MechaCon 2020

MechaCon was conceived as a revolutionary Anime convention experience, utilizing a unique three-fold approach focusing on Japanese animation, Japanese culture, and Transformers. The brainchild of two close friends, Pete Bares and Jon Russo, the convention soon became the largest, longest-running and most successful anime convention in Louisiana. Though successful now, this was almost not the case as the convention began with a less than auspicious first year event. MechaCon’s inaugural weekend, August 26-28 2005, saw an unwelcome visitor as the now infamous Hurricane Katrina bore down on the Mississippi and Louisiana Gulf Coasts. The storm made landfall merely hours after MechaCon closed its doors for the weekend. For many of the convention’s attendees, it was the beginning of weeks of uncertainty and great anxiety. Some attendees left the convention early, hoping to get a head start driving away from the storm and the convention’s home city of Lafayette, Louisiana. Others remained in Lafayette, unable to return home to the southeastern side of the state. In the days and weeks following the storm’s landfall, the convention staff rose to the challenge of helping displaced convention attendees from the storm affected areas in any way that they could. A mere four weeks after Katrina’s historic landfall, just as the convention staff began to catch its collective breath, Hurricane Rita slammed into southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana. Striking even closer to Lafayette, some on MechaCon’s staff were affected in much the same way as those they had been helping just days before, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.