So this weekend I tried a new con down in Los Angeles. It sounded good on paper – ~2500 attendees at a con for queers. I figured I’d at the very least pay for a trip down to LA for some sun.
In practice? Bent-Con should be renamed Sausage-Con. I think maybe 1% of the people I saw passing by my table on Friday and Saturday were women. And almost none of the men who were in the dealer’s room had much interest in the work of a transwoman who likes to draw ladies; I sold four Tarot decks and no copies of Rita before I gave up on Saturday and hooked up with some local friends (Megan, Matt, Chris and Jack) to hang out and draw and soak in a hot tub.
I don’t know if those guys were buying stuff from people with more dudely wares. But they sure weren’t buying any of mine.
Sunday? Screw sitting in the dealer’s room trying to sell my work to an audience that is clearly not interested i it. I’m hopping on a bus and going down to Santa Monica, to bum around a place I remember a lot more than Burbank and lounge out on the beach.
…oh holy fuck why is there a television on this bus with the sound piped through the entire thing yeah um welcome to LA Peggy.
My experience with conventions slanted towards the gay crowd was always: They were there to pick up dates first, so money was to be spent to wine and dine. Unless you were Tom of Finland and then they “might” consider buying something..Or had “hardware” that could be used. Beyond that, notoriously cheap shows that tended to not be worth the time.
I’m not surprised. I definitely wouldn’t have gone if it had been truthfully advertised as Sausage Fest – I know that my appeal to masculine gay dudes is basically zero, if not “ew get it away before it gets girl cooties on me”.
This one had weird damn hours, too. Dealer’s opened at noon and closed at nine, right before the dance started. Awesome, I get to start getting cranky from hunger on top of being cranky from no sales, and if I had been in any kind of mood to hit the dance I would’ve had no time to go get dinner.