My longtime friend, cartoonist Bob Foster, just sent me the following…
Every time you discuss the S.D. Con, I get another twinge of annoyance. I didn't go this year, for the first time since #2. I just couldn't face the miserable freeway drive to and fro, the agony of hoping to find a room, the aggravation of playing slow motion football with 100,000 attendees and the concentration of so many people, vehicles, superheroes and tourists all in one three-block corner of San Diego. Unless they spread events around the whole city, utilize other facilities (like the old convention center or all those vast meeting rooms in all those other hotels all over town) I probably won't be going back. It's just too much of a pain in the ass. I'd be curious to know how many of your readers feel the same way.
Well, the miserable freeway drive from L.A. to San Diego is what it is. The convention committee can't do much to change that, and I suggest you consider the train or driving at a non-peak hour. Actually, Sergio and I had a pretty unmiserable drive down this year on a Wednesday afternoon, thanks in part to a shortcut. And it wasn't all that bad on the way back on Sunday evening, either. (One year, I had to drive back in the middle of the night. I left San Diego around four in the morning and did 80 MPH most of the way — with cars passing me. Much to my amazement, I got back to Los Angeles in the two hours that Mapquest claims the drive should routinely take…and that included a drive-thru detour involving a Fatburger.)
I suspect spreading the con out over the city wouldn't work, even if those facilities are available. A lot of the hotels there weren't designed with big meeting rooms because they figured that's what the convention center is for. But if the con sprawled all over San Diego, my guess is that 99% of all attendees would still spend the entire con in the big building because that's where the epicenter of the convention is. And if you told them there were great events across town in the old convention center, they'd say, "Great, but there's more than enough for us to see and do here, and who wants to hassle with traffic and parking and going somewhere else?"
I'm sure most attendees wish the con was less crowded, that it was easier to find lodging, etc. — and by the way, what you're suggesting wouldn't make hotel rooms any more plentiful. It would probably make them more difficult to secure if all the folks like you, who stay away because of the crowds, decided it was now safe to attend. But the con has become what it's become, and I long ago had to accept that this convention I've attended since the very first one was no longer the intimate gathering it was back at the El Cortez. There are other conventions that can give you a less congested experience — the WonderCon in San Francisco and the Mid-Ohio Con in Columbus, to name two. The size and scope of the Comic-Con International have become a part of its unique nature and I don't think it's going to change.