they were all dancing along with the music.
Then I just put everything out of head and started dancing with this woman I didn’t know and just enjoyed the moment for what it was.
Of course, it had to come to an end. Her friends dragged her off, probably to another party. She waved and left, and I was oddly unconcerned. I had enjoyed the experience for what it was and just turned around and continued swaying to the music.
After a few more songs I suddenly realized it was nearly 2 in the morning so I stumbled out of the museum/nightclub and after walking 3 or 4 blocks to find a cell signal I finally hailed an Uber and got back to my hotel to sleep for six or so hours.
Friday
Let me tell you that there have been times in my life that I have watched the sun rise from the parking lot of a night club. Nothing to be proud of but nothing to be ashamed of either. But never had I ever had a hangover.
Maybe it was my age or the fact that I hadn’t had that much liquor in years or both. Water. I needed water. That’s one curative that I’ve heard for hangovers, another is potassium tablets. All I had easy access to was water so that would have to do.
I didn’t have the energy to find breakfast, so I settled for the hotel’s continental fare. After getting some food into my system I strapped on my sunglasses as tightly as possible over my eyes and stepped out into the bright San Diego morning and caught a ride to the convention hall.
The Uber dumped me off about 8 blocks from the convention and I was glad to walk a bit and clear my head. Should I look for that girl? Even if I did manage to find her among the 130 thousand people in attendance, then what? No. Just enjoy the experience for what it was and don’t press the matter. Just be.
Friday and Saturday were the big days for the con. The A-listers, the big tv shows, and the big movies would make their appearances in Hall H. This time Hall H lived up to its reputation. A winding line looped back and forth over grassy area with tarps overhead to combat the sunshine that would soon be in full force.
So we sat there. Ahead of me, three thirtysomething guys from Youngstown Ohio that worked in Insurance and behind me, two teenage girls from Los Angeles. Every once in awhile we shuffled forward a bit. A team of employees from the local In N Out burger roamed up and down the line taking orders for lunch. Other hawkers were selling water and even phone chargers.
The line stopped moving so we all sat down to wait till the next panel. So, fast forward to three hours later and the Ohio guys had left. Each new panel was accepting fewer and fewer people as most of those already inside were refusing to leave.
The Hall had three more panels left for that day but only one that I wanted to see. The doors opened and the line barely moved. That was it for me. Some of these folks would camp out here overnight but I didn’t come to San Diego to literally sit in line all day.
Apart from the big panels in Hall H, the convention had many smaller panels throughout the convention, and I went to listen in on several. The topics ranged from “creating superhero costumes on a budget” to “diversity in science fiction and fantasy” to “preparing your manuscript for your publisher or for Hollywood”. All fascinating topics in their own ways but I had heard these before at other conventions.
Having attended many different conventions over the years you begin to notice all the similarities of these conventions to one another. SDCC may be the big convention but it is just another comic convention just like the Super Bowl is just another football game. It’s the spectacle that people come to see and be a part of.
It was late afternoon by then and I wandered round the Gaslamp for a while. Even out here the crowds were thick with tourists and locals trying to catch a glimpse of people in costumes. I passed by the SYFY exhibit. They were preparing for another party that night. Unlike the night before this would be strictly by invitation only and reserved for VIPs and industry insiders.
My luck had gone bad as far as after parties that night. All that was available were tickets for an evening cruise round the harbor or a burlesque show by the local troupe of the suicide girls. I picked the boat.
I called home to check in. Blood sugar and blood pressure normal.
After dinner I wandered my way north towards the docks passing by glamorous white condominium towers right next to the Gaslamp. I could only image how much these went for and what the maintenance fees were for the tenants. A couple of streets down the scene was decidedly less glamorous.
On a darkened street was a group of homeless people camping out. From one end of the block to the other about 30 people were sleeping on the sidewalks in sleeping bags or blankets or some with nothing at all.
They weren’t doing drugs or hassling people or anything. They were just trying to get some sleep. I’d heard a bit about the number of homeless in California, but I never imagined it could be this many. I’ve seen homeless in Houston before and knew that they had camps or places where they gathered but had never seen them on just a nondescript street trying to sleep.
Food for thought during the harbor cruise. The tour itself was nothing special, the boat was a bit overcrowded, it had a lot of loud music, drinks, and the captain pointing out sights in the harbor.
I just leaned on the rail holding a drink in my hand. Despite the alcohol I would say my mood was sobering.
Saturday
I took an Uber back to the hotel and got in at a modest hour of midnight and immediately fell asleep. The next morning, I got up early and thought about going to the Gaslamp for breakfast but instead walked around the North Park area.
North Park is one of those older inner-city neighborhoods that has been revitalized and now being overrun by the younger set. Think of something like Washington Avenue in Houston. Just like all these old neighborhoods it had its own quirky charms and traditions that somewhat set it apart from other such neighborhoods around America.
I had breakfast in a local café/jazz club and walked around taking in the sites and looking over some of the bungalows in the area. The neighborhood was quite tempting, but I could well imagine what the housing prices were.
By the time I got to the convention the Hall H line was even longer than on Friday, so I immediately rejected that option. I reviewed the program and picked out some panels and walked the vendor’s hall a few times till I found a hardbound copy of The Incal, a graphic novel by Jean Giraud, as well as a few other knickknacks.
I checked in back home. Elevated blood sugar and normal blood pressure. When are you arriving home tomorrow?
As the afternoon wound down, I wandered the Gaslamp and had a last dinner in San Diego and went to a live performance of Mystery Science Theater 3000 at the Balboa theater and went to bed.
Houston
Let’s be honest. I felt better than I did when I left. Three days and four nights of unwinding and relaxing tend to do that for you. Nothing back home had changed of course. I still had to check his vitals and I had a ton of emails to tend to that night and of course work would begin in the morning.
In a way I suppose I needed that time to unwind for what was to come. In a little over a month Houston and in particular my house would almost drown during Hurricane Harvey. My dad’s mind slowly drifted away and of course he would pass away in about five months’ time.
I feel conflicted about that trip to this day. On the one hand I feel that I should have spent every possible second with him but on the other hand I think that what would have changed?
As to the convention itself, it is as I have mentioned before just a convention. It’s a spectacle and I would advise anyone that can to give it a try at least once in a lifetime to see what it’s like, but would I go back? Probably not.
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