Confrontation At Anime Con

[ashfire]

Katsucon was just recenty held at the Gaylord Hotel in Prince George's County on the banks of the Potomac River. The con has been using the hotel for sometime. This weekend seem to be the most troublesome event the con has held there. The other half of the hotel was being used by the B'nai B'bith Youth Organzation. From emails and friends I know that attended, the BBYO seem to have been a ruling group of use of public and access areas of the hotel. I heard of physical grabbing and pushing of anime con attendees by adult chaperones or verbal downing and use of unnecessary words and langage on other con attendees some cosplaying.
Some of the people may have beenable to talk and tried to be friends but others were not going to let it happen.
I heard there was a meeting of the staff from both groups and the hotel management to prevent anymore problems but con attendees said there were still problems.
I did attend on Saturday morning for four hours but had to leave for a fire dept meeting. I was dressed in a fire dept jacket and hat walking thru a public area when a BBYO chaperone got in front of me to prevent me from walking into a area they were controling. I just said sorry sir and moved in another direction.
I have been to other cons where there was some crossbooking of groups that there was some confrontation.
Otakon at the Baltimore Convention Center the first year had a to share with a Arab org.
Nekocon shared the first year of the Hampton Roads CC with the Marine Corps Ball and a local Catholic Church anniversary dinner and in the coliseum across from the convention center was a rap concert. There was some confrontation and some comical situations during that.
Nekocon shared the con center a couple of more times with the Marines and other events with some good and bad.
I don't know if anyone has seen, heard or experienced similar problems while attending a con but its hard to believe what happened at Katsucon.

[Crossfire]

While I've never been to a 'con, I can certainly relate to having confrontations between... less-than-friendly groups. During one of these incidents the local MP's got involved, which I thought was pretty cool coming from a police family myself. Needless to say they got **** done, and didn't worry about offending anyone in the process (like so many instances these days). Turns out a kid in our barracks (sleeping on the lower portion of my bunk, hilariously enough) started a black market with stolen goods. Fun times.

[goldenspines]

Hmm, I wonder about this sometimes, for bigger conventions in bigger cities especially, since there's so much else going on along with the anime con.
For the local con I staff, we usually take over the whole hotel and don't have to worry much about other groups getting mixed up in our fun times, though this year, another, unrelated to anime group had managed to book one of the hotel's conference rooms on the Saturday, the busiest day, of the con (they somehow booked it before we could. It was all complicated how it happened. >.<; ), so I wonder if we'll end up facing some of these problems you speak of. I really hope not, though.

[ashfire]

After my post about the Katsucon situation, the BBYO has sent a letter of apology to the staff and attedees of Katsucon and hope that they can find where problems were. The Katsucon staff has asked that attendees would not use the internet to attack the BBYO with negitive (anti) items that make things harder for people to be willing to work together in such a situation again.

[Dante]

Looks up BBYO - why the heck is an organization dedicated to Jewish Acceptance going crazy on anime con members? Were Hellsing cosplayers walking around with swastikas or some kind of madness?

[ashfire]

I think it was that they didn't understand or couldn't deal with the anime culture and to suddenly put these two groups together was somewhat of a trainwreck even thou the staff of both groups tried to work it out during the the two events for three days.
Consider you were also dealing with adults also trying to keep their youth involved in the activities for the BBYO and not sneaking into the anime con.

[Rewin]

The xgames were going on right next to anime expo last year, but i didn't hear of any conflict. Did make traffic even worse though.

[ashfire]

Xgame people could be into anime compared to others. Consister hard core football fans or players. They may not realize that the same companies that make video games are also involve in anime related games which have included anime in them. Anime may not be their thing and if they saw a bunch of cosplayers would make fun of them or yell cuss words or scorn them.
While at Otakon, my group was staying in a hotel which a pro football team was staying along with people from Otakon. After a overnight sleep. A member of our group was going to the elevator and there was two football players staring at the person in the elavator dressed as a character of a anmie series. The doors cloosed and the two players looked at each other and said "WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT". Our group member tried to explain what was going on and the two players thought it was a porno convention.