I just moved from Tampa, Florida, to Homestead, in the Miami-Dade County area. Tampa has a science-fiction club., Stone Hill, that hosts an annual SF convention, Necronomicon. http://www.stonehill.org/ Orlando has a club, Oasfis, that hosts an annual convention, Oasis. http://www.oasfis.org/ Miami is a bigger metro area than either – but I can’t seem to find any club or con here. Why not?
BTW, is this the right forum for this? Or should it go in IMHO or CS?
Hmm, there was something like that in the last couple years, I think. This wannabe pimp I knew was spouting off about how he was asked to transport Verne Troyer (Mini-me from Austin Powers, that’s his name, right? I was like “Who the hell is Verne-effing-Troyer?” and he was annoyed) from the airport and convey him to some sort of con in Miami or Hollywood. I think it was a sci-fi/comic con, because said pimp in addition to his lackluster pimping and B-list celeb transporting skills, was a comic book fiend who had confessed to every last one of his girls that he was really Wolverine, and had a healing factor.
He would then cut himself to prove it.
That the pimp was completely unfuckinghinged would come to light in later months, but at the time he seemed like what passes for normal in the local area. Upon inquiry, I did receive confirmation from him that there was: a) a geekish convention underway, b) pimp had been entrusted to retrieve Troyer, and c) this mission had failed.
Anyway, long story short: the pimp, who I suspect was told to convey said midget because of his 20-year old Ferrari and abundant free time, claimed that he was subsequently snubbed by Troyer, and Troyer then went on some sort of drinking binge on South Beach and totally ditched the con. Now, that might be true. On the other hand, the pimp might have been politely described as a vast toad of a man, and upon seeing him Verne Troyer may have feared being eaten and chosen the better part of valor.
We’ll never know, because the pimp and I had a falling out. I’m told he has since fled the continental United States, or finally managed to mortally offend a certain subset of the local Italian-American community, or both, and either way is unavailable for comment.
But there was definitely a con here, in the last couple years.
I know there used to be an annual con here – Tropicon, hosted by the South Florida Science Fiction Society – http://www.sfsfs.org/tropicon.html. But apparently the last one was in 2001.
Can’t say about the area specifically, but cons are getting harder to run due to costs. It used to be that a hotel was happy to have someone filling rooms on a weekend and would work hard to give function space at a low rate.
Now, function space is at a premium, so they have no problems charging a lot for them. For most business conventions, it’s no issue charging a couple of hundred dollars for registration – the money is a business expense for the attendees and often paid for by their company.
But a science fiction con can’t charge that sort of money (World Fantasy and Worldcon can charge over a hundred, but nowhere near as much as a business convention can). So it’s hard to find function space for a rate they can afford. It’s worse if the con doesn’t have a relationship with the hotel so they can negotiate: after one or two cons, you’ll usually get preferred treatment from the hotel; the one thing an SF con can offer that most business cons can’t is that, once a suitable hotel is found, the con will provide steady income every year, while the business convention will often go somewhere else the next year.
The entire arrangement can fall apart if new management comes into the hotel – and hotel management is not all that stable.
So I’m guessing that if the group still exists, it just can’t get the hotel space it needs at a price it can afford while keeping the membership price reasonable.