The East Wind Takes Us All in the End: Farewell SherlockeDCC
It is with a heavy heart that we are bidding farewell to SherlockeDCC. 2017 would have been our 5th year, and that is certainly a good number to end on, but we’ll be unable to bring our Sherlock party to San Diego Comic Con this July. There’s a few reasons for that, and we’ll get into that, but first and foremost we would love to express our utmost gratitude and appreciation for everyone who has helped make SherlockeDCC such a rousing success since 2013. To all our volunteers, our co-conspirators, our partners, our sponsors, our guests and attendees… you truly are what made SherlockeDCC what it was, and we have nothing but love and thanks for you.
Through this party we made life-long friendships, had memories that’ll forever be a part of us, and were part of a wonderful and loving community at San Diego Comic Con. It was amazing. And we will miss it horribly.
What started as just an idea for a Sherlock meet-up in 2013 grew into a beast of a party that trended on twitter, was sponsored by Intel (still omgwtf about that one), and visited by the show’s producers and stars. Kristina, Liz (Being Geek Chic), Megan (The Nerdy Girlie), Lacy (Sherlock DC), and Cara (Ohcararara). We started this monster and it was an amazing one. It was an incredible night, and we instantly knew we had to do it again.
So we did.
In 2014 Tillie joined the team, as did Sora (who was busy helping someone during this photo, bless her). We grew and moved into a bigger space. Rolling Stone came. It was super cool. We had live music and some tables that including nerdy nail art and painting, and slowly began to introduce games (who can forget Shoot Sherlock??)
We grew even more in 2015 including an Artist’s Alley and merchandise. We raised money for charity, had a wonderful Q&A with Sue Vertue, Steven Moffat, and even Louis Moffat! (Secret: Rupert Graves wanted to come, but had to fly out before the party… trust me, we were all bummed).
2016 saw a bunch of changes. All our lives were going in different directions. Businesses were made, international moves occurred, others simply couldn’t make it to SDCC that year; life happened. Jules, Tiffany, and Michelle with Nerd Out joined Sora and Lacy for 2016. Steven and Louis graciously came back and even roamed around a little bit. Hillywood were there too, because hot damn.
There are so many memories… countless. Going through the SherlockeDCC hashtag on Instagram made me a little weepy, I won’t lie. It was always from the heart. We did everything for the attendees and for the fandom. We loved doing it so much, we truly did. You all were incredible. Everyone was incredible.
SherlockeDCC has always been a giant undertaking. The planning involved simply outgrew our team. Why not just get more people? Well, yes, we could, but the fact was, it was always an insanely stressful amount of work. Working around the clock, securing things, pricing things out, organizing 500+ goodie bags and food and drinks and… well, you get it. We loved it, don’t get us wrong, we genuinely love event planning, but the last two years in particular were very very difficult and in the end the stress incurred (and exhaustion and illness) was too much to deal with it again. We were doing this in our free time, still working, still going to university, still running our respective websites and businesses.
The party always cost between $10,000 and $20,000 to put on, depending on the year, price jumps, etc. We never wanted tickets to become outrageous, because our goal was to make SherlockeDCC accessible to everyone. But with every year that SDCC expands, so do the prices. While very rarely did we have to dip into our own pockets, thanks to ticket sales, the raffle, and sponsorships covering the cost more or less, it did happen some times, and it is a risk we can’t take any more as anything you need to hire (be it food, drinks, games, equipment, etc) is just jacked up so much during SDCC time. We were going to be priced-out eventually, perhaps we already had been. Ew money.
We had worked with amazing sponsors every year, and they did a huge part in allowing the party to have all the entertainment possible. Love to Intel, 221B Con, Adagio Teas, Quirk Books, Wattpad, Sherlocked, Larabar, Elope, GoPop, FYeahCopyright, Gold Bubble Clothing, New Paradigm Studios, Random Realities, Graphic Lab Tees, and the Mystery Loves Company Bookshop.
To Bekker’s, Gemeni, and Pixster who were with us from the beginning, thank you for your services and feeding, entertaining, and photographing our amazing guests.
To our vendors Lauren Gallaway, Cara McGee, Jackie , Lucy Keifer, Espionage Cosmetics, High Voltage, Inchells, Amy Zen, Ex Astris Atelier, and Colin Lawler, thank you for sharing your wonderful works with everyone. And to Veronica who always made fans and trinkets for EVERYONE, every single year. You, lady, are a superstar.
And a particularly heartfelt thank you to all of our volunteers each and every year. You were the beating heart of the party. Handing out goodie bags and badges, checking tickets, selling raffle tickets, helping attendees, helping talent, and making sure we all stayed sane. Our love and appreciation for you knows no bounds. Thank you to Elly, Dylan, David, Valentino, Alberto, Karen, Elana, Takeema, Caylin, Elizabeth, Lisa, Amber-Rose, Theresa, Elisabeth, Terena, Mary Ann, Harriet, Jill, Michelle, Megan, Mary, Amber Michelle, Keeleigh, Adalisa, Gina, Sarah, Josh, Lori, Adam, JD, Ryan, Dan, and Radio… our amazing badge artist every single year. To all of our artists who donated their amazing work: Sketchlock, House of Darkly, Buneesi, Geothebio, Artbylexie, Radiocrist, Reapersun, Detectivelyd, azur3verie, Cheryl, Sakibatch, and Shycustis.
We have been very lucky to work with the AMAZING San Diego Public Library the past three years, and they have been more than fair and incredible and please support them. They worked with us, our time, and our budget like no one else, especially for such a gorgeous venue. A special shout out to their events coordinator Erwin Magbanua and the library’s security team who has always been a stand-up gentleman and would bend over backwards for us every year.
And of course we have to give a lot of love to the amazing Sherlock team who were always raring to support us, the party, and all the attendees. Thanks to Sue Vertue, Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss, Rupert Graves, Louis Moffat, Reetu Kabra, Hartswood Films, BBC Worldwide, BBC America, and PBS Masterpiece for their generosity, time, autographs, and for generally just being super awesome human beings.
SherlockeDCC has been the most wonderful of rides. The support from the SDCC con-going community has been stunning, and trust us, our hearts are just as broken. We would love to do this part forever, but it’s not feasible at the moment, so we’ve decided to let it go. We truly hope you’ve all had as wonderful of memories as we have.
Maybe one year we will return, who knows. Perhaps after this Reichenbach we too will show up with a badly drawn mustache and go “Surprise!” But for now, this is good-bye.
All Our Love,
The SherlockeDCC Team
Kristina Manente is the founder of The Baker Street Babes, as well as a podcaster, reporter, event coordinator, and PR guru for the Babes. Beyond Holmes, she’s a gamer, a traveler, a freelance writer, an audio engineer, and a Van Winkle style napper. She currently works professionally in podcasting and radio.
You can view her writing and audio work at kristinamanente.me and read her latest publications at www.clippings.me/kmanente. Feel free to stalk her on twitter at @CurlyFourEyes.
It was my pleasure to make the fans and other goodies for the goody bags and bracelets for the raffles. I’ll miss the party as it was something I really looked forward to at SDCC, but I understand how difficult and costly it can be putting the party together.
Maybe in a few years you’ll have “Watson and Holmes TV series SDCC” get-together ;)
Its been optioned :) crossing fingers on making it to Pilot….
Now I’m even more envious!
Lots of love,
R
[…] other bad news, the popular offsite SherlockeDCC won’t be returning this year. The Baker Street Babes shared the news on their site, thanking fans for all the love and memories over the years. We’ll miss you, even if we were […]
I went to this party a couple of years in a row, but the emphasis JUST on BBC Sherlock was off-putting. I thought the BSB were supposed to be and represent fans of ALL the versions of Sherlock Holmes, but the continued emphasis on just one version has always been a bit tiresome. Particularly as this one version went downhill qualitatively the past couple of years. Maybe it would have been better if you’d paid equal tribute at these events to the other beloved versions of Holmes (Granada seems to always get forgotten entirely in all the “official” art, fan art and goodie bags, for one thing). Otherwise, appreciate all the work and effort, but the party couldn’t ever be said to be representative of ALL Sherlock Holmes fans. Those of us who like other versions just sadly hung around the edges and felt left out, kind of like on this website.
I’m sorry you felt excluded Bev. SherlockeDCC was always billed as an exclusively BBC Sherlock party however. We never promoted it as anything but.
However on our site I think you will find the majority of our content is not BBC related, we do cater to all iterations of Holmes.
First of all, thank you for all your effort every year. While I could only volunteer one year (And trust me, it was the best memory I have of SDCC that year), every other year I tried to tell everyone to go and enjoy the meeitng, as well as tried to make my schedule work to be able to volunteer again (SDCC has been good to me work-wise… not so much schedule-wise).
So great luck to every single endeavor in the future, and I know that if you ever do an offsite on SDCC again, I will be there, first in line, to volunteer.
[…] BSBs say goodbye to SherlockeDCC […]