the last days of the aff

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

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

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, it was briefly a big pile of rubble right next to Interstate 75 after the ministrations of the wrecking ball of Price & Sons Demolition, and now the property is home to a Wal-Mart. But for years it was Atlanta's event home away from home.

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 had ever held any affection for it, similar hotels would dot America's interstate off-ramps throughout the 1970s and beyond. In Atlanta, 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 the persistent rumor of Burt Reynolds' car crashing into the lobby (reportedly in the film The Cannonball Run, though a careful viewing of the movie reveals otherwise), but the future would see the hotel's management and branding change several times. The facility would be known as a Radisson and as a Howard Johnsons, and as it was called when I was most familiar with it, the Castlegate.

I've always been told that the Atlanta Fantasy Fair was forced to leave the Dunfey's, as it was then known, 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, and Indian weddings. 1996 Olympics memorabilia auctions and chess championships. Antique radio Mega Swap Meets. 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.

Atlanta Pin Show souvenir pin, 1995

And why not? The Radisson/Howard Johnsons/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, play your live action role playing games, and generally do whatever you wanted with the knowledge that nobody from the hotel was going to lift a finger to stop you.

Vintage Radio Swap Meet in the Castlegate ballroom circa 1998

As such, this made the Castlegate the place where conventions were born, and where they died. Anime Weekend Atlanta started there in 1995 with 300 attendees, and 20 years later 25,000 people attend the show. 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. Of course, part of this dismal success/failure ratio is the whimsical, underfunded nature of fan conventions and the people who run them.

AWA video room, 1995

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.

Castlegate elevator circa 1995

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 your festival would make it out alive, and maybe it wouldn't.

actual Castlegate footage from child beauty pageant documentary "Painted Babies"

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."

tennis, anyone?

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.

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 Estrus recording artists Man or Astro-Man? 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.

-Dave Merrill

edited 2017 to include more information on the current property and to add photos found on the internets, thank you Castlegate documentarians