Gulf Coast Convention celebrates geekdom

This past weekend marked the 30th anniversary of Mississippi's largest science fiction and fantasy convention, Coastcon.

Held in Biloxi, visitors found guests, costumes, books, toys and games from your favorite themed shows, video games and movies.

During the day, the convention boasted a large gaming area, catering to card, miniature and video gamers and role-players. They had a good-sized merchant room and art show. A costume contest, charity events and a dance closed out the convention.

When the sun went down, it became more interesting. The convention hotel, located as nearby as a recovering coast would allow, had room parties.

You can usually find these places via flyers or word of mouth. The best way to describe them is the Roman hedonistic stereotype minus vomitoriums.

An active, adult nightlife is part of most sci-fi and fantasy conventions, at least the ones I have been to. I guess it comes from the open, accepting nature of the convention goers and people being themselves free from the judging eyes of society. It is important to not that the convention and the organzation that runs it do not condone what happens after the convention. They have no part of it.

That being said, I had long interesting conversations with drunken pirates, sober ninjas, World of Warcraft aficionados. I drank copious amounts of free alcohol, found new music, and watched a BDSM demonstration. Not for me, but it was educational.

All in all, Coastcon offers something for everyone; I can say from experience every liberal art major would find something interesting to see and maybe a thesis or two.

The next convention I recommend going all day and night. If you are even casually interested in any of the aforementioned activities, you owe it to yourself to experience this unique convention.