InsaneJournal

Tekko's Artists' Alley wanksplosion
So yeah, the Tekko '08 Artists’ Alley wank report. This is my experience, the info I’ve gleaned from others, and my big ol’ cranky nature.

First things first: They shouldn’t have gone with such a small venue. The hotel held about a thousand people; the turnout for the con was about 2.7k. Throw in gigantic lines and absolutely nothing starting on time and OMGWTF heating/cooling systems and pissed-off staffers you’ve got the infamous recipe for disaster.

I camped out in Artists’ Alley again (which was two little rooms at the farthest corner of the hotel), only this year I actually had stuff of my own to sell. But for whatever reason cockery had gone down with the hours, closing Artists’ Alley (henceforth AA) down hours before the dealer room. We do our best sales after the dealer room closes, so being shut down at 6pm on Saturday really wasn’t good—and was a far cry from the Expomart, where artists would hang out and sell stuff until all odd hours of the night.

Now, this is how I remember things: People started asking about us getting later hours. We were told to get a consensus to make sure no one would be inconvenienced by said later hours. The consensus was reached in paper format, with someone going around asking artists to sign off on a request for (you guessed it!) later hours. Out of both rooms of present people, a single artist didn’t sign. I was told he said he didn’t care because he was going to the masquerade.

The paper was handed off, we were told the AA hours were extended, and the world was good. So it was a bit of a surprise when one Trevor W. Schadt came marching into room #2 at around 8:40pm and demanded that every non-artist leave—which lost us sales, btw. Now, at this point we had no idea what was going on. So when he turned around and locked the remaining artists in, and had people standing with their arms folded both inside and outside of the doors like they were some kind of guards? Yeah, that move tweaked a few artists into panic mode. From there he proceeded to fucking scream at us about how we had "demanded" to stay open, how we’d violated the rules of AA (we hadn’t) with our collective signatures, and how he could kick us out of the con and sue us and bring all kinds of legal wankery down on us for all the trouble we'd put him through—and if we didn’t think he was serious, then we should just know that he was the head of the dealer’s room.

This was the point that I started wondering if dramatic music was playing in his head.

In the meantime, the girl who’s the head of the AA stood in the corner and looked . . . small. I remember her saying somewhere on the forums that she’d been intimidated when he started screaming and that’s why she didn’t step in. I also remember hearing that she’s been friends with him for years.

Dearest Trevor got even more dramatically offended when some of us thought he was joking. But his entire overblown posture and attitude were so wildly farcical ("AM I CLEAR? AM I CRYSTAL CLEAR?") that we kept on waiting for the punchline that never came. Like my one coworker said: It’s a con. People pull silly stunts. We thought it was a stunt and giggled at him for a bit until he lit into the one guy with “I AM SERIOUS. YOU’VE KNOWN ME LONG ENOUGH TO KNOW WHEN I’M SERIOUS.”

For what it’s worth, the guy who supposedly knows Trevor so well told me he only knows him by sight.

But towards the end of this tirade someone started hammering on the doors from the outside, going on about "Trevor, you can't do this. Trevor, open these doors right now." It was another staffer person—LadySephiroth on the Tekko forums—who interrupted our little pow-wow because the con chairs were getting half text messages and call&hang-ups from room #1 (which he'd already hit right before us). (So even as it happened, the con chairs knew what was up.) Trevor cracked the doors open just enough to stick his head through, snappishly told her that he'd be done in just a minute, and went back to the "crystal clear" bit.

All of this took a little less than ten minutes. I know this because I finished two dreads while he ranted, and the dreads take me four to five minutes each. Yes, I hear too many people bitching to be easily fazed past multi-tasking.

After he left and the room exploded into WTFery, an unknown staffer girl (mixed race, 5’7”, glasses, probably 165lbs) told my friend that Tekko could sue us for breach of contract because we'd put out that petition/consensus/request. I’m told Tekko staff members on Tekko’s forum have been refusing to give up her name.

A handful of AA people basically cornered the head of con safety later on and demanded to know WTF was up. She said she'd take care of things. Trevor was still working in the dealers' room (and berating people there, loudly) on Sunday. In the meantime, I managed to use the word "douchebaggery" more times than I have throughout the entire Bush presidency.

It wasn't until Monday, when I (almost politely!) hit the forums and brought a swarm of cranky people in my wake, that we started to get apologies—and even then, the apologies came from people who were completely unrelated to the incident. And it took until Friday for Trevor to post a somewhat half-assed acceptance of blame & public announcement of his resignation, though I’m told he officially resigned right after the con and had told staffers when he'd be resigning well before the con even started. Which makes this entire "I quit because of my misdeeds!" thing a gigantic pile of BS.

Lulz, communication. Lulz, WTFery. Roffle, fauxpology. Livejournal/Tekkoshocon, OTP, Y/Y?

So yeah. That’s the major AA trainwreck that went down. Other problems, of course, include the dance sucking ass (again), the huge lines running the length of the tiny venue, and the food places in the hotel running out of food (?!) & ATMs running out of money. I made enough to fill my gas tank and pay off my taxes, though, which is good—though I can’t help but wonder how much better I would’ve done at a bigger, better venue. Hence the heavy lean towards ANext.