San Diego Convention Center

Mm-hmm.

And at that point, I was working on a very large architecture project, the San Diego Convention Center expansion, and I was managing all of the, um, uh, documents that were being done in three different, uh, cities, in three different offices.

And I was working ridiculous hours.

Uh, weekends, 12-hour days were normal.

Well, apparently there were two rival taxi dance halls in, uh, 1934.

The Gaslamp District was at the time called the Stingray District because before all of that land was reclaimed for the San Diego Convention Center, there were docks.

And you could see stingrays, you know, swimming under the docks.

So this was like the red light district kind of.

Yeah.

Logistically, financially, that- that's the biggest hurdle right there, is finding the appropriate size space.

'Cause we have small centers like where we are, the DoubleTree, or there's large ones like the San Diego Convention Center.

Nothing, not really anything in between.

There are legitimate role models, and s- some that, that kind of make you blink twice.

You know, when you drive by Comic-Con happening and you watch the people walking up and down, uh, along, uh, in front of the San Diego Convention Center or someplace like that, you think, "Holy cow, people get so spun up and so invested in a character." But when it starts becoming a character who commits violence, it really becomes frightening.

Yeah, it really is.

This case is actually out of England, and it's from the Tivendale Sandwell communities.

I lost track after the first time, Trey.

We're outside the San Diego Convention Center here in San Diego, California at CloneCon 2026, interviewing all the fans,

the furries, the freaks, the heroes,

the villains, the nerds, the street preachers.

Um, now I've never been to San Diego, so I can't compare it directly to it, but people I know that have been to both say that, uh, both are, you know, unto themselves quite something.

But, but I, I've heard a lot of people that have been to both say that New York feels more crowded, probably because of the layout of the Javits versus whatever the San Diego Convention Center's like, which again, I, I've not been to, so I have to just, you know...

Um, but, uh, you know, I, I would say that, um, that in spite of that, um, there are, like, it, it can...

We, we probably, not probably, we are spoiled because we've been going to New York Comic Con since its beg- its, its, its inception, right? So I think we just take for granted the amount of stuff that there is to see and do and participate in, right? [laughs] Like, we're just like, "Ah," you know, like, "been there, done that." But there's actually, like, legitimately- ...

laminates.

The kind of laminates that you get if you go to a seminar or if you're at some business convention or the things that happen in the San Diego Convention Center that are not Comic-Con.

Or like a film festival.

You get your name, whatever, where you're from, your level of access, VIP, normie, whatever it is.