DragonCon

Before I get to far into my topic today I have to give you some personal history so you’ll better understand everything I’m going to be covering.  DragonCon is a giant convention that takes place in Atlanta every Labor Day.  It’s Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Comics, and everything else you can think of crammed into three hotels.  The real appeal is that everyone is staying in these (and the surrounding) hotels.  Because it’s inside the hotels, and the hotels are more or less connected, it doesn’t ever really stop.  Sure the signing areas close down and the dealer’s room is locked up; but at night it becomes a drunken parade of cosplayers.

I first went to my first DragonCon 11 years ago.  I’ve met people there who’ve become such dear friends that I consider them family.  I met my wife there and drunkenly proposed to her to get her attention.  Years later I proposed to her there again; this time it wasn’t a joke.  I haven’t been the past couple years because of other life events, but we were planning on going back in 2014. 

Over the years DragonCon has gotten more and more successful.  That makes its founders quite a bit of money.  Ed Kramer is one of those co-founders and I knew he resigned from DragonCon in 2000.  You see that was when Kramer was first accused of molesting three teenage boys.  So while he wasn’t involved with running DraconCon he was still getting paid by them.  I didn’t know that part.  His 2011 dividend from the convention was 154,000.

DragonCon has been trying to sever ties with Kramer, including trying to buy out his shares.  Kramer is unwilling to do that and has filed litigation against DragonCon to stop any attempts to remove him.  So that’s where we are now.  Those 120 dollar weekend passes and DragonCon shirts add up fast and unfortunately part of that money ends up going to a child molester.  I can’t support that.  I’m not going back to DragonCon while he is still profiting from it. Maybe this Labor Day I’ll invite all my friends to my house, dress up silly, and drink till the sun comes up; that's pretty close to what I did at the con anyway.