Exhibiting in artist alleys while disabled and chronically ill
Hey all! I thought I’d get some thoughts out in regards to conventions and what I personally have gone through to continue exhibiting at conventions after becoming chronically ill and disabled. Obviously, it’s a personal perspective, and not by any means a one size fits all summary.
This topic has been weighing on me of late, through a combination of wistfully wishing I could attend the conventions I can see via social media my friends are all at, interacting and selling and making connections and most of all having fun, and a sullen realization that I may not be physically able to continue selling at the convention I’ve had a table at for six years.
My personal condition mixes heavy dietary restrictions (celiac disease, intolerances like egg, nut, dairy, plus low FODMAP diet) with a chronic illness called POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome), which causes me to suffer from heat intolerance (hugely problematic since cons tend to be in the summer, and regardless of air conditioning, once those bodies fill the place up, it’s very hot), dizziness, lightheadedness, blurry vision, not able to walk far unassisted (I use a rollator, which I’ll come back to in a later section), blood pooling in my legs, brain fog, fainting on standing, insomnia (which worsens symptoms, and I ALWAYS get pre-con jitters leading to insomnia), and several medications every four hours. So basically… really fun times!
At Fan Expo Canada, my biggest and most profitable convention which I’ve exhibited at, as mentioned, for the last six years, I am situated on an endcap table. It was at first a strategic move - my first year was down an aisle, and while it was a great start to be artist alley career, the end cap proved to receive far more foot traffic. So I partnered up with friends of mine and split the end cap tables. The end cap is essentially two tables, and similarly priced to the regular aisle tables, but with the bonus of FAR more foot traffic and visibility. The extra bonus, which later proved to be a downfall in terms of sales, was that we were the last aisle and very close to the bathrooms. Once I became too sick (still yet undiagnosed at this point) to make it far on my own, the nearby bathrooms were a godsend, and the “extra space” the endcap provided was the only way I could actually get my rollator/wheelchair to fit behind the tables. (Sidenote here: Fan Expo is actually terrible about giving you room behind the tables. For the artists down the aisles, they’re told they have 3 feet of space behind their tables. That 3 feet includes chairs and sometimes banners… and bumps right up against the other person facing out the other way. People clamber down, knocking banners, bonking chairs, tripping over merch, just to make it down to where I am and guiltily ask me to move my seat, my wheelchair, so they can get by and go to the bathroom or get food. And I have MORE space than them and they still can’t get by!!) The end row… not so much, as buyers rarely made it all the way down there, considering there are about 500 tables before ours to wear out their patience and wallets before making it there.
So, while the positioning is ideal for me with my physical condition, it became clear in the last two years that sales were plummeting. The toll it took on my health in order to get to the convention at all, nevermind make it through the day, became very clear in 2017. My dear mother, who has been ridiculously accommodating and abundantly helpful as my table helper, gently suggested that maybe I can’t do this anymore. What was once my nerdy four day Christmas had become an incredibly stressful, time consuming, health destroying money pit.
I used to cosplay. That joy was taken from me by my chronic illness, as was any chance I could walk around the convention I loved so much since first going to it in my college years.
Pre-illness, cosplaying Arya Stark.
To give you a rough idea of what it’s now like for me to set up and vend at Fan Expo:
- Recruit as many of my friends as possible as helpers, as I’m not able to physically carry anything from the truck down three floors and across the huge hall to my table. Bribe them with food, money, passes, whatever works, just so my mom doesn’t have to make 4-5 trips solo to carry down all my supplies. (My table is very bulky.)
- I have several personal fans turned on ASAP so I don’t suffer a heat induced fainting spell, including one hanging down around my neck.
- I guiltily and anxiously try to set up the table while I wait for my helpers to bring my stuff, and inevitably overexert myself.
- I try to think clearly enough to instruct my helpers how to take over, as they force me to sit down and eat some of the food we prepared. (Important note: All of my food is premade. On Thursday this isn’t as much of a big deal, but consider this: on the rest of the days, my parents have to get up 1-2 hours earlier to prepare 14 hours worth of uncontaminated food for me and figure out how to keep it appropriately warm/cold)
- The table gets set up before the show’s earlybird hours begin at 2pm.
- The show is open until 9pm on Thursdays, and I am so utterly exhausted already on the night of day one that I have a thousand yard stare on the long ride in my wheelchair back up two elevator trips to the truck, and a 30-45min drive home to reflect on how this is my life for the next three days.
- My mother has to do most of the greeting, especially at eye level. I have to remember that I cannot stand up quickly, or much at all, but feel incredibly rude when I don’t greet customers on foot like I had in previous years.
My view for most of the convention.
- Eating is a chore, and something that will always make me feel very sad and alone. It’s very isolating to always eat something different from everyone else, to have to think very far ahead and worry if there will be enough food to last me, and turn down all free food offered by fellow vendors. I exhibited at TCAF in 2017 and was extremely nervous about their “no food” rules, as I have to eat small meals every 2 hours or risk exasperating my symptoms, and I also cannot walk immediately after eating. Originally, as per the rules at TCAF, I would have had to leave the area and get to the first floor to eat my meals, which would essentially mean… I couldn’t ever be at my table. This didn’t happen, thankfully, as accommodations were very kindly made on my behalf to eat my prepared dietary food discretely behind the table. Fan Expo wants you to eat from their provided vendors, which is very much impossible for me, and we’ve never been stopped and questioned while bringing in full cooler bags worth of food as exhibitors.
- Bathroom trips. They were an embarrassing ordeal. Everyone knew when I was getting up to go to the bathroom, when my wheelchair was converted into a walker by my mother so I could stumble down the aisle to the washroom that is thankfully so closeby. However, that restroom has one (1) handicapped stall and it is almost always occupied inappropriately. Last year, I sat in dizzy agony for 12 minutes, near tears, my necklace fan’s battery near dying and not providing me enough air, my phone unfortunately forgotten at my table, and me sitting on my walker feeling very near to passing out. Some very kind soul pounded on the handicapped stall door and told the woman making a phone call in there (????) that it was needed by an actual handicapped person. Bless you a thousand times, you wonderful lifesaver.
- If people want to talk to the artist, or interview me like I was last year for someone’s vlog, I have to carefully calculate if I have enough spoons left to stand or talk for that long. That’s right, talking exhausts me. I’m too disabled to work, let alone go anywhere on my own, and I spend the majority of my time alone in silence (well, verbally - I do play music while I draw) at home. Conventions require you to be On, On, On! all weekend, whether it’s greeting people, thanking them for their purchase, asking them to repeat themselves because the other 129000 attendees are chattering too loudly that you can’t hear what they asked for, or whatever else might come up along the way. I wish I could say that the rest of the year spent in reverent silence is my way of stockpiling spoons for the four day exhaustionfest that awaits me, but it really just works in the opposite way from deconditioning!
- The convention finally wraps up, and there’s a collective sigh of relief.
- I wish the work was done as soon as the last guest leaves, though! Like set up, this process is arduous and exhausting. I nearly passed out several times last year, and the scary part was that I was all alone. My tablemates had long left, as had 90% of the artist alley. My fans were on their last legs with their batteries and doing nothing to regulate my temperature at this point. I tried feebly to pack away the next box for my mother, now bringing back a load of items solo, but having to wait in ENORMOUS lines for the ONE elevator to go up to the parking level and then the ONE elevator to get into the actual parking garage… each trip took way, way, way longer than bringing items in…) It’s extremely scary for me to feel this way at all, especially alone and in an environment where I would be extremely vulnerable should anything happen. (Nevermind my cash box sitting right there, so had I passed out… ugh)
- I cry a little as I count the cash on my lap in the car (yet another very long line to leave, only this time with air conditioning blasting in my face thankfully) to realize that I made ~$500 less each DAY than I had the year before, and that in 2016 I had made less each day than I had in 2015…
Riding home with this very heavy spinner rack on my lap.
What was my point in writing all this? Well, there are several, and… sort of… none. I needed to get it off my chest. I needed to vent, even if no one may read this and give me feedback on what I should do. But most of all, I want to give feedback to the convention world on what THEY should do.
Make conventions shorter.
- This trend of four day cons, and cons with RIDICULOUS 12-14 hour artist alley times are ludicrous. Make them shorter. Make more actual weekend conventions. Heck, make more ONE DAY conventions. Two of the best conventions I’ve had were two and one day conventions (TCAF and MCX).
Make artist alleys more user friendly.
- Leave enough rooms down the aisles behind our tables that we can walk. Can you imagine if I, a wheelchair user, had a table down an aisle? How would I POSSIBLY get my chair down the aisle where there essentially is no aisle, there’s just chairs and banners and merch?
- Accommodate disabilities. TCAF did this VERY well. Fan Expo gave absolutely no shits about helping me, including when I lost my pass because the flimsy thing fell off their cheap lanyard. I was sitting in a wheelchair the majority of the day and it managed to fall off somewhere unnoticed, and yet they required a $90 replacement fee, ie. a full weekend pass price. Even when the situation was explained that my mother was my helper and according to their policy, helpers who are pushing wheelchairs (which my mother has to do, my chair doesn’t have wheels like that, it’s a walker/wheelchair combination) receive free admission so she shouldn’t have even had to buy her original $90 pass to begin with, nevermind us pay for a second one.
Make online conventions.
- This is my biggest suggestion. I would like to see conventions held online. I am positive there are people in a similar situation to me who cannot physically go to conventions, and who are missing out on the opportunity to reach other fans.
- Online cons could host panels through livestreamed google meetups, could exhibit artist alley vendors through personalized listings of their online shops (along with sales/coupons/free shipping/whatever to make the experience exclusive to “congoers” as well as serve as a boost in advertising), could connect people worldwide with one another who would not meet at a local con where proximity is an issue.
- Last time I suggested this online con thing via twitter, people were like, “Yeah that’s cool! Let me know when you launch it!” I have no capacity nor reach nor energy to do this myself. Go ahead and run with the idea yourself!! I give you full permission to springboard off this and do with it what you will! I’m suggesting it because I want to see it done, not because I want to host it myself. I physically can’t, if that wasn’t clear enough earlier.
You can find my work in the following places:
