My cancellation was cemented when, after I had been removed from any and all position with it, Michael Whitehouse ended The Steampunk World’s Fair. This happened when he told a live Internet audience that the event they expected in May wasn’t going to happen.
This happened live on Travis Sivart’s ‘Talk of the Tavern’ show–shockingly, it’s been wiped completely from the Internet. Of course it was.
Now, for many many months, both of our hotels had been sold out of rooms. That happened almost as soon as they became available; basically, as of that moment, every phone was instantly jammed with people trying to get rooms.
Well, when they were told the event wasn’t happening, the phones of both hotels were essentially immediately jammed with people calling in to cancel every single room in the place; I learned this because while one was an Embassy Suites and very corporate, one was a Radisson whose general manager and I often spoke about business at odd hours. He called me and asked me what to do.
He was able to postpone his room cancellations, but the Embassy was emptied out, and three days later, the Radisson was empty.
This made that event impossible to run.
PLEASE BEAR IN MIND THAT THE SILVER PHOENIX SOCIETY HAD NOT TAKEN OVER THE HOTEL CONTRACTS AS THEY DID NOT WANT TO ACTUALLY ASSUME FINANCIAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE EVENT. YET THEY TOLD EVERYONE THE EVENT WAS CANCELED, EMPTYING THE HOTELS AND SUDDENLY MAKING THE CONTRACTS INTO A MASSIVE LIABILITY.
The fact that they claim the contracts “were not transferred to them” is a bit like someone who burns down an apartment building complaining that the homeowner didn’t provide them with enough juicy stakes to cook for all the now-homeless residents. It’s bold. It’s just not true.
Bear in mind that, as with other festivals, we pay for our massive uses of space, electricity, staff, and other resources partly in providing our hotels with packed, profitable weekend of paying customers.
As we’d been doing that for several years, this was a great deal all around. It allowed us to pass on lower tickets fees and way more investment in great bands and performers, rather than a need to pass alone $50,000 in hotel fees.
Of course, were we to default on that, especially relatively close to the event, the hotels would be in a terrible position. So, as with e
Now, Dark Force Fest, which Jet and I created when it was Dark Side of the Con, not just survived, but is obviously thriving.
The last Wicked Faire that I, myself, planned, did happen.
Events I create can survive with proper management.
I’ll say this just once:
Thousands of people got hurt when The Silver Phoenix Society made a huge mistake.
Almost none of those people have heard this story.
Or any part of my story.
I can’t blame them for thinking I’m a monster.
I can’t ask them to stop believing it.
But I also can’t avoid telling my stories to avoid hurting the feelings of people with whom I was once very, very close.
I will, however, avoid telling people about this website until I’ve at least showed it to a few more people.
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I don’t think I can put it more simply than that.