Oddest Convention Combination at a hotel
 

What is the oddest combination of conventioneers that you have come across while staying at a hotel?

For me, it was a mathematicians convention and a hairdressers convention at a Texas hotel. Very interesting when members of both groups got into an elevator and looked at each other!

Brighton, England, August 1985: As I was checking into my hotel for an international nutrition conference (lots of academic types, government officials and earnest folks from all over the world), the conference that was just ending was the regional (or perhaps even national) billiards championship, complete with colorful rowdy characters partying hard and waving their custom-made cues around wherever they went.

Oklahoma City (I think; maybe Salt Lake), mid-1980s: The national convention for Miss Deaf America inundated our hotel with lovely young ladies, all of them deaf of course. Sign language everywhere. I was there on a business trip along with a colleague, a young man in his late 20s, who back home had a very active social life. He came close to crying with frustration more than once.

During Harley Week in Myrtle Beach, the Shriners and Hairdressers also have their annual conferences.

Fez hats, big hair, and tattoos. Gotta love Myrtle Beach!

Not a combination but I was in Philadelphia for business and the National Assoc of OCD sufferers was having their annual conference at my hotel. Not to make fun, but it was very interesting.....some of them had to go up and down the escalators many, many times.

We were in NC when there was a Gay Bikers Convention. The bikes in the hotel parking lot were fabulous!

I was at a hotel bar on a snowy night in NJ with a dozen or so colleagues that were also participating in an advanced skills class for the NYC investment bank we worked for. I'm sure we fit the sterotype of the obnoxious, arrogant, type-A personalities.

The only other people at the bar were from a group, think it was called Blue Sky Thoughts, that was a self-help group for those suffering from low-self worth and low self-esteem.

Not a convention necessarily but a couple of years ago in the Chicago grand Hyatt the following groups were in attendance on the same night:

International Mr. leather
Gay Square Dancers
A local high school prom

And, like the methematicians and hairdressers, they found they had a lot more in common in the elevators than they thoguht!

Not in the same hotel but in the same convention center...New Orleans 2001 - I was attending the International Special Events Conference and right next door was a Guns and Knives show. The combination made for some great people watching (from both conventions) during breaks!

Didn't happen to me, but a friend of mine was running a marathon (sorry, I don't know where) and the host hotel also had a computer gamer convention going on at the same time.

A few years ago, we were staying in Columbus OH. Not sure of the exact name of the convention, but it was Police and Firemen convention complete with demonstrations and products. Outside were all types of police cars and fire trucks and other apparatus.

Just returned from San Diego where they were having the California Bar Association annual meeting with all kinds of lawyers in conservative suits.

Alongside was the Surfers Convention, the real kind of surfer, the kind that goes into the water!

COMDEX (Computer "Geek" Convention) and an Internet Porn convention.....in Las Vegas....those were some funny times...alas, COMDEX doesn't have a convention anymore after topping out at 200,000+ before the dot.com bust....

I once attended the Comdex in 1987. The porn convention that used to go with it is /was called Adultdex.

A few years ago, a friend stayed at a Philadelphia Hotel and there were two conventions going on... One for Midgets and Dwarves and one a Kennel Club Show... He called his wife from the lobby and told her he was surrounded by little people and just then someone walked by with a Bedlington Terrier and he said and also Sheep... They had a good laugh later

This wasn't exactly a convention on BOTH sides, only one- but it was one night I will never, ever forget.

It was at the OakBrook Durrey Lane Theatre/ Hotel complex in OakBrook, IL.

My woman's club decided to go see OKLAHOMA (12 of us in 2 vans) with the dinner package at the very last minute.
It was circa 1992 or 1993. This is highly unusual as they are all 1950's type stay-at-home moms and don't even go downtown (Chicago). They are salt of the earth /kind but very, very conservative.

It turned out to be the Convention and dinner for the Transvesite Club of America.

We had the best time, and I have never seen so many tiaras and spangles in my entire life. My one girl friend is very white skinned / black haired and blushes very easily. One of the things I will never forget is that Carolyn was bright red like a beet every time I looked at her. We saw more hairy legs under textured pantyhose, etc. and strapless shoulders etc. Everytime any of us would look at each other or try to say anything- we would burst out laughing so hard that we couldn't even talk coherently.

And they actually made all the bathrooms "girls" that night. The intermission was a scream- funnier than the show.

I was in Vegas two years ago and recall getting a chuckle out of seeing "Welcome to the attendees of the American Bar Association Convention on White Collar Crime" and a sign announcing meetings for an organization of internal auditors. DH couldn't stop cracking jokes about who arranged that schedule.

Probably the most interesting was a hotel in St. Louis where a convention of Friar Tucks, well at least catholic priests in friar outfits had convened. All in the "brown" robes wandering about, it was very surreal. Although they looked very comfortable, I wish they had those hanging in the closets at the hotel instead of those rough terry cloth robes.

I'm not sure it qualifies as "oddest" but it certainly does as "least compatible". About 3 years ago, I was attending a convention for retired law enforcement officers. At 60, I was among the youngest of the attendees and we old cops are tired and treasure our rest.

At the same time, the hotel was hosting a regional high school basket ball tournement. Several teams of kids and their supporters were running up and down the corridors, yelling and screaming until the wee hours of the morning.

If you think cops are in a bad mood when you get stopped for a ticket, you should have seen all of us the next morning.

In Wilmington DE, a jr. high school soccer tournament concurrent (complete with soccer moms, dads, little siblings) with a female body-builder's contest. Sharing the elevator was kind of a trip.

Maybe these groups are more compatable than not but in Quebec City about 8 years ago, the Jane Austen Society of North America was sharing a hotel with a vexillologist group (people who study flags).

The JAS acted out scenes from the books-in costume, so would always be riding the elevators wearing velvet tailcoats and brocade vests or hoop skirts.