reports:Strategicon produces three conventions yearly - Orccon on Presidents' Weekend in February, Gamex on Memorial Day Weekend in May, and Gateway which is held during Labor Day Weekend in September. They have been doing so in and around the Los Angeles area for over 20 years.
As conventions go, they are generally medium-sized as far as attendance, but the gaming opportunities are equivalent to a much larger convention. Like most western conventions, attendees pay only an entrance fee with unlimited free gaming (subject to space at the table, of course.)
I've been attending their events for close to 20 years, and, while the convention has been bigger (especially during the height of Magic the Gathering & Pokemon), I have always been able to have a good time. For the first 10 or 15 years, I was usually helping a friend sell used books and games in the dealer room, and didn't really get in more than a single game once every few conventions. If it wasn't that, I was volunteering and usually too busy. It was only in the past four or five years that I was actually able to sit down and play a few games.
So what happens this year? I'm back in the booth selling an esoteric (but remarkably useful) collection of new and used books and magazines, along with some out-of-print games for John - along with some 1/700 scale models and a mishmash of World War II, Military History, Viet Nam and Aviation Heritage magazines. Amazingly enough, he had an unpunched copy of Circus Maximus in the box. That got quickly snapped up for the $10 USD price he had marked.
Fortunately for my sanity (and unfortunately for everyone else's, I suspect), my booth was between Trowbridge Painting Service and Flying Buffalo and across the aisle from DLD Productions.