In 1987 when Jack Kirby turned seventy, a bunch of us decided to throw a surprise birthday party for him at the Comic-Con in San Diego. Everyone was invited to attend and everyone was invited to contribute money to the cost of it. Flyers were circulated that said if you wanted to donate, just find Mark Evanier and give cash to him…and you'd be amazed how many people did.
The convention was much, much smaller then than it is now so I was a lot easier to find on the convention floor, which was in the old convention center in San Diego. They had just begun building the current convention center in '87, it was completed in 1989 and Comic-Con began happening there in 1991. During this time, downtown San Diego transformed into a major tourist destination with great hotels and restaurants.
Before that, there were a few great hotels and restaurants but a lot of the city catered to off-duty sailors so you had a lot of sleazy bars and strip joints and there were neighborhoods you didn't want to be in after dark. Not unless you were a hooker or you wanted one.
Friday night of the con that year, most of us were at a Holiday Inn down by the ocean, which is where a lot of the parties were. I wandered through them, partly to see friends and partly so people could hand me ten and twenty dollar bills "for Jack's party." I was wearing one of those safari coats with lots of pockets and since I'd come there directly from the con, I had thousands of dollars on me, all in old, crumpled bills.
Around 2:30 AM, I decided to head back to my hotel, which was the Westgate. Len, who'd been with me much of the evening, was heading back to the Westgate at the same time so we went out and tried to get a cab. When none could be found in twenty minutes or so, we decided to walk it, foolishly forgetting that the route would take us right through Pimpsville. We were both pretty frightened, more so when I reminded Len that I had a couple thousand dollars in loose bills in my pockets. If you'd been there and you were looking to rob someone, I was your dream-mugging.
Lacking alternatives, we just decided to press on, walking briskly — but not too briskly, lest we look like we were packing currency. We were stopped by several ladies of the evening (I'm being polite; they were whores) who offered to show one or both of us a good time. One looked like she'd just come from an open call to play Lurch on a remake of The Addams Family.
I said, "Sorry but we're both gay and we're only looking for dick." We scurried past this person and then Len punched me in the shoulder and said, "Why did you tell her that? She probably had one!"
We passed a bunch of guys on a corner, any one of whom looked like they'd have knifed you for twenty bucks. Miraculously unknifed, we made it back to the Westgate. Len came up to my room and I emptied my pockets, we counted and it turned out I had a little over three thousand dollars. That's in addition to the six bucks I had in my own wallet. It was then that Len pulled a knife on me and stole all of the money that had been donated for Jack Kirby's birthday party.
Well, actually, it was a comb and he didn't really take the money but it was a good, funny thought on which to end our adventure.
The next night, a couple hundred people yelled "Surprise!" at Jack Kirby in a ballroom at Hotel San Diego, which ain't there no more. I had a great time. Len had a great time. Jack and his wife Roz had the best time. No one who was there will ever forget it and I have a lot of good memories of that evening.
One never-to-be-forgotten moment occurred after it was over, and Len and I and about eight other people were walking through Downtown San Diego, heading back to our respective hotels. We were in the same crummy area Len and I had walked through at three in the morning but now it was 10 PM, a largely-different crowd was peopling the street, I didn't have three thousand dollars on me and we were in a large group so we were pretty safe.
And we passed the hooker who looked like Lurch. She (maybe he) was out there early, Len spotted her (him?) before I did and yelled out, "You missed a great party!"