AniMarketplace

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The artist alley is the part you actually remember. Not the panels, not the autograph line - the folding table where someone your age was selling a print of a character you thought only you cared about, and you stood there too long, and they said the show's name back to you like a password. Conventions have gotten expensive enough that a lot of people have quietly stopped going. This is that same feeling without the badge: an outdoor artist alley and vendor market in Little Tokyo, free to walk into, with performances and cosplay and a swap-meet corner where people clear out the figures and doujinshi they have outgrown. Free attendance changes who shows up - you get the teenagers and the people who have been in this since the VHS-fansub era standing at the same table. One real detail: vendor spaces run seventy-five dollars, first come, which is why the mix of sellers is different every year instead of the same corporate booths. Sunday, October 18, noon to eight, 244 San Pedro St, Los Angeles.