Some see a pop-up vendor fair. Marty Valencia-Estay sees a marketing opportunity. The hobby seamster sells embroidered T-shirts, hats and sweaters featuring pocket-sized Pokémon. In June, he tabled at Sacramento’s newest night market, one geared toward nerds, geeks and gamers.

“When the opportunity popped up, I jumped right on it,” Valencia-Estay says. Business was slow that evening, but he attributes it to the warm weather. The gathering at Lucid Winery was still a place to meet curious customers who might buy from him later online. The “City of Festivals” — as the City Council has been trying to bill Sacramento since at least 2022 — has no shortage of events, especially for vendors. “It might be a little bit saturated, to be honest.”

The pop-up was organized by SacGeeks, a Meetup group started in 2005 that became a nonprofit in 2022. The social club hosts activities like a weekly board game night and an annual film festival. Its inaugural Geek Pride Night Market was so popular, executive director Bex Francis told me they decided to bring it back monthly. Each one is like a mini comic convention, minus the celebrity guests. People are encouraged to dress up for rotating themes like “Summer of Superheroes,” “Monster Mash Multiverse” and “Dungeons & Drag Queens.” It’s one way the vendor market stands apart from similar craft fairs.

“There are a lot of conventions, and there’s a lot of stuff going on on the weekends too,” Francis says. “So you really have to have a draw.”

Pop culture markets and conventions have grown in popularity in recent years. The Capital Region’s oldest and largest by far is Sac-Con, only rivaled in attention by SacAnime. Dan Houck owns both. When I requested an interview, he referred me to a spokesperson who, after a month, had not responded to any emails or texts. So it’s unclear how Houck or his employees think cons in Sacramento have changed during their four decades in business. One thing is certain: Houck’s success has inspired others.

Mike Millerick cited Houck as “a big inspiration” for him starting StocktonCon in 2012. Back then, success was uncertain. Millerick had nightmares the week of the event. He feared no one would show. Similar comic cons had come and gone in Stockton, and they were much smaller. But the con was an instant hit: It “well surpassed our expectations,” Millerick says. Attendance grew to 14,000 annually and a show was added in Lodi. So how has business been since the pandemic?

“I would say right now it’s doing OK,” Millerick says. “Let’s just leave it at that.”

Millerick isn’t worried about the other cons in his neighborhood. Often he’ll share advice with them and coordinate to ensure their celebrity guests don’t overlap too much. He wants StocktonCon to be affordable, family-friendly and known for booking “legendary pro wrestlers” — a common feature at nerd conventions. The challenge is competing for attention among all the farmers’ markets, festivals, expos, craft vendor fairs and other types of shopping experiences with live entertainment. “There’s just a lot of things spreading people’s interests out,” he says.

Celebrities are key for drawing in crowds, especially at Sinister Creature Con in Sacramento. Tim Meunier, founder of the Sacramento Horror Film Festival, launched the horror convention event in 2015 after Houck of Sac-Con pitched the collaboration. The two have since amicably ended their partnership, Meunier said. The event for horror lovers is held twice in the summer and fall. It features tattoo artists, makeup artists, prop makers, cosplayers “and a sprinkling of some horror celebrities to feed people’s nostalgia.”

Some cons might just break even, but it’s rare for Meunier to have a loss. “Last October was pretty challenging,” he says. He calls that month “Second Christmas” due to the abundance of events. He’s had to move his film fest to January because it was too hard to draw a crowd. “October has just gotten more and more competitive since I started in the horror business.”

Aside from increased local competition, Meunier says “mega cons” like Wizard World also made it harder for Sacramento’s pop culture cons. The traveling event was held in multiple cities and featured top-tier celebrities for meet-and-greets. In 2014, it added a stop in Sacramento and drew in around 20,000 people annually, Comstock’s previously reported. Meunier said Wizard World was overbooked, overpriced and underpromoted. This led to poor sales, which damaged the Capital Region’s reputation and made it harder for Meunier to book special guests for Sinister Creatures Con.

“They hit and quit and leave, and then we’re left cleaning up their debris, and so it’s taken some years now to finally shed that,” Meunier says.

“It’s taken me 10 years plus to book some of the guests that I’ve had, because at one point they were like, ‘Sac has no money.’ And then guests that I finally got to come here, very pleasantly surprised.”

Wizard World ceased during the pandemic. Intergalactic Expo in West Sacramento, which started as a SacGeeks annual celebration of “Star Wars” before spinning off, also met its demise due to COVID. This hasn’t deterred others from starting new cons in the area.

Brent Trayce Sands launched a comic book series in 2020, opened a Sacramento comic book shop in 2021 and created a comic book convention in 2022. The name was later changed from Comic Verse to Verse Con to help broaden the appeal. It’s held twice a year and features a hundred vendors and a handful of celebrities. Attendance is a few thousand. For Sands, the convention was an obvious business move. “It was just a natural thing to do,” he says. But what about the area’s other cons? Is he worried about competition?

“There are events every week. If you’re not on the same day, you’re not competing,” Sands says. Still, he thinks each con should have its own identity and feel at least a bit different, but not so specific as to alienate people. For Verse Con, what makes it stand out is the focus on Sands’ Impound Comics brand and the fact that it’s a Black-owned enterprise.

Sands said business is good and feels there’s room for more pop culture events in Sacramento. He feels comic cons used to be something mainly for “extreme fans” of pop culture. That’s changing. Even Sands, a lifelong comic reader, didn’t go to a convention until his first SacAnime in 2021.

“It felt like that was for the fanatics more so than the casual fans,” Sands says about cons, “and now the casual fans are realizing they’ve been missing out.”

–

Subscribe to the Comstock’s newsletter today.