Westercon, created in 1947, and which in its heyday drew a couple thousand fans, is held in a Western North American city – if one wants to hold it. Right now there are no takers for 2023.
Even this year’s Westercon business meeting was deferred until this weekend at Loscon 47 because the 2021 Seattle Westercon was not able to hold the con and disbanded. The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, stewards of the Westercon service mark, conducted a 2023 site selection vote yesterday – None of the Above won against the assorted write-ins. (Once there was an unopposed 2023 bid for Tempe, but they withdrew in June.)
Kevin Standlee announced the site selection result on his blog, as he prepared to chair today’s Westercon business meeting where there was wide latitude under the rules to pick a site anywhere in North America west of 104° west longitude or Hawaii. But there were still no takers. Instead, he told Facebook readers afterwards, the Westercon Business Meeting created a committee (“The Standlee-Hayes Commission”) to find a site/group to host Westercon 75. Kevin says, “We won’t decide until sometime early in the new year. More details later, including a recording of the Business Meeting.”
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
There are two YouTube videos that show how the sausage of Site Selection was made. The first is the Business Meeting itself, which first officially received the results that shows None of the Above won the election due to no bid having filed. The second is a Committee of the Whole, which considered alternatives slightly less formally than the Business Meeting has to do and submitted recommendations to the Business Meeting. The Meeting adopted the recommendations unanimously before adjourning sine die (without date). There will be no Business Meeting on Sunday, because we managed to reach a conclusion with less than ten minutes before we would have adjourned until Sunday.
Westercon Business Meeting
Westercon Business Meeting Committee of the Whole
As you reported, Lisa Hayes and I were empaneled to figure out what to do about Westercon 75. This does not mean we are going to run Westercon 75, although in a technical sense it leaves us as acting co-chairs of Westercon 75 until we find someone else to run it, somewhere.
Lisa and I have been talking to people at Loscon/Westercon and will continue to discuss the matter with interested people. I do not expect to work on this until we get back from Worldcon, and thus would not expect a conclusion until February at the very earliest.
Note that by handing the task over to the “Standlee-Hayes Commission,” the decision is in our hands. The Business Meeting has washed its hands of the matter and delegated the decision to us.
This is a similar conclusion to what was made at the Swecon meeting last weekend. There was the seated Eurocon in Uppsala, Sweden for 2023, which was elected as the 2023 Swecon, but no bids for 2022. Instead we opted to give two respected fen—Carolina Gómez-Lagerlöf and Tomas Cronholm—delegation to appoint the 2022 Swecon if a servicable bid would appear.
There are so many places that have been good hosts to Westercon, Portland, Seattle, San Diego, Los Angeles. All with large fan bases. Now, I remember Denver and Oakland. I didn’t attend El Paso, but why not again? Nevada has convention cities though Las Vegas is actually too big, but you could hold Westercon in the Grand Sierra Resort or the Nugget in Sparks.
I watched the videos of the Business Meeting and wondered if Kevin and Lisa needed mental health examinations [Big Loopy Grin].
Mary mentions the Grand Sierra in Reno. That might be a good location for some time farther in the future. It’s a much more family-friendly casino than the hotels from the 2011 Worldcon. I think that holding a Westercon in Reno the year after Tonopah is likely not a very good idea, especially since all of the Nevada fans are involved with Tonopah.
El Paso was one of the first low-attended Westercons when it started its downward spiral. It had an attendance of around 300. Of course, it didn’t help that it was scheduled against the San Diego Comic Con.
However, I believe it was back in Boise once in the day. I wouldn’t mind going to Vancouver again.
Adrienne Foster: I remember a story old-time LASFSians told about the Boise Westercon (1956) is that it didn’t sell enough memberships to break even til the con had started and at that point the greatly-relieved chair went into the bar and got drunk.