The Grand Sierra, location of the first Biggest Little Furry Convention (May 3-5, 2013), was packed with enthusiastic crowds of casino visitors. A person with free time or money couldn't avoid fun if they tried. It had restaurants, swimming, bowling, gambling, movies, go karts, and more attached to a large and classy hotel. Holding a furry convention there just made things extra outrageous.

Even with the planned options, the place offered good fun just for wandering around. A buddy and I wandered out a side exit that led nowhere special. On the way back in, I was stopped by a blonde woman who looked like a vacationing professional. She gestured with an astonished look, and asked, "What's all this about?"

"It's a theatrical thing. It's for a Furry convention", I said.

"A what?"

I explained about people who like role-playing and creativity. She asked about the costumes.
"No two are alike," I said, "I don't build them, but there's a lot of artists who do it here."

"You're doing pretty good at explaining this," she said. "I just don't know how to take it seriously from a big talking dog!"

"You're doing pretty good yourself," I told her. "And that's the point. Being silly!"

Fur the 'More, Baltimore’s first furry convention, took place on the first week of April. April is known for its rain, and whenever it rains, it pours. It was to be my first small convention, but it was certainly not as small as many other new conventions.

My own experience, compared to other furs, is limited: Anthrocon 2011 & 2012, and MFF 2011. Today I review this hatchling. I’ve included some personal stories – the greatest convention stories are personal. Besides, if you don’t have stories to tell, than what was the point of going on the adventure?

Crossaffliction is working on a sort into categories of all Flayrah’s posts. He has started at the beginning in January 2001, and is so far through September 2004. He notes that as of that date, there are only seven Furry convention reports. “[T]hey seem to have fallen out of fashion as of late. In case you hadn't noticed.”

He is right. I have complained about the difficulty that this makes in writing a history of Furry fandom. Early s-f fans wrote convention reports of five to ten pages in their fanzines. When Sam Moskowitz wrote his history of s-f fandom in the 1930s, and Harry Warner, Jr. wrote his of s-f fandom in the 1940s, and I wrote a history of the World S-F Convention from 1939 through 1948 in 1976, we had no trouble getting information on the conventions because of the long, detailed con reports in the fanzines. But there has been little of this in Furry fandom. A Furry con report tends to be little more than, “I went to the con and I had a good time”, or, “A lot of people caught the con crud”, or posting a half dozen or so photos of unidentified Fursuiters.

To do something about this, here is my very incomplete report of CaliFur VIII just past. I hope that other attendees can add to it.

Although South Africa has a small number of furs, with just under 200 registered users on the ZAfur forum, it does hold an annual, national furmeet, South Afrifur. As there are so few furs in South Africa the meet is intended to gather as many as possible together, once a year, to get to know one another.

The first South Afrifur meet was held in Cape Town and was organised primarily by Dracius. In 2009 the meet was intended for Johannesburg but was cancelled by the organisers.

The 2010 meet, organised by Nanukk, Electrocat and Cat147, was held in Port Elizabeth from 7–15 January 2011. The meet was hosted by Nanukk and attended by about 14 furs from around South Africa, though that varied from day-to-day.

As I mentioned in a similar report a couple of years ago, I consider myself a fringefur because I don't do things that more committed furries do (writing, art, fursuiting, taking on a fursona). Mostly I just like to read furry comics; most of my favorite Webcomics are furry, and I first got into the fandom when Fantagraphics stopped publishing Critters and I had to find another source. Text stories don't appeal so much, though I loved Michael Payne's Blood Jaguar, for instance, and I don't much care for movies or TV of any sort. I've never seen Disney's Robin Hood, which I gather is something of a furry gateway drug.

So why did I go to Anthrocon at all? Well, I'll tell ya.

Last weekend I went to Anthrocon in Pittsburgh, the biggest anthropomorphics (furry) convention in the world, with 3390 in attendance. I thought some of a conreport might be of interest to some of my correspondents.

Reported by Ash Paluk - now known in the furry community as Zaishi Mai.

Saturday the 21st of June marked a significant day for Northern furries, the first UK convention outside of London, ConFuzzled. Of course, I had to wake up late. After a power-shower and a quick breakfast, I arrived in Manchester, meeting with Tori and Silentwulf, among others including Hyss and Istauri. I must say, I've never met quite a more friendly bunch of people, and this being my first meeting with a group from the fandom, ensured that my positive view on furries continued.

« It's been fantastic and hell to all the neysayers! » ~ Lazerus

It was a cold, wet day in Manchester town on June 21st, but the atmosphere inside the Manchester YHA was as flaming as the residents of Canal Street just a few blocks away. Yes, the long awaited ConFuzzled is in town! And we here at The Furtean Times felt we should splash out a bit and report live from the convention itself, I mean, we have been documenting the rise of this homegrown convention since issue one; it was only fair we gave it a shot for a final finale.

One year of planning later and The Furtean Times is in the warm confines of the ConFuzzled hostel, a little damp from the unfortunately less welcoming weather outside; the newly renovated YHA in the Castlefield area of Manchester providing a much more inviting environment. In this one building there was 136 furs packed in to 35 rooms, served with top of the range facilities and events.

« To put it concisely, my opinion of ConFuzzled so far is as follows: Completely awesome! » ~ Fenrir

A new hotel and the steampunk theme were the most noticeable things about Califur this year. Held May 15-18 at the Hyatt Regency in Irvine, California, the fifth Califur convention attracted 587 registered attendees.^[1]

After con staff felt that they had outgrown the Holiday Inn, they arranged for Califur 4 to be held at the Hyatt Regency. Califur 4 did not come close to filling the event space in the hotel, as there was a wedding, a senior prom, and other events the same weekend.^[2][3][4]

Hotel staff put up a black curtain to separate Califur areas from space being used by the other events, which annoyed some Califur attendees.^[2][5][6] There were reports that non-Califur people, some possibly drunk, were disregarding the curtain and bothering Califur attendees.^[7][8]

Some attendees felt that the convention was unwelcome at the hotel,^[6][5][9] but most still admit that individual hotel staff were friendly or at least professionally polite.^[10][2]

BJ Buttons and Cobalt after the fursuit parade

Welcome to GreenReaper's con report for Midwest FurFest 2006! I was looking forward to this one. Midwest FurFest 2005 was my first furry convention - my first fan convention of any kind - and it had been exceedingly good. You can read more about it in my previous con report. Since then, though, I'd visited ConClave 31 and Anthrocon 2006, each with their own charms. Would I find MFF somewhat lacking now? Read on to find out . . .

As this was my first furry convention, I decided to write it up in a little more detail than I would do otherwise. Read on to see what a con virgin thought of Midwest FurFest 2005. You should also read KinkyTurtle's MFF 2005 con diary, which is far funnier than mine! :-)

NEW! See links to convention photos at:
http://www.morphicon.org/

In this report:

* Official Numbers
* Special Thanks
* Morphicon Feedback
* What's Next

(read on for more...)

******************************

Anthrocon guest-of-honor Michel Gagne has posted his convention report, with lots of fursuit photos.

Morphicon has concluded, and the convention was a success beyond our wildest dreams!

Given the unfortunate proximity to other conventions, we anticipated only about 80 attendees. When registration closed on Sunday, 120 furries had registered for the convention, 113 of them paid registrations! 115 furries in all attended the convention, 108 of them paid.

Those who registered but were unable to attend con will be sent convention materials through postal mail (including sponsor goodies for sponsors), so they can still have something from us.

(more below)

The World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) was in Toronto this past weekend. What went on?