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So as you might know if you’ve been following this blog, over President’s Day weekend Dawn and I got back into the convention groove with the Long Beach Comic Expo, with the holiday allowing us to take full advantage of the early setup on Friday.
No complaints there, honestly, we got loaded in and got our badges with minimal fuss, although I did end up scrounging around for alternate parking options since paying the convention center a $15 “all day” fee for two hours of being there didn’t sit well. On Saturday and Sunday when we truly were there all day, fine, but otherwise that was going to be steep.
This phenomenon is not isolated to Long Beach, in fact it’s a reason we continue to pony up the ever-increasing fees for a hotel stay at WonderCon despite theoretically being able to drive back and forth: the Anaheim Convention Center wants you to pay an all-day parking fee even just to access the loading dock for a few minutes, and the lots are set up in such a way that means you could very well end up paying twice.
Maybe it’s changed now, but that was a rude realization a few years back. Speaking of changes, though, as I went to re-enter the Long Beach convention hall from the frontal direction after getting the car parked at a street meter (a far more economical option for two hours or less, believe it or not!), I was reminded of the relatively new additions of metal detectors and bag searches to convention entry.
I mean, I’m pretty sure we can thank Matthew Sterling for that since this only really started happening after he tried to bring a loaded arsenal into Phoenix Comic-Con. It’s also something that as an exhibitor you can still be surprised by, since truth to tell there have been conventions where we barely get a look at the front lobby, much less the entrance. Even those times we use the front lobby to load in, we’re doing so early in the morning, sometimes before things are fully set up. It can easily skew your perspective. You wonder sometimes why the crowd is so thin for the first couple of hours after opening, and then find out that due to various factors it’s taking the crowd two hours just to get inside, even if they pre-bought. And that was before things got all TSA at the entryway.
Anyhow, thankfully I had nothing I was carrying or dragging when I came back to the convention that Friday afternoon, but despite showing my exhibitor badge I was still made to empty my pockets and walk through the detector. Keep in mind the convention isn’t even open until the next day and meanwhile the loading dock has no such screenings going on. Which, yeah, can you even imagine how crazy that would be? And in my head I imagined the situation if we didn’t have Friday off and were trying to wheel our stuff in on Saturday morning, as we’ve done in the past. “Sorry, sir, you’ll have to open all those boxes and bins for inspection.”
And so once I was cleared to go inside, I went straight to Dawn and said sorry honey, we’re not sleeping in as much as we thought tomorrow because we need to make damn sure we get here before they close the loading doors, because I am not arguing with security and I especially am not going to try to explain to them that yes, there is food and drink in this cooler because we are exhibitors who need to eat and we are a long-standing exception to the rules on that.
Exceptions are why exhibitors have a love/hate relationship with security staff, who tend to be temporary hires that were briefed that morning for all of 15 minutes and the briefing was, for example, “no one gets through this door.” Often omitting crucial riders like, “unless they are exhibitors with an official confirmation letter authorizing them.” Because that’s happened. I’ve had a letter from the convention organizers that in boldfaced print says LET THIS GUY IN THROUGH THIS DOOR and the security guy won’t let us in, because his scant-yet-absolute orders are NO ONE GETS IN an there’s no one around to override him.
But on the other hand, Matthew Sterling, right? But on the other other hand, cavity searching every exhibitor and their merchandise would be… impractical. On Saturday at Long Beach I did check out the lobby in the morning and exhibitors were bringing in their stuff through the front, so I asked if they’d had any trouble and they reported that after from some grumbling and arguing, security was allowing them to pass. As one does, I ween, when confronted not with a singular backpack but a rolling cart stacked to the brim with containers secured for transport.
So where do we go from here? Probably the same old same old from an exhibiting standpoint, as any convention which started making exhibitors pry open all their crates before entry and letting poorly-trained temps paw through their merchandise likely wouldn’t have exhibitors for long.
Other than that though, I figure that like it or not, the metal detectors and potential pat-downs are going to be here for the foreseeable future.