Whew, I’m frustrated that due to my holiday schedule, it’s over a month since WreckCon happened that I’m writing up my review. No matter, I’ll do my best to recall and document my experience!
Straight from Giga-Bites Cafe to the WreckCon Pop-Up, it was back-to-back funky tables that weekend. I haven’t been to the proper WreckCon because of scheduling conflicts with Marietta the Gathering, so I’m glad I could try out their pop-up in November, the first of its kind.
A few friends had have good experiences at Wreck Con in the spring, so when I heard of the autumn pop-up I wanted to give it a try. Sign-ups for their pop-up were announced on their Instagram and main website. Once accepted, they sent out an email for you to confirm your attendance, very important since there was no table fee.
The WreckCon Pop-Up was located in the Instructional Center on the Georgia Tech campus, across two separate rooms on different floors. Artists were assigned to a room but free to choose their tables upon on arrival. I was on the second floor and arrived earlier enough to snag a front-facing corner table in the middle island to neighbor my friend, Emisharks. From what I could tell, the building’s main function was to serve as class rooms and study spaces, so our tables were interestingly narrow with varying heights. Each “table” space was allowed two of these narrow tables, and I was pretty satisfied with my L-shaped configuration!
In addition to the vendor halls, There was an official stamp rally organized by our event hosts, but I’m unclear on how artists got to join. It involved collecting 3-D printed tokens with the WreckCon mascot on it, and at the end of the day vendors were allowed to take some home as souvenirs.
While WreckCon Pop-Up was open to the public, most of our attendees were GT students, which makes sense due to the venue being their campus. Thus most were younger adults visiting on their Sunday free time, with some cosplayers amongst them. There were some sandwich boards outside on the sidewalks, but I couldn’t determine if most of the student body knew an event was going on. Sales were fairly slow for myself and I do wonder if that was due to my location on the second floor.
WreckCon’s organizers were kind and checked in with us throughout the day. At one point they even offered snacks and hot drinks. When I had questions about my parking situation, I happened to be the only vendor that found the limited-hour parking lot, they went around to check if anyone else had made the same mistake. I really appreciated their concern for our cars getting booted, even if I ended up being the only one in danger! Then later during load-out when one of the elevators broke down, a bunch of organizers helped us move our hauls down the stairs!!! I was moved by their youthful energy. I was under the impression the organizers were primarilystude nts or recent grads, but I’m unclear if WreckCon is officially affiliated with Georgia Tech.
One thing I found interesting was that the majority of us vendors weren’t GT students or alumni, which is just so different from my experience at SCAD. Most of our market events were exclusively students or professors from what I can recall, haha. Are there really that few STEM majors interested in a side art hustle”
I can’t really complain about a free event, even if I did end up paying twice for parking! I want to blame Georgia Tech’s confusing parking signage for that one. And for downtown Atlanta prices, it could’ve been a lot worse, haha. I made a modest profit, and there was a nice sense of nostalgia vending at WreckCon Pop-Up. The last time I had been at GT was for Momocon when it was also a student-run event, and I was still at SCAD! The Wreck Con organizers were also so lovely and you can tell they want to grow Wreck Con into something special. Unfortunately, since I am booked for Marietta the Gathering I won’t be able to make it Wreck Con in 2025 either!
Billie’s Vendor Rating
| Organizer Vibes | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Foot Traffic | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| Attendee Vibes | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Restrooms | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Pokémon GO | ⭐⭐⭐ |
I’ll be keeping an eye out if there are future Wreck Con events that fit my schedule.
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