This local San Diego site requires you to pay $100 to read their online content. Foo that, but from the looks of the free lede, the city is only grudgingingly beginning to accept the Comic-con’s economic impact:

Comic-Con gives city ‘enormous economic shot in the arm’
Event expected to bring in major tax revenue<
To the casual observer, the annual comic book and pop culture extravaganza known as Comic-Con may be little more than an opportunity for grown men with serious Peter Pan complexes to indulge their love of fantasy and penchant for Star Wars costumes. This is, after all, an event that includes discussion panels about television shows and autograph sessions with graphic novelists. But for San Diego, the convention is far more than an oddball attraction; it’s a cash cow in nerd’s clothing.


What’s the matter anyway? Isn’t a nerd’s dollar worth as much as anyone elses?

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1 COMMENT

  2. Meh.

    Every time I’ve made it out to San Diego, the people in town from shop owners to waitresses to cab drivers have been nothing but excited about having both Comicon and the fans it brings around. And that’s not just a matter of making money, but most folks seem to be generally happy that a “nerd show” sets up shop in their town.

    This article stinks of one of those “I know so much more about the world than these illiterate scum” style pieces that I doubt it’s worth paying to see the rest of.

  3. I agree with Kiel. I had friends who worked in the hotel industry who I stayed with when I hit SDCC back in ’91(!) and even back then, everyone they knew were excited about the nerd prom. People dug the colorful characters and really envied the people’s passions.

    Considering that the con and the amount of spending has only grown tremendously since then, I’d say that article is just your usual sloppy approach to find a new spin on an obvious story.

  4. Uhhhh…. that’s a rhetorical “your,” by the way, not a reference to you, Heidi. I’m dissing Malloy and Co., not The Beat.

  5. So if gays have the ‘pink dollar’ what do nerds have? The ‘bagged & boarded dollar’? The ‘limited edition variant dollar by Michael Turner’?

  6. That’s a great question, NewChad. The ‘polychrome dollar’? Despite all the cool possibilities, it’ll probably just end up being the ‘nerd dollar.’