I'm home this weekend as opposed to being at the Comic-Con Special Edition down in San Diego. What I'm hearing from down there is "Low attendance on Friday, some bottlenecks with getting in (badges being issued, vaxx cards being checked, etc.) and a pretty good crowd there yesterday." One friend who asked I not quote him by name wrote me…
I guess it's a success. I had a very good time but it was a little eerie with everyone wearing masks including some very creative ones. It's just a little strange to be in that room at what looks a lot like Comic-Con as we know it, and not be elbow-to-elbow with people in Klingon suits and on a Saturday, no less. I wouldn't have thought I'd miss the crowds the way I did. But there were dealers around and I did score some bargains.
There wasn't much in the way of celebrity encounters and the panels upstairs seemed to be displaced by a lot of gaming. There wasn't much on the schedule that intrigued me and everything that did was highly promotional. But I'm glad I went for one day.
I'm hoping it'll be regarded as a success. I felt a smidgen of guilt at not attending and therefore supporting the con committee's efforts towards normalizing our world. It's just that I'm not quite ready to be in a building with lots of other people…even way less people than are usually in said building when I'm present. If I hadn't withdrawn, I would have spent the last few weeks wondering if I wasn't making a really dumb mistake.
So I'm glad I didn't go and I'm glad other people did. Best of both worlds. Besides, I've been very busy here tracking the price of cashews.