That's why in the entrance hall, on the way to the registration desk, there are tables promoting and soliciting membership in the various future conventions, both regional and further afield, such as one in Boston in 2004. The rest show up at the door. Like Safer and Boston Baden, they tend to be heavily into computers and related subjects, or New Age undertakings. They are also doctors, civil servants, teachers, business people, journalists, you name it. And in a noticeable aside that dazzled this writer, about half of them range from plain overweight to the grossly obese.
Fans accept other fans, never mind the avoirdupois.
She wears a huge flowered hat and has around her hips a laden leather toolbelt, the contents of which a maintenance man might envy. She is cheerful and serene, and is one of the few who doesn't broadcast a slight air of desperation, or perhaps lostness, sensed in other conventioneers encountered. I met both my husbands at conventions. I think that over the years there's been cross-pollination among SF conventions and medieval or renaissance fairs. Costumes are an aspect of that play.