The fine illustrator Steve Leialoha writes…
I stayed at the Hotel San Diego once or twice. The cockroaches were legendary. I do know that after the hotel was closed they filmed a few scenes of the film Traffic there. In it, the character played by Miguel Ferrer orders room service food and upon eating it, promptly dies. He should have known better.
Betcha Miguel never stayed there when he went to the con.
Another old San Diego hotel — the U.S. Grant — is undergoing a $52 million renovation and is scheduled to re-open for business in Fall of this year, too late for the Comic-Con. And probably too expensive for most attendees. I never stayed in the old U.S. Grant but it was the scene of the first San Diego Con, which I attended way back in 1970, back when we thought it was mobbed to have 500 comic fans in the same place at the same time. The hotel was undergoing a massive renovation then as well, but was merely upgrading from Extremely Shabby to merely Somewhat Shabby.
The place I still miss is the El Cortez Hotel, where the con was held for several years in the seventies. I'd say the place was a dump but that would be demeaning to dumps. Still, it was a fun dump, run by a management that didn't seem to care all that much what we did to it. Some people will be stunned to know that not only is the El Cortez still standing but it's been completely renovated — in some areas, restored to what it was in its glory days — and converted to condos. That's right: That crappy room that you stayed in for $20 a night in 1977…you can now live there. Or if you just have a yearning to visit, you can do so at the El Cortez website.