Wednesday, July 24, 2019
By:
SAN. DIEGO. COMIC. CON.
To give you all a little bit of perspective here, I went to my first comic convention all the way back in my freshman year of high school. As soon as I stepped foot into the downtown Phoenix convention center, I knew these were my people. I ended up volunteering or working for and with Phoenix Comicon (now Phoenix Fan Fusion) in one way or another for the next six years. Once I got into college, I was across the country and it was a lot harder to participate in stuff like this, so in a lot of ways I left that part of my life behind when I moved to Iowa.
Then, a few weeks before my internship started, my mentor asked if I would be interested in going to San Diego Comic Con. Uh, DUH! That’s only the DREAM!
I left for Comic Con on Tuesday afternoon and arrived late Tuesday night. I got to stay in the historic Grand Horton hotel, right in the Gaslamp district of downtown San Diego. Not only was the hotel gorgeous, but it was walking distance to some great restaurants and the convention center! It was fun to just walk around and see San Diego.
Wednesday I had a bit of free time before Preview night, and knew I wanted to go see the ocean. I happened to run into a few coworkers while walking downtown, and we decided to all check out the Sunset Cliffs park, about 20 minutes out from downtown. It was a beautiful area, but not well marked due to some construction and revitalization projects going on. We ended up walking around for about an hour before finding the beach access – and at that point it was high tide so there wasn’t much beach to access at the foot of the cliffs! We had a great time anyway, and it was a nice bonding exercise that helped me get more comfortable around my coworkers.
Preview night kicked off about 5pm and I got my first peek at the exhibitor’s hall. This place is MASSIVE, let me tell you! I have heard talk about SDCC struggling to have enough space in the downtown area because of the sheer amount of people attending, but the exhibitor hall alone at this convention center is huge! I cannot imagine what it would be like if it were any bigger. Even during preview night, where there wasn’t as many people, it took a decent 30 minutes to just walk around the perimeter without really looking at any of the booths.
The rest of the weekend settled into a nice routine – I’d work a few hours, then get a break to go see panels or check out other events, maybe work a few more hours and then we’d all meet up around 8pm to go catch dinner and drinks. As much as I love conventions and dressing up, my favorite parts of this weekend were getting to know everyone and hanging out over dinner.
I spent five days at San Diego Comic Con and I don’t think I was able to see half of what all was going on. Honestly, it was pretty overwhelming! Ultimately though, it was an amazing experience.
Now that I’m back in DC trying to reflect on all of this, all I can think is that this was probably the most amazing experience so far. My internship is coming to a close! I’m going home soon and all that’s left is to wrap up and finish what we started about nine weeks ago. Only two blog posts to go, folks!
See you all next week.
Isabel Bishop