Peter Hartlaub is the pop culture critic at the San Francisco Chronicle…and a guy who's pissed that WonderCon is no longer in that city by the bay. I don't live there but I'd like it back there too, though not necessarily at the expense of the one in Anaheim.
My understanding is that the folks who decide who and what gets to convene in the Moscone Center in S.F. simply do not value the convention highly enough to take it on other than a "Well, if we can squeeze them in" basis. The first year WonderCon was not in S.F., there was major renovation going on and the number of conventions that could be accommodated was low. Now it isn't but WonderCon still has trouble getting good dates. They have been offered space in the Moscone but, for example, they were offered it once for a weekend when another convention already had most of the Moscone booked and had filled local hotels and driven the price of lodging to extremes.
In the meantime, Anaheim — to which WonderCon fled when the Moscone slammed the door during their renovations — has worked out better than anyone expected. I don't see the organizers giving that up. What they might be open to is an additional WonderCon per year back in San Francisco. That is, if they could secure good dates late in the year. How about it, Moscone? I loved going to a big comic convention in the heart of that city up there.
Thank you, Tom Galloway, for telling me about this article.