atlanta fantasy fair

hello

2020-09-04T16:48:00.000-07:00

This blog is going to be a central area for information and images concerning the Atlanta Fantasy Fair, a comics and SF convention that took place in Atlanta yearly from 1975 until 1995. Additionally I will be posting information and images of other now-defunct Atlanta conventions and fan organizations from the same era, such as Phoenixcon, Dixie-Trek, etc. If you have any images, information, stories, rumors, tall tales, or legends about these conventions, please don't hesitate to send them to me at terebifunhouse@gmail.com or post them here in the comments.

Atlanta Fantasy Fair: an overview

2019-09-04T16:56:00.000-07:00

Okay, so there was this convention in Atlanta called the Atlanta Fantasy Fair, and according to the internets it might as well not have existed. But exist it did, from 1975 until 1995. The following is an incomplete overview of the 20 AFFs, when and where they were held, and who was there. Information has been culled from various sources including AFF program books, convention listings, usenet posts, and comments from readers.

I will keep updating this post as more information comes in. If you have any data, image files of flyers or artwork, t-shirts, program books, please contact me at terebifunhouse@gmail.com

Thanks to all those who have contributed!

1975 Atlanta Fantasy Fair I
Ramada Inn, I-85 and Monroe Drive
"At the first Atlanta Fantasy Fair in 1975, the guests were Stan Lee, Kenneth Smith, and me, with my Superman collection." M. Hirtes

Listen to a WAGA radio news report about the first AFF here! (thanks to Don)

1976 Atlanta Fantasy Fair II
Location: Marriott Downtown
Guests: Frank Brunner, Steve Gerber, Dick Giordano, and Kenneth Smith

1977 Atlanta Fantasy Fair III
Location: Dunfey's Royal Coach (Castlegate)
Guests: Neal Adams, Kenneth Smith
There was the CONAN van, parked INSIDE for I think the 77 show at the Dunfey/Castlegate. (T. Johnson)
Dr. Smith was a guest at all of them up until 1988 or so I believe. He quit coming after he tried to intervene in a very loud and childish argument that some gamers were having while he was trying to give a seminar on techniques. On of the gamers viciously insulted him, and he's never been back to an Atlanta con since.("billy goat")

1978 Atlanta Fantasy Fair IV.
Location Dunfey's Royal Coach (Castlegate).
Guests: Stan Lee, Jim Starlin, Howard Chaykin, Jim Steranko
1978, first convention: Atlanta Comics & Fantasy Fair. Stan Lee, Starlin, Chaykin, Steranko. For some weird reason, Robert Conrad was hanging around the lobby on Saturday night.

1979 Atlanta Fantasy Fair V.
Location: Downtown Atlanta Sheraton.
Guests: John Byrne, Dave & Deni Sim

"In 1979 Deni and I had the table next to John Byrne at the Atlanta Fantasy Fair and we made a fortune on back issues and sketches... " (Dave Sim) Visions #1 was published.

1980 Atlanta Fantasy Fair VI.
Location: Dunfey's Royal Coach (Castlegate)
Guests: Robert Bloch
Visions #2 published.

Gil Kane was due at 80 show, but didnt make it. Robert Bloch, however was there. They showed his 3 STOS episodes prior to/in conjunction with his presentation. (T. Johnson)

1981 Atlanta Fantasy Fair VII
Location: Dunfey's Royal Coach / Castlegate.
Guests: Al Williamson, Michael Whelan, Bob Burden, Mike Jittlov? Visions #3 published.

1982 Atlanta Fantasy Fair VIII August 13-15
Omni Hotel & World Congress Center, Atlanta GA
Guests: Frank Miller, Ray Harryhausen, Will Eisner, Philip Jose Farmer, Forrest J. Ackerman, Bob Burden, Mike Barr, Dick Giordano, Brad Linaweaver, Somtow Sucharitkul, Len Wein, musical guests "Axis". 4000 copies of program book (Visions #4) published.

1983 Atlanta Fantasy Fair IX, August 5-7
Omni Hotel & Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta GA. Guests: Theodore & Jayne Sturgeon, Gerald Page, WSFAns Ted White & Forrest J Ackerman, Bob Burden, Forry Ackerman, Bob McLeod, Wendy and Richard Pini& more. Rooms were $44 a night, 3 day passes were $19.

1984 Atlanta Fantasy Fair X
Omni Hotel & World Congress Center, Atlanta, GA. GOH: Larry Niven. With: Forrest J Ackerman, Robert Bloch, Sharon Webb, Richard Pini & others. Membership: $25. Write to: Atlanta Fantasy Fair. P.O. Box 566, Marietta, GA 30061

"Not only saw Buckaroo Banzai, but I have a real polyester Buckaroo Banzai headband given out as a freebie at the Atlanta Fantasy Fair in the summer of 1984. I wonder if anyone's insane enouW^W^W^^W what it would go for on Ebay? (jackd) "

1985 Atlanta Fantasy Fair XI
Omni/WCC. Newt Gingrich and Fredrick Pohl are guests.

1986 Atlanta Fantasy Fair XII
Omni/WCC.
I attended the 1985 and 1986 AFF.(...) But for the 1986 one, Stan Lee was there with a clip from the upcoming monster hit movie "Howard The Duck". It was a big deal at the time. Other guests for the 1986 AFF were Jim Shooter, Chris Claremont, Archie Goodwin and Tom DeFalco. (J. Helmick)

1987 Atlanta Fantasy Fair XIII
Omni /WCC. Lamar Waldron displaced as con chair before the 1987 convention.

1988 Atlanta Fantasy Fair XVI, June 24-26
Atlanta Hilton & Towers in Atlanta, GA. Convention location displaced due to Democratic National Convention in Atlanta. Steve Jackson is a guest.

1989 ATLANTA FANTASY FAIR XV.
Atlanta Hilton and Towers, Atlanta, GA.

1990 Atlanta Fantasy Fair XVI
Date? Location? Guests - Jack Kirby

1991 Atlanta Fantasy Fair XVII
Location? Guests -Dave Stevens

1992 Atlanta Fantasy Fair XVIII June 20-21
Hyatt Atlanta Airport Guest: Peter David

1993 Atlanta Fantasy Fair XIX June 25-27
Hyatt Atlanta Airport, Atlanta GA. Guests David Prowse, Grace Lee Whitney, Caroline Munro, Monique Gabrielle, Jeff Rector, Gunnar Hanson, Irish McCalla. Memberships: $27 until 6/5, $30 at door.

1994 Atlanta Fantasy Fair XX June 17-19
Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, Atlanta GA. Guests: Sarah Douglas, Bruce Campbell, Jeff Rector, Geraint Wyn Davies, John Russo, Ted V. Mikels. Memb: $27 until June 5, $30 at door. Rooms $79 sngl/dbl, $99 tpl/quad.

1995 Atlanta Fantasy Fair XXI, June 23-25
Castlegate Hotel, Atlanta GA. Guests: Claudia Christian, Dirk Benedict, Dwight Schultz, Jeff Pittarelli, Don Hillsman II, Wayne VanSant, Joe Phillips. Memberships $35 for 3 days. Rooms $69.

So, as we can see, the convention went from being Atlanta's premier SF/Fantasy gathering with top-notch guests and venues (Stan Lee, Al Williamson, Jim Steranko, Ray Harryhausen, the Omni, the Hilton) to a confused mish-mash of scream queens, airbrush artists, and B-movie personalities, operating out of the Castlegate (!). More information about the Castlegate may be found here.

AFF 1983 newsletter

2012-01-17T09:34:00.000-08:00

Here's some images of the 1983 Atlanta Fantasy Fair newsletter, sometimes referred to as a "progress report". In addition to flyers, conventions would find it necessary to publish 16 or 20 page newsprint booklets to really "sell" the show to a world that was decades away from web pages - it's hard to show the appeal of a costume contest, a film festival, or a giant downtown hotel in just a few lines of type.

I believe the 1983 AFF was the first show I was allowed to attend in any meaningful capacity - I roamed the halls of the Omni, bought my first Judge Dredd comics, watched five or ten minutes of "Robinson Crusoe On Mars", and purchased a full set of Elfquest comics that had me in a Pini-derived elfy-welfy haze for weeks.

I think that's a costume of the Godzilla movie-monster Angirus! That would have been something to see in the early 80s. Honestly I can't remember if we were allowed to stick around long enough to see the costume contest that year. Probably not. I did catch the amateur film festival, which as I recall featured a wonderful if overlong movie about a teenage magician titled "Summer Magic" that climaxed with a Houdini-style escape from a swimming pool. The next year's amateur film festival featured "Summer Magic II", a much shorter parody of the first film in which the underwater escape doesn't go quite so well. Also screened was a movie titled "Drugs From Deep Space" and the thrilling "Galactic Avenger", 30 seconds of cut-paper spaceship animation followed by three minutes of family home movies. You just don't get amateur films like this any more.

I probably made it to the con suite - what 13 year old doesn't want free soda? - but I didn't play any role playing games, see any auctions, or witness any awards ceremonies. Most of my time was spent poring through the entire dealers room, wishing I'd mowed a few more lawns that summer.

If you hurry you can get your membership to the 1983 AFF for only $13!! Or you might have to buy it at the door for $19. While you're at it, you can get a room at the Omni for $44. That's cheap even for 1983! Of course you have to spend the entire weekend worrying about getting mugged or killed while in scary dangerous downtown Atlanta, but that's a small price to pay.

Don't forget to pick up your AFF T-shirt and show the world you're proud to be a fan!

newsletter courtesy the Devlin Thompson National Archives

atlanta starcon & comics

2011-10-18T16:24:00.000-07:00

ATLANTA STARCON & COMICS was a one-time show from the former Atlanta Fantasy Fair organizers. After the disappointing 1995 show, the administrators ditched the AFF brand and replaced it with a new convention featuring a wide slate of guests from Hollywood, the comics industry, the martial-arts stars of the WMAC MASTERS, and the usual costume contests, video rooms, gaming, con suites, panels, art shows, and dealers.

I did not attend this show because it was held on the same weekend as the second Anime Weekend Atlanta. As it turned out the second AWA was a total success and the convention is still rockin' it after seventeen years. How did Atlanta Starcon & Comics go? I don't know.

I was told that the dealers were packing up on Saturday afternoon, which doesn't bode well for any show. First year conventions, even if they have a staff pedigree stretching back for years, are always a tough sell. This was the last attempt by the former AFF administration to keep a yearly show alive in the face of both Dragoncon and public indifference.

Note the hotel, the Marriott North Central - Dixie-Trek had already been there a few times and AWA would move in for its next two shows. But Atlanta Starcon & Comics would vanish into the mists of the '90s.

Dragon-Con 1989

2011-10-12T08:12:00.001-07:00

I've often thought of the growth of Dragon-Con and the concomitant shrinkage of the AFF / Dixie-Trek as emblematic of a paradigm shift among Atlanta's fan community - the older Trekkie/Whovian fan power structure being replaced by a younger crowd more interested in D&D, fantasy, and Bettie Page Look-A-Like contests. And sure, I probably think about this too much.

Dragoncon started in 1987 and quickly swelled in attendance to match that of the AFF. Dragoncon's administration has freely admitted inflating their attendance figures in the early days, but it's the truth, that was one crowded show. By 1989 they were infringing upon AFF's turf, which was the Omni / World Congress Center downtown.

I'm pretty sure I went to this show and wandered around all weekend without a badge, setting a Dragoncon tradition that many thousands would repeat over the years. I'm not a gamer, not a fan of fantasy or horror movies, so there really wasn't much for me to do at the show other than gawk at the nerds. Again, a tradition many thousands would repeat over the years.

Wow, $65 a night for a hotel room in downtown Atlanta! At the Omni! Did the Omni still have the skating rink in 1989? The late 80s saw the transformation of the Omni complex into "CNN Center", when it was an oasis of light and order amidst the wasteland of Marietta Street. Which of course now is tourist central. How things change.

I spent many a fine convention meal at that Chick-Fil-A in the Omni, as well as a fine convention quarter in the Gold Mine arcade. At one point CNN Center had a movie theater that showed first run films AND "Gone With The Wind." Every day.

Whoever had this flyer before me helpfully listed some video room programming, which included Dune, Robocop, Alien, Aliens, three Star Trek movies and the always-entertaining Star Trek Blooper Reel, required by law to be screened at every SF convention forever. Apart from the blooper reel this could very well be USA Cable's schedule for any given weekend.

Dragoncon is still going, in spite of scandals and assault and the baleful eye of the fire inspector. It's become the de facto Nerd Mardi Gras for costumers, fame mongers, gamers, and the newly empowered geek demographic as they parade through downtown in all their Klingon finery and Stormtrooper armor. And they said it couldn't happen here!

Dixie-Trek 1986

2011-10-12T07:35:00.000-07:00

Dixie-Trek was a SF convention held in Atlanta GA throughout the 1980s and half of the 90s. An outgrowth of the Atlanta Star Trek Society, it moved from strict Trek into the larger world of media SF, as its 1986 flyer demonstrates.

I attended the 1986 show mostly because of Peter Davidson; I was not then and never wound up being any kind of Star Trek fan. My memories of the convention include running a fan table promoting our Japanese animation club, filling a car with convention pals for a late night food run, wandering into a room party where BEER was being served (!!) and generally having a good time in the convention environment as an unsupervised teenager. Also note the ubiquitous presence of Brad Strickland.

Films at the convention were 16mm prints run off a clackety projector. These included, of course, the Star Trek Blooper Reel, which was a highlight of conventions since in the pre-VHS days conventions were the only place you could see them. Of course you couldn't get Dr. Who episodes on 16mm so the convention used their ten-foot video projection screen. Remember those three-lens RGB projectors?

The world of Japanese animation was only then beginning to carve out a foothold among the Trekkies and Whovians of the world, and I can assure you that every bit of anime shown at this Dixie-Trek was copies of copies of copies of Project A-Ko and the Macross movie. Advance tickets were only $22, which was probably a lot back in 1986, but these days is pretty much what you'd pay for an advance ticket at a comparable show. Though these days you will probably get gouged for autographs, priority seating, and "VIP Access". Note the Century Center was charging $59 a night. You can't get a Super-8 room for that price any more.

Dixie-Trek faded away in the mid 1990s as Atlanta fan conventions crumbled under the onslaught of Dragon-Con; the Trekkies of the 70s and 80s found themselves with kids, jobs, and no time for filking, while the new fandom of the 1990s wouldn't be caught dead getting Billy Mumy's autograph, instead preferring to play video games and get Todd McFarlane's autograph.

"Dixie-Trek" was also used as the name of a sci-fi convention in Mississippi attended by a character on the TV show "Big Bang Theory". Somebody owes Owen Ogletree some royalties, is all I'm saying.

AWA would hold its third and fourth conventions at the Century Center, which is now a Marriott property and seems to have undergone a complete makeover. If you are planning a 900-1200 person event I highly recommend the Century Center; lots of good memories there.

the last days of the aff

2010-08-14T10:57:00.000-07:00

This was the program book cover for the last AFF. Note the SF/fantasy characters on the cover- nobody even remotely connected with these properties was at AFF that year. A nitpick, but one indicative of the total cluelessness infecting the higher-ups at the convention in its last few years. The convention had some high-profile media guests- Claudia Christian from the popular SF series Babylon 5, two A-Team cast members - but you wouldn't know it from this program book cover. On the other hand, in the Dirk Benedict bio one learns that a macrobiotic diet saved him from prostate cancer in 1975.

The Castlegate was in fine form this year; the convention was allowed the use of the former nightclub as a consuite, which became the most entertaining part of the show. We shot darts at each other in the halls, abused the Vampire players (one player, outraged that we would poke Vampires with sticks and proclaim them "dead", said that he expected us to treat them with a "modicum of decency". One con staffer got into a bar fight with cowboys, starting the brawl with a beer bottle to the head. (He later said, "He knew I was going to fight, and I knew he was going to fight, and I knew it would wind up with a beer bottle to the head, so I just got it over with").

I was in charge of the anime room and we showed Porco Rosso, Ah My Goddess, Streetfighter II, Giant Robo, Macross Plus, Prefectural High School Earth Defense Force (as we were calling it in those days), Urusei Yatsura, Akira, Rose Of Versailles, and Future Boy Conan, among other titles. I even ran an Anime Hell, though I couldn't tell you what I showed. Other events? Hollywood movies like The Flintstones, True Lies, Total Recall, and Rocky Horror (of course); episodes of genre TV like Wizards & Warriors, Logan's Run, Friday The 13th, The Night Stalker, and The Flash; and panels like "Q&A: Comics Guests" and "Panel: Fantastic Art", and cookie-cutter every-con-has-one stuff like "opening ceremonies" and "costume contest."

And yeah, that was it. So if you paid $35 for this convention you would feel completely ripped off. We didn't feel too great about it and we got in free. It was obvious to most of the staff that the convention was having a real problem getting guests of any stature - nobody busts down your doors to see B-movie legends, regardless of what the fans tell themselves - and while we had a lot of suggestions for events that might not require airfare from Hollywood, they were always shot down in favor of yet another scream queen or pro wrestler.

(Here this historical record degenerates into my own personal opinion, and does not reflect the feelings of all former AFF staffers, the members or staff of any other organization, or the owners and shareholders of Major League Baseball.)

The fandom was becoming younger and more interested in things like computer and video gaming, live-action RPGs and Magic, and of course the Japanese cartoons. AFF reacted to this new surge of interest by ignoring it completely; they allowed people to play the games, but they did not capitalize on it in the slightest.

Another problem was that the AFF had generated massive amounts of bad publicity because of the bad blood between it and Dragoncon. Right, wrong, whatever; the practical matter is that people don't want to go to a convention percieved as shrill, self-serving, petty, politicky, and jealous. AFF was percieved as all those things. Having public tantrums in the halls of your own conventions, scheduling AFF a week away from Dragoncon, engaging in vocal smear campaigns - all that stuff keeps people away from your door. (re: MOC)

So we'd been keeping our eyes open when we started AWA, and we managed to avoid most of the pitfalls - we had a raft of cheap, involving activities for everybody, we kept a tight rein on our budget, and we never relied on guests to sell tickets, Plus we never feuded with other conventions in public. Will AWA last 21 shows? Who can say? All I know is that AWA will never have Darth Vader, Spock, or The Crow decorating its program book, and that's good enough for me.

Atlanta Fantasy Fair would not return. The owners divorced, and while one party wanted nothing to do with conventions, the other party wanted to keep going, yet at the same time deny the first party any convention money that would have to be paid if the name "Atlanta Fantasy Fair" was used. So the next year saw an exciting new convention, "Starcon And Comics". Comic book artists, B-level celebrities, and - this will really get people in the door - an Elvis impersonator. Scheduled on the same weekend as AWA 2 in November 1996, it became a living example of the Old And Busted being destroyed by the New Hotness. You know, guys, a damn phone call is all it would have taken to get us to change our dates, we would have worked with you guys, we had a lot of sympathy and goodwill. But nooooo, you had to act like big shots. I sure hope you felt like big shots watching the dealers pack up on Saturday afternoon.

AFF 1986

2010-08-14T10:34:00.000-07:00

Here's some images from the progress report for the 1986 Atlanta Fantasy Fair.

Front cover:

Guests included Stan Lee, Jim Shooter, John Romita Sr, Archie Goodwin, Ralph Bakshi, Greg Hildebrant, John Varley, Boris & Doris Vallejo, Terry Nation, Kelly & Polly Freas, Steve Jackson, Richard Pini, Cat Yronwode, David Dorman, Brad Strickland, Gregory Nicoll, Matt Feazell, and more. There was also extensive video programming:

Notice the emphasis on "Japanimation". It's the exciting new fad!

Atlanta residents will be excited to learn that Ted Turner's Cable News Network is in the process of making the Omni their new home.

(thanks to Devlin Thompson for providing me with this material)

the castlegate

2008-09-04T17:05:00.001-07:00

Sure, it was a dump. Even when it was open for business, it had broken windows and sagging ceilings and a funky smell that you could never really get away from. It spent three years vacant, a home for derelicts and stray animals and the occasional body, and now it's a big pile of rubble right next to Interstate 75 The wrecking ball of Price & Sons Demolition has completed its task and nothing remains but smashed bricks, broken glass, and, of course, a mysterious funky smell.

demolition
Thanks to years of hosting Star Trek cons, comic book shows, and the first Anime Weekend Atlanta, memories of the place are burned into the brains of many local nerds such as myself. But I wasn't aware that the hulking shadow of the Castlegate loomed large in the history of Atlanta as a whole. Built more than thirty years ago as the Dunfey's Royal Coach, this sprawling hunk of mid-70s crap sat on sixteen acres of prime northside Atlanta real estate. Constructed in the style that would be affectionately known as "mock Tudor", (if anybody held any affection for it), the Dunfey's nightclub would become one of the city's foremost battlegrounds of the sexual revolution. As the haze from the 70s cleared, the Dunfey's would survive a few Atlanta Fantasy Fairs and Burt Reynolds' car crashing into the lobby (in the film The Cannonball Run), but the future would see the hotel under new management, first as a Radission and then as a Howard Johnsons, and subsequently, the Castlegate.

I've always been told that the Atlanta Fantasy Fair was forced to leave the Castlegate because an over-enthusiastic congoer attacked the elevator doors with an axe. I doubt this story, because a casual perusal of the Castlegate's clients and events reveals that they wouldn't turn anyone away. Gun shows, talent shows, dog shows, record shows, Indian weddings. Pot festivals. UFO conferences. Prizefights. Jon-Benet Ramsey-style beauty contests. Alumni associations. Magic: The Gathering tournaments. By the time the 1990s rolled around the Castlegate was the destination of choice for any gathering of more than three people and less than $3,000 to spend.

And why not? The Castlegate was conveniently located, it had lots of parking and restaurants of all kinds close by, and quite a bit of convention space at reasonable rates. It wasn't downtown, so you were spared the no-parking, no-food, no-nothing desert of Atlanta After Dark, and yet it was close enough to downtown to make it a central location for the entire metro area. Best of all, you could be noisy, throw parties, shoot darts, and generally do whatever you wanted with the knowledge that nobody from the hotel was going to lift a finger to stop you.

As such, this made the Castlegate the place where conventions were born, and where they died. Dragoncon started in the Castlegate in 1987 and now they fill downtown's largest hotels; Anime Weekend Atlanta started there in 1995 and now we're busting 3500 and using cavernous convention centers. On the other hand, both Dixie-Trek and the Atlanta Fantasy Fair limped to the Castlegate to hold their final shows, and other shows like Outworld tried to use the Castlegate as a starting point and never got out of the gate. Even my first attempt at conventioneering - the ill-fated Phenomicon convention Scott Weikert and myself ran - had its second and final year at the Castlegate.

AWA at the castlegate

Convention life nearly a decade ago.

Part of this dismal success/failure ratio is of course the whimsical nature of fan conventions and the people who run them. But another element is the Castlegate itself. As mentioned before, the staff simply didn't care, and that's a knife that cuts both ways. Sure, hotel reps looking the other way for a few stains or broken lights is good; but ignoring complaints about rats, insects, malfunctioning AC and lack of hot water is not. The Castlegate had a swimming pool that was never filled, a tennis court that was completely overgrown with kudzu, and a back parking lot with more weeds than asphalt. Windows were broken, door locks didn't work, there was a meeting room full of construction junk and a shopping cart from the nearby Kroger, and a bathroom none dared enter. The low ceilings and maze-like arrangement of the building didn't help matters. The guest rooms were situated on long hallways that radiated out from the lobby in two directions - if you were unlucky to get a room on the far end of the facility, that meant a long, long walk. If that hallway happens to involve stairs, too bad! There might be an access corridor with a ramp, but you'll have to find it for yourself.

Quirks of the facility aside, the Castlegate's less-than-helpful employees frequently made a bad situation worse. Failing to honor agreements about convention space usage and double-booking guest rooms isn't just annoying, it's downright criminal, and these sorts of problems can suck the enthusiasm right out of your average volunteer convention organizer. It was always a crapshoot going into the Castlegate; maybe you'd make it out alive, and maybe you wouldn't.

Of course, if you make it out alive, you'll have plenty of war stories. Two AWA staffers found themselves on an elevator with a hotel employee, and they commented on the kudzu-engulfed tennis court. The hotel employee's reply - "What tennis court? The Castlegate doesn't have a tennis court."

what tennis court

As the 90s progressed, the Castlegate found itself bought by the Hare Krishnas, who used a wing of the facility for offices and services. The hotel was named in court proceedings surrounding bribes for concession franchises at Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport - apparently payoffs were made during breakfast at the Castlegate's restaurant. The hotel finally closed its doors for good in December of 1999, but the story wasn't yet over- amid rumors of re-opening under different names, or the site being used as a Home Depot or IKEA location, the building was used by the United States Marine Corps in August of 2000 for an urban warfare excercise.

elevators at the Castlegate circa 1995

Whether or not there actually was a "Dirty Dozen" list of abandoned Atlanta properties that the city wanted torn down is open to debate. The fact is, the property was up for sale for over a year (only $20 million!), but finally the Castlegate heard the call of the wreckin' ball. I've got mixed emotions about it myself; sure, it was a slime-pit and an eyesore, but the place was a big part of my life and it's never pleasant to see something like that go. Not only was it the site of my first real convention experience -it was the site of my senior-year high school prom. My project for admission into the Graphic Design department at GSU was to design logos and promotional material for a business of our choosing - and I chose the Castlegate. It was where I severed my involvement with the Church Of The Subgenius; the paunchy, wig-sporting Sub-G "band" refused to vacate the stage, so I grabbed the collection plate and told Man or Astroman to set up in the damn hall, so that we could hear some real music. The Castlegate was the site of the last Atlanta Fantasy Fair and the first Anime Weekend Atlanta. It was where I learned to get things in writing, how to jimmy a lock, why you should never rely on the room's built-in Muzak speakers, and whether or not a sucker-tipped dart can break a hotel light fixture (it can).

Atlanta might be better off without the rats, the odors, and the inoperative A/C, but there isn't another low-cost, hassle-free option for the kind of shows the Castlegate championed. The kind of freedom in planning and executing events you got at the Castlegate was a rare thing, and it's sorely missed. Whatever rises in its stead - whether it's a high-rise apartment block, a Home Depot, or somebody's corporate headquarters - you can bet it won't be as much fun, or smell nearly as funky.