Beercon

Beercon was a fan gathering held September 5–6, 1948, in Milwaukee, WI. Festivities mostly occurred at the home of organizer Bob Stein, 514 W. Vienna Ave. It had an attendance of 11. Besides Stein, attending were five Michifen, members of the Misfits, who had traveled from Detroit by Greyhound bus — Ed Kuss, Art Rapp (from Saginaw), Hal Shapiro, Ben Singer and George Young — and one Chicago fan named Carr, plus an unnamed Milwaukee fan who had a car and three other Milwaukeeans whose names are lost to fanhistory. As far as we’re aware, this was the first sf con in Wisconsin.

There doesn’t seem to have been much emphasis on beer. Shapiro, who reported on the fan gathering in Spacewarp (Vol. 4, No. 1, October 1948), mostly drank milk. Highlight of the event was the viewing of two H. G. Wells films, The Shape of Things to Come and The Man Who Could Work Miracles. The fans crashed a meeting of the mundane United Amateur Press Association, bought art and sf from each other, and, when the fan with wheels turned up, “cruised Milwaukee looking for Donn Brazier and insulting females.”

On the way home, the Michifen stopped in Chicago to pop in on Amazing Stories editor Ray Palmer at his offices.

• See “Beercon: Burb by Burp” by Hal Shapiro in Spacewarp 19, p. 17.
• See also: DeCon.

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Convention
	1948

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