Frankie Goes to Hollywood

Dragon*Con

Dragon*Con is a HUGE sci-fi/fantasy festival held each year in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend. We didn't plan ahead very well, because we thought we'd just be able to walk up and buy tickets the day of the convention. Oh how wrong we were! The rumor is that this festival drew over 30,000 people to our fair city, and the line to get a ticket for one day (Saturday) was at least a four hour wait. Four hours to part with $40 a person? No thanks, I'll get my Dr. Who fanboy fix somewhere else. We did, however, have the good fortune to get off of the train just as the parade was passing by, so we got to see hundreds of people in their sci-fi/fantasy best. We estimate that at least 1 in 3 people were wearing costumes; the actuality might've been closer to 1 in 2. Even though we missed out on the convention, we were very happy that we got to see the parade. I've uploaded a few pictures, but these don't do justice to the massive scale of this thing. We didn't get any shots of all of the people in Anime costumes, Lord of the Rings costumes, any sci-fi/fantasy TV show you can think of, Harry Potter, and even Guitar Hero - yes, people dressed like the guitarists from the video game. Crazy.

Darth Vader announces the arrival of alllllllllll of the Star Wars wannabes.

Some of the more creative types made their Star Wars costumes out of boxes, unlike the hundreds of Storm Troopers plastic. Nothing says an Atlanta summer day like a walk in downtown wearing plastic head to toe.(Also note the cameraman's utilikilt. Lots of men were wearing those outside of the convention.)

This guy's costume was George Lucas. *snigger*

300 - these costumes definitely were more appropriate for Atlanta heat than, say, plastic storm trooper gear.

RoboCop, followed by the Boy Wizard and his legions.

I got sweatier just looking at this poor guy.

Frankie and Daddy on the way back to the MARTA train after failing to get into Dragon*Con.

We even made Frankie a shirt - "Hi-fi, lo-fi, Sci-fi is My-fi!"