New York Star Trek ’76 – "Disastercon" (2020 article)

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Title:	New York Star Trek ’76 – "Disastercon"
Creator:	Infinitus_Potentia
Date(s):	2020
Medium:	Reddit
Fandom:	Star Trek: TOS
Topic:
External Links:	New York Star Trek ’76 – “Disastercon”; archive link
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New York Star Trek ’76 – "Disastercon" is a 2020 essay on Reddit by Infinitus_Potentia.

"Conventions! The things that are held together by bad food, a whole lot of alcohol, and the volunteers’ reanimated corpses. There are just so, so many things that can go wrong in a con, and history is littered with cons blowing up in the most spectacular fashion. This one is not the worst, but still bad enough to invite scrutiny from the… New York Attorney General?!"

Some Topics Discussed

• a short history of Star Trek conventions
• New York Star Trek '76
• Star Trek Chicago
• overreach, greed, and stupidity

From the Essay

In the beginning, there was the Star Trek Lives! cons:

In the 70s, Star Trek Lives! (STL) was the con to go to if you lived on the East Coast. STL was founded by a group of Trekkies calling themselves the “Committee”, hence it was also called the Committeecon. While STL was not the first Trekkie con—that honor belonged to a 1969 con in Newark, New Jersey — [STL] was the first to feature prominent guests like Gene Roddenberry & Majel Barrett (1972), George Takei (1974), William Shatner (1975), etc.

[...]

Even as STL was still in its infancy, its successes attracted the attention of both the media and investors. People began to wonder if they were looking at an untapped gold mine. It was just a question of time before someone came up with the idea of a for-profit Trekkie con. That person was Lisa Boynton.

Some Star Trek Chicago context:

In 1975, Lisa was a 35 years old tax consultant and law student in Chicago. She was a long-time Trekkie and had links to the famous Chicago-based Star Trek fanclub Starfleet Command. With the help of Starfleet Command members, she set up Star Trek Chicago (STC), a for-profit convention that paid its honor guests — the first to do so. The con took place on August 22-24, 1975 at the Conrad Hilton Hotel. Among the guests were the cast of the original series plus the astronaut James McDivitt, Dr. J. Allen Hynek (professor of astronomy and director of the Center for UFO Studies), writer David Gerrold and artist Kelly Freas. Leonard Nimoy even starred in a TV commercial for the con. The original cast, in their costumes, were “beamed up” to a life-size mockup of the Enterprise’s bridge set up in the hotel.

By every account, STC was a smashing success. It attracted 160,000 attendees and earned in excess of $100,000. Even Trekkies who did not attend and non-Star Trek SF fans were thrown into a tizzy. They were scared that since Lisa’s team—named “Telos IV”, or also known as The Chicago Strektacular — had paid so much for the guests, non-profit cons would never be able to afford the actors even if they were willing to pay. Furthermore, Telos IV planned to organize similar Star Trek cons all over the country. It seemed like the end of fan cons was nigh.

Behind the scene, things were however not as rosy. The organizers had made up the $100,000 to the media while in fact they lost $10,000. Long-time Trekkies who had experience attending cons also reported poor planning, poor reception, poor coordination and just a mess overall. Vendor owners were also angered as they were given just a narrow corridor to hawk their wares. All in all, the con “succeeded” because it attracted and impressed “normies”, while by every measure it should have been seen as a terrible con. So what could go wrong when Lisa Boynton and Telos IV decided to bring their con to New York?

"A disaster that should not had been":

Now, to be fair, Telos IV was well aware that their con was not up to the standard, because their organizing committee had only done one other con named “CurCon” before. And so, according to noted Trekkie Sharon Ferraro, they sacked the most useless organizers and hired experienced people to fill the roles.

Their next con was to be named the New York Star Trek ’76, and it was planned to run for two days—from January 23 to 25, 1976 — at the New York Hilton in the Rockefeller Center. Already the date had people turning their eyebrows up. It happened just two weeks before the Al Schuster-organized 1976 STL that only drew 4000 attendees and was to be the last STL. While some fans thought that Schuster was only in it for the money, they also accused Boynton of cutting into STL’s attendees.

Even a ticket was no guarantee:

Secondly, with a venue of that size, 5000 attendees is considered pretty packed. The number of fans who showed up for the New York Star Trek ’76 was estimated between 20.000 and 50.000. You can already see where this was leading to. The hotel staffers were overwhelmed. They were forced to turn away everyone at the gate, even those with tickets. Tickets that Telos IV sold irresponsibly, without any regard to the crowd size limit. Some accounts even stated that as the con was going, ticket vendors continued to sell. A ticket sold for $8-$12 which, for many young Trekkie back then, was not a small amount.

Even if you managed to get inside, things were not much better. There was not enough room for the fans, reporters, vendors and guests. The original schedule was not followed at all too. Many fans were disappointed because they were denied even a glimpse of their favorite actors. The original cast was kind enough to hang around and make an extra third appearance for these fans, but it did little to quell their anger. The volunteers exhausted themselves to keep things from bursting apart at the seams. A riot was barely averted.

The most notable event was though the time William Shatner had a lemon meringue pie thrown at his face whilst giving a panel. It missed though and gave Shatner a laugh.

Hiding in a locked room:

But where is Lisa Boynton in all of this? She locked herself in her hotel room and refused to deal with the mess of her own making. Then she absconded to Chicago with all the money. The whole even was widely made fun of by Trekkies at the time. They dubbed it "Disastercon," "Riotcon," and "Heartbreak Hotel.”

The press was however less charitable, and both the con and the attendees were ridiculed — this was before Trekkies were widely accepted even in the SF fandom. Eventually words reached Louis J. Lefkowitz, the New York Attorney General at the time, and he opened an investigation into the con. Now this is where the trail went cold. I could not find anything else on the investigation save for a statement from Lisa Boynton — she said she was “disappointed” that the New York Hilton was unable to handle the crowd.

I will not speculate whether Lisa Boynton and Telos IV acted the way they did because they were incompetent or just straight up greedy and amoral, but let it be an example of how NOT to organize a con. Overextend your reach, and everything falls down./.

Fan Comments

A fun write up. Disaster cons are always a treat to read about. Shame about the lack of closure on the investigation though, I wouldn't be surprised if once the news cycle moved on it was dropped. - ailathan

Interesting stuff. When I think of conventions, I tend to think of the ultra-slick, ultra-corporate ones like the San Diego and New York Comic Cons. There's something really ineffable reading about the early days of convention culture (long before my time, obviously) where there was money to be had and it was a little more formalised, but it was still only a few steps removed from fan meetups. -- DoctorWhoFan16

con disasters are the ultimate popcorn fuel for me. i lived for the minute-by-minute reports of the failure that was dashcon. my local semi-big regional con has kinda dropped in quality over the years, and a lot of it has to do with the director being stubborn, rude, and mildly bigoted (dude lost the use of the old name of the convention because he testified in a court case for another convention altogether).

also i can't ask right now but this is very possibly the con where my mum, cosplaying a green blue-skinned space babe, spilled a coke on david gerrold while rushing to attend his panel. - winteyr27

Running a large event like a convention requires a lot of hard work, know-how and money. The sheer difficulty combined with the fandom belief that enthusiasm can make up for any of those means that you end up with professional convention running crews and corporate backup as the only way to run a successful convention and plenty of examples of why is that the case.

And even then, since is on-site, it only takes a few of the local crew trying to skip some money to go to their pockets to get disaster. - OPUno