Nuke The Fridge Con

This past weekend was the second annual Nuke the Fridge Con, held at twice-​weekly Frank & Son’s Collectible Show. I’d been to Frank’s in the past when various industry professionals and wrestling stars came to do signings, but the sheer numbers don’t compare to the crowds NTFC attracted.
First off, I applaud NTFC’s planners for choosing to hold the event at Frank’s. Each stall within is a small business that could use the influx of crowds and, for a convention held there, could function as a built-​in dealer hall — no massive amount of set-​up and tear-​down in a rented out convention center, and by that same token you’re not forcing attendees to pay horrendous parking garage fees. Whenever there’s a convention in SoCal (Wizard World, Comic-​Con, etc), the dealers at Frank’s sometimes pull up stakes, pack up as much as they can, and pay the sometimes exceptionally high booth prices to exhibit. It’s a gamble for these businesses, and by having a con right at their homebase of business is good for them. Plus, they have more of their product available, and more elaborate displays, so this is a positive for the attendees as well.
With everything there are some negatives, and I only really saw two in hosting NTFC at Frank’s: tightly packed crowds and lack of parking. Since Frank’s is a long-​running collectible show, the majority of the space is already taken up. Though Frank’s does have a small area set aside for extra exhibits, that space was consumed by the massive signing lines for people like Stan Lee and Mike Tyson. The rest of the area had an artists alley and the walls were lined with booths for other professionals who came to the show. It was a pretty tight bottleneck just to get in and out of the space (though I could think of worse places to be stuck than staring at Ray Park as he shook hands and gave a thumbs up for pictures). Frank’s gets pretty crowded on its own some days, but with the promise of seeing such people as Ray Park, Stan Lee, Mike Tyson, Ernie Hudson, Richard Hatch, Virginia Hey, and others for FREE, you can imagine how many people turned up.
As for parking, Frank’s already has a shortage of available spaces on regular business days, but it was exponentially more competitive during NTFC. People were parking in red zones and on unpaved spans of land, below bright, red block letters screaming, «NO STOPPING ANY TIME!!» While these people were devil-​may-​care about it, police were taking down plate numbers and mass producing tickets. Were attendees up for the walk, there was ample parking across Valley Blvd, in Walnut. Personally, I feel the pros far outweighed the cons of NTFC.
Regarding the convention itself, I was impressed. I mean, it was FREE, not to mention the array of industry professionals they were able to rake in. And there were cosplayers. REAL cosplayers. Women were dressed as Silk Spectre, Jurassic Park velociraptors, and Twi’leks, and there were troops of men in Star Wars mercenary and Jedi regalia. The presence of cosplayers are often a sign of a healthy con. If you have a girl painted all blue or a guy in full head-​to-​toe Hulk costume on your second year, you’re doing something right.