Anthro Northwest 2017


Another one bites the dust.
After the fall of RainFurrest, trying to get a furry convention to happen in the Seattle area - or really, anywhere at all in Washington - was just about impossible. The team behind Anthro Northwest were the first ones to pull it off, and they even scored a Downtown Seattle venue, the Renaissance Hotel. The con immediately drew controversy for a variety of reasons - largely the fact that they labeled themselves an "anthropomorphic arts convention" (avoiding the term “furry” altogether), and their emphasis on being a completely family-friendly event, banning all adult content. Strangest of all, the convention’s board members appeared to have no previous experience participating in the furry fandom.

There was a lot of skepticism from locals, myself included, but unfortunately, the careful wording and strict rules were probably necessary to make any Seattle hotel agree to host a furry convention. Still, some of us wondered what the point was in even having a local con if it had to be like this.

Things grew even more tense when the con revealed at practically the last possible moment that there would be a TV crew present, filming an episode for CNN's This Is Life with Lisa Ling. Many attendees were deeply uncomfortable with this unexpected news, given the fandom’s history with bad press.


Fox Amoore on stage.
Despite it all, some friends and I couldn’t resist satisfying our curiosity. We thought it would be fun to check out ANW and see what it was like. ANW 2017 was held from November 9-12th.

I stayed with Jovian during the con, opting out of a hotel room this year. I happened to be on a college field trip in the area that Thursday. My professor was staying in Seattle afterwards as well, and she drove me there while we discussed a variety of topics such as politics and Twitter. She dropped me off near Westlake Center, where I did some downtown Seattle shopping before taking the bus to meet Jov, who had prepared for my stay by purchasing Grocery Outlet wine and Cheetos.

That weekend, we met up with friends at Ren's house. It was only recently that I had begun making friends with local furries, and this was actually my first time meeting several friends I would go on to build years of memories with.

Together our group headed to the Downtown Seattle Renaissance Hotel. The hotel was quite small compared to a typical furry con venue. The ground floor contained most of the con's events, and we were immediately entranced by the DashCon-esque ball pit set up near the escalators. I quickly noticed that ANW's marketing as a family-friendly event must have been successful, because there seemed to be younger kids accompanied by patient yet bored-looking parents in just about any direction you looked. I considered approaching a mom to make small talk about how I, too, had attended a local con with my parents as a youth and how cool it was that she brought her kid, but I decided to leave the poor woman alone.


The inflatables panel.
The infamous fursuiter Telephone was a guest of honor that year. During our people-watching, Jov and I ended up stumbling into a sort of meet-and-greet session where the Telephone fursuit was running around. We watched as a young kid in a homemade wolf fursuit head entered the room with her dad, excitedly shouting "look, dad, it's Telephone!" and giggling and squealing in pure delight as the angel dragon playfully interacted with her. I can't lie...it was a touching moment.

Our activities that weekend included attending the fursuit dance competition, getting pizza, listening to Taebyn's Bedtime Stories, Dealer’s Den shopping, fursuit parade watching, and of course a lot of ball pit viewing. We also enjoyed sitting in the back of a small panel room and watching the Lion King screening in its entirety.


Our view during the Lion King screening.
Trips to the Renaissance Hotel restrooms provided me a few pleasant memories. At one point, disoriented from Grocery Outlet wine, I had to shove through a dense crowd to locate the toilets, and emerged to see a fursuiter standing alone in an empty hallway playing a flute and watching me as I passed to finally take my piss. Another time, I almost ran smack into Boozy Badger as he was being pulled from the ball pit by Uncle Kage while I was on my way to the bathroom directly behind them. Later, I briefly came face-to-face with Lisa Ling herself as she made her way into the hallway after exiting a restroom.

Speaking of her, we didn't see a whole lot of the CNN filming. I caught a glimpse of Lisa being filmed walking through the con space, and her interviewing Kage in the hotel bar. When the episode came out the next year, I checked it out immediately and was pretty entertained seeing a professionally shot TV special on the little first-year con we'd attended. The episode is a feel-good fluff piece that positively represents the people it interviews, but sort of paints furry as a community strictly for anxiety-ridden social outcasts who struggle to function outside of a fursuit.


A sexy man purchased in the Dealer's Den.
Overall, the weekend was a good and influential one when it came to meeting Seattle-area furries. The experience of having a whole squad of friends and acquaintances to explore a convention with was completely novel to me, and unimaginably fun. Notably, I got to meet Marona, who I had known online through the Impressive Title community for probably almost a decade! ​While the convention itself wasn't as big or rowdy as more established (and less 'family'-focused) events are, ANW left me with a feeling of optimism about what fun lay ahead for me in my furry fandom future.


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