Wednesday, August 1, 2007

There once was a small little unique community that people were intrigued by. A lucky few already lived there, and a few other brave souls moved into that community, even though there wasn't much money there. But eventually, a few people saw a way to exploit that community for its uniqueness; and they moved into it in a big way, shoving aside those who had always dwelled there.

I'm talking about the comic community, of course.

All the talk at the San Diego Con seemed to have a subtext of; this is a great convention, too bad we have those comic nerds over in the corner. I wonder if we could change the name of this convention, and get rid of them. We really only care about movies and video games.....

I've figured out, if we could just move about 20k people down the river twenty miles or so, call it Bend. Then let the people call this town, New Malibu. Perfect solution.

Of course, we'd have to move the Redmond people to Madras, and the Madras people to Warm Springs, and the Warms Springs people into the middle of the desert. That's always been progress, right? Why stop now?

3 comments:

dkgoodman said...

I see that paradigm happen over and over again. There used to be a great little convention called the West Coast Computer Faire where hobbyists would go to talk about computer kits and homemade software and the like, but the suits saw the money and started commercializing the whole thing, and it lost its character and eventually, its existence.

Kind of like when the bean-counters get too much power in a company and say, "Nice product, but if you cut corners here and here, you'll make a lot more money" and the next thing you know, it's not such a nice product and they're not making so much money. Or, just as sad, they are making money but the consumer is stuck with a substandard product.

Duncan McGeary said...

That's it exactly. The San Diego Comic Con got so big because there was a community of lovers of graphic arts that created something cool.

What's weird is that the comic community still doesn't have that big a presence. It's as if a Mack truck attached itself to a Volkswagen.

And I would think that Bend, and especially downtown Bend, falls under that dynamic. I think downtown will eventually miss the funky stores...

dkgoodman said...

Keep Bend Funky! :)