Grand Rapids Comic Con 2019
Grand Rapids Comic Con is the biggest nerdy event held each year in Western Michigan. This year it was held over the weekend of November 8-10, 2019 at DeVos Place in downtown Grand Rapids. It was bigger than ever this year, with Main Events moved to the nearby civic auditorium and the hall it had freed being used for things like the Star Wars exhibits, so the main Exhibit Hall would be entirely vendors and artists.
Because load-in starts at 1PM on Thursday, we went up on Wednesday. I carried our last few items out relatively quickly and we hit the road in good time. We made good time up US 31 through Indiana and then I-94 across to Kalamazoo. But as we got onto US 131 up to Grand Rapids, I suddenly got excruciatingly sleepy. As in could barely keep my eyes open, but we were so close to getting there that it didn't make sense to get out another can of pop because there wasn't enough time for it to take effect. Needless to say, I was very glad to pull in at the hotel and shut down the van.
We got checked into the hotel without trouble, but when I took the bell cart out and piled on the first load, I discovered we had a problem. The tires on the bell cart didn't have enough air in them, and were going so flat I could scarcely move the cart. I ended up having to put a bunch of pop back into the van to lighten the load enough that I could carefully push the cart in to our room and load that stuff in. Then I went to the front desk to let them know they had a serious problem. Unfortunately they didn't have a spare bell cart, and neither did they have a suitable pump to air up the tires. I suggested they go to the gas station that was next door, but they were concerned that the more powerful air pump could blow out the tires.
However, they found me a laundry cart, and I was able to carry the rest of our stuff in. Getting the big cooler in and out of it was a hassle, but I managed. The big suitcase has wheels, so I just wheeled it in on its own. By the time I got everything in and set up, it was time for supper. Then I got on my computer and started setting up blog posts for later in the week, since the physical activity of carrying in our stuff had restored me to alertness. I also got my novelette out, intending to just work on puzzling out how to fix the logic holes, and suddenly started writing actual text. I actually got several pages done before it was time to turn in for the night.
On Thursday we got up and had the hotel's complimentary breakfast. Then we headed downtown to DeVos Place so we could get parked reasonably close to the freight elevator. I'd expected to be restricted by lack of signal to reading e-books on my iPhone, so I was surprised to get enough of a signal to work my way through some of the e-mails that had built up while we were busy with conventions. Then it was close enough to time to load in that I dug out our cart and got the first load onto it so I would be ready to go as soon as the freight elevator opened.
My husband and I took the first trip up to the show floor together, and I headed to our booth to drop off the merchandise while he went to vendor check-in to get our badges. As I headed over, I was momentarily disoriented by the sight of much lower numbered aisles than I had expected, but as soon as I realized that things were slightly shifted from what I remembered of previous years, I was able to find our booth with relative ease and deposit the boxes at the edge, where they wouldn't interfere with putting down the puzzle mats.
As I was going back down for my next load, I was intercepted by one of the loading-dock employees who'd helped get us loaded out after this year's JAFAX. She asked if I needed some help, and I told her that every additional able body would get us done that much faster. So she was able to grab a flatbed cart when my husband hadn't been able to find one, and we got to work cleaning up the stack of merchandise beside the van so I could get parked in the next space over.
We were making good headway when the freight elevator suddenly started acting up. The elevator operator tried resetting the emergency stop button, and it appeared to work. However, the freight elevator went up very slowly, so much it was obvious that something was seriously wrong with it. When it finally reached the top, we thought that we'd made it -- except the doors wouldn't open, and then next thing we knew, we were going back down at more of the normal speed. This time the doors opened without any trouble, but nothing the elevator operator could do would get the elevator to work. She then called the maintenance crew that she'd brought down on the previous run, and they tried to get it to work by cycling the power to it, hoping to get the logic boards to reset. However, nothing would get it to work, so they finally put in a call to the company that services the elevators, telling them that we were in the middle of load-in for a large number of vendors and the service call needed to be expedited.
However, even an expedited call was going to take an hour or more just to get out to us, and there was no way that we could just suspend operations indefinitely. We needed to get everyone in there as rapidly as possible, so someone higher up decided that it was time to fall back to letting us go up and down on the two staff elevators. The woman who was helping me was actually part of the security team but working dock, so she was simultaneously helping get my loads in and helping supervise the movement of vendors through the Back of House mechanical area to the staff elevators. But even while doing double duty, she helped me get those last few cart loads in with astonishing rapidity. We got done faster than anything but the conventions where we're allowed to drive up to our booth and load straight in.
I thanked her for all her help, and she told me she'd see whether she could help during load-out, but warned me she'd probably have duty that would make it impossible. I let her know that I understood about primary job duties coming first, then addressed myself to getting everything set up as rapidly as possible. My husband had already gotten the puzzle mats spread and the t-shirt structure built, so I focused on getting our other four display structures built so that he could start filling them while I got t-shirts out. As it turned out, even with the delays from the freight elevator breaking down, I was able to get all four displays set up and get all the t-shirts out, including those belonging to our consignor, and I even did a little work on filling the other displays by the time they wanted to get the vendor hall closed for the night.
We went back down to the parking level and headed out, thinking that we were going to get a ten-buck event rate. I was rather astonished when I was told that no, I needed to pay the fifteen-buck rate because we'd stayed into the evening. I had to quick dig out the emergency fiver that I keep tucked away in a corner of my pocketbook, and made a mental note to replace it at the end of the convention so I'd have something for a future surprise like that.
We made it back to the hotel in reasonably good time and had supper. I had time to do a little more writing on my novelette before turning in for the night.
On Friday we had the hotel's complimentary breakfast, then headed back downtown to finish setup. I got the books set out, and then moved to our ceramics, only to discover to my dismay that we were a lot further down than I'd realized. Once I got all our regular merchandise out, I ended up having to go through some boxes and tubs of stuff we don't usually put out, just to get our tables fully covered. On the other hand, we were ready in time, and were just putting the last few signs up as the VIP members started filtering in. Sure, it meant we didn't have any time to look around, but at least we had everything set up and ready to go.
However, sales were very slow all day long. We had a reasonable amount of traffic, but almost everyone was just looking, not buying. By the time we closed for the night, I was seriously wondering if we'd made a major mistake in giving this show a second chance after it had flopped hard in 2018. I tried to tell myself that this is a show where people spend Friday planning and do their shopping on Saturday, but it still wouldn't quite settle down my gnawing worry that I'd set us up to fail.
On the way to retrieve the van from the Schriebner lot, I stopped on the bridge over the Grand River to make my usual pledge to Roger Chaffee and seal it with the Elder Sign. Then I picked up my husband so we could head back to the hotel. We got back in reasonable time and I got us supper. Then I did a little more work on my novelette, but it was really just a token effort, squeezed in before we turned in for the night.
On Saturday we got up and had the hotel's complimentary breakfast. Then we headed downtown yet again for our big sales day. I was going to do a little looking around, but by the time we got everything in order, the first VIP's were beginning to trickle in, so I really didn't get to look around much.
Sales rates really did pick up, enough that we started running out of dollar bills to make change and had to go running to various other vendors we knew to buy desperately needed change. However, most of our sales were small ones, which do add up over time, but only if you've got really high volume. It also didn't help that we were having trouble with shoplifters. Nothing big like the nylon sparring sword that was stolen in 2018, but one of the thieves was incredibly brazen. She was talking with my husband like she was going to buy a squishy, and suddenly she pocketed it and just took off. My husband yelled at me to "get her," but I had no idea what was going on, and couldn't just go around accosting every random female in the area. By the time I got even a basic description of the thief, she had long since vanished into the crowd, and there were far too many people answering to such a general description. The next time we had a lull in the flow of traffic, I went onto Facebook and put out a warning on a vendors' group I belong to that everyone needed to watch their stock closely for thieves, because we'd just been hit. A little while later, I noticed several other squishies were missing from our table, and asked my husband whether he'd sold any. Apparently we'd gotten hit a second time, this thief even more bold about it.
By closing time, I was feeling better about our ability to break even, but still hesitant about committing to returning in 2020. In particular, I was beginning to seriously question whether we wanted to continue with the 20x20 setup we'd been using ever since the convention moved to DeVos Place. It had made sense in 2015 and 2016 to get a large area so we could put out as much merchandise as physically possible. However, as sales were shifting from large, bulky items like t-shirts to smaller things like squishies and emoji masks, it seemed like it would make a lot more sense to reduce our layout to a 10x30 setup similar to what we do at Youmacon. Yes, we'd lose the discount, but in a down economy, even a few hundred bucks shaved off our break-even point might make the difference between a good con and a losing one.
We headed back to the hotel and had supper. I counted our money and found we were reasonably close to paying for our booths. If we could make the cost of hotel and gas, we could at least consider returning in 2020 (since a lot of the stuff we were selling was old stuff we were trying to get rid of, rather than stuff I planned to restock for our spring 2020 events, so cost of goods sold was much less of an issue). I also got a little writing done, although it was more of a token than anything.
On Sunday we got up and had the hotel's complimentary breakfast. Then we headed downtown to DeVos Place for the last day of the convention. This time we parked in the underground parking deck, getting as close to the freight elevator as we could manage in order to shorten our trips during load out. Of course it meant a very long walk to the elevators that would take us to the entrance of the vendor hall. We actually managed to get there so early that the vendor hall wasn't even open to vendors, so we found a place to sit down and I made some headway on cleaning out my e-mail inbox while we waited.
Once we got inside, we got our tables uncovered and ready for business. Then I finally had some actual time to walk around and take a look at the other vendors' setups. I should've waited until VIP time to go through the media book backstock and tighten it, because VIP time was so slow that I could've done the job and not missed a single customer.
Even when the doors opened to the full attendance of the convention, traffic and sales remained slow. I could only wonder how much of it was people who were partying until late and struggling to get out of bed and checked out of their hotels, and how much of it was people who went to church on Sunday morning and would only come to the convention after services got out.
Also, all our efforts to find someone to help us failed, so it was clear we were going to need to start packing early if we were going to have any hope at all of getting out of there in time. I didn't really like starting to pack right after lunch, because sales were actually starting to pick up, but we did not need to get crosswise with the venue for being late getting out. So I started putting away the fragile stuff that had received relatively little attention, and then the various items that we'd put out entirely to fill out displays that looked excessively scant.
Only after we officially closed did we box up the t-shirts and start taking down the displays and pulling up the puzzle mats. I went down to the parking deck and retrieved our handcart so I could at least get the big gridwall down and start taking t-shirt boxes down. At least with everything being on a level surface, I was able to pile my cart higher, which allowed me to work a little faster. Especially considering that there was a lengthy line for the freight elevator in the early part of the load-out process, getting more on every load was a good thing.
And then, as I was about fourth in line for the next trip on the freight elevator, it started acting up. The doors closed to take the current load down, and the re-opened, with the same people and carts on it. Repeat the process again, and I was having that sick sinking feeling of "here we go again" -- only with the freight elevator stuck on the show floor level where it couldn't function as a bridge between the parking deck and the Back of House area as it had on Thursday.
As it turned out, the problem was someone standing too close to one of the sensors and causing a safety cut-out to activate. Once everyone was rearranged appropriately, it was able to go down, unload the current crowd, and come back up with a group who were bringing back empty carts. Even so, it was still valuable time lost when we could least afford it.
As the crowd began to thin out, I was finally able to grab one of the convention center's flatbed carts, which could hold a lot more merchandise. It also enabled me to put our cart away, since we were getting closer and closer to the point where we needed it in place so we could stack our other merchandise around it. Eventually I snagged two other flatbed carts and piled the remainder of our merchandise on them in order to get everything off the show floor as rapidly as we could, since the time was rapidly dwindling.
Once everything was on the parking deck, it was just a matter of getting it all into the van as rapidly as I could. Even so, we ended up being the last dealer to leave -- but at least we did just get charged the ten-buck event rate, rather than anything higher.
Very glad to be done with the whole process, we drove back to the hotel to have a very late supper. Then I scribbled a little more on my writing before we turned in for the night.
On Monday we got up to definite snow on the parking lot and vehicles. However, it looked like traffic was moving relatively well on US-131 (which the hotel backs up against), so we hoped the trip wouldn't be too awful. Given that we'd ended up with a bare break-even at best, we couldn't afford the damage an additional hotel night would do to our bottom line. So we ate breakfast, then gathered up our belongings as quickly as we could manage.
Because of all the snow coming down, I pulled the van under the hotel's awning to load out, which required a fair amount of maneuvering. Worse, the tires on the bell cart still hadn't been aired up, in spite of their having an entire weekend to get something done about it. Since housekeeping was using all the laundry carts, there was nothing to do but split up our belongings into smaller loads, which required extra time.
As a result, we were about half an hour later than we'd intended getting on the road. Then we stopped at the gas station, since we were down to half a tank and did not want to head out into snowy weather on so little fuel. All that added additional time, and by the time we actually got on US 131, it was a slushy mess. I was barely able to go 40-45 mph because any faster and we didn't have solid traction. I could feel it in the seat of my pants every time we tried to speed up.
And then everything slowed to a crawl. I could see flashing lights ahead, so I knew there was trouble. As we got closer, I saw cop cars, tow trucks and some cars that had clearly been in a crash. One was sitting on the shoulder, and the other was up against the cable barrier in the median, which suggested that one or both had spun out before colliding. Later we saw a number of cars spun out in the ditch and the median, and more tow trucks trying to winch them out. One was a car I'd seen in the earlier backup, which had changed lanes to try to get ahead before everything got tight.
Only when we got to I-94 did road conditions finally improve. It really felt like MDOT had gotten caught by surprise by this storm, and had failed to pre-treat anything but the Interstates, and even those not well. I still wasn't able to get up to 70 mph, and wouldn't until we were on US 31 and beyond South Bend.
Road conditions were pretty decent through most of Indiana, and our worst problem was the ice that kept building up on the windshield wipers. It would get so thick that they couldn't keep the windshield properly clear, and I'd have good visibility through only a few small patches until we stopped again and I'd knock as much ice as I could manage off the wipers.
The snow started getting heavier again as we approached Indianapolis. My husband was using a traffic app on the iPad Pro, and could see that I-465 was an absolute mess. So we ended up routing along surface streets through the north side of Indianapolis, then down to our neighborhood. I was very glad to finally pull into the driveway and shut down the van. A family member was getting us meals to go at one of the area churches that does a weekly meal ministry, so I focused on getting all our personal belongings into the house so that nothing would freeze overnight. Still, with the weather worsening with the fall of night, I was very glad when that family member got home and we had everyone safely indoors for the night.
Copyright 2019 by Leigh Kimmel
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Last updated November 23, 2019.