Forty years of fandom
My favorite annual event that takes place in Atlanta is celebrating a major milestone this year.
Dragon Con, described as the largest multi-media, pop culture event on the convention’s website, is celebrating 40 years of folks from around the world gathering in downtown Atlanta to show off their cosplays, meet their celebrity heroes, parade down Peachtree Street and Linden Avenue, and party nonstop over Labor Day weekend.
“Dragon Con’s founders had multiple interests and that gave them an idea: combine fandoms and genres into a single convention for fans who, like them, were interested in different things. While it doesn’t seem so radical today, it was audacious for its time and, eventually, it upended the staid convention scene,” explains the convention’s website.
To me, what makes Dragon Con so special and engaging is exactly what made the event so different from the start: at any given time during the five-day-long convention, attendees will encounter cosplayers inspired by movies, TV, music, comics, books, anime and more as well as panels, discussions, concerts, dance parties and meet-and-greets centered on a wide variety of subjects and interests.
I am also pleasantly surprised, each year, at the amount of acceptance, kindness, generosity and comradery I experience and witness at Dragon Con. We may not all be fans of the same things, but to me, Dragon Con is really a giant celebration of “fandom” itself.
There is so much creativity expressed in many of the homemade cosplays I see each year that even if I’m not familiar with what a particular attendee may be referencing, I can still appreciate the extraordinary work it takes to complete those eye-catching costumes. I always tell folks curious about Dragon Con that have never been that it is truly the best people-watching event around.
I first attended Dragon Con more than a decade ago, having no idea what to expect. Like the Grand Canyon, I could describe it to you all day long, but experiencing it for yourself is the only way to truly appreciate it.
I hope this is just the beginning for the convention that started four decades ago and grew from about 1,000 fans to more than 70,000 fanatics who, each year, flock to Atlanta for what I believe is the best annual event in the city.
For more information, visit dragoncon.org.
