Downtown San Diego was still bustling with Comic-Con activity on Monday.<\/p>\n
Now the massive pop-culture convention is over. What went up must come down. Crews were tearing down building wraps, dismantling activations and packing up props.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had tons of fun,\u201d Cindy Valladres said. For her and her husband, Hadrian Valladares, Comic-Con and the Gaslamp Quarter lived up to expectations.<\/p>\n
\u201cGoing to Comic-Con and then coming down, grabbing lunch and dinner at all the restaurants here in Gaslamp and everything was great,\u201d Cindy Valladres said.<\/p>\n
Restaurants and bars downtown were packed throughout the weekend and busier than in recent years, according to Michael Trimble, the executive director of the Gaslamp Quarter Association.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s been a real positive thing,” he said. “We’ve also seen a lot of more Hollywood A-list stars coming to Comic-Con this year, which we didn’t have last year, which increases the wow factor. And people want to come.\u201d<\/p>\n
This year, the iconic Gaslamp sign over Fifth Avenue was temporarily transformed with branding for \u201cAvengers: Doomsday.\u201d Something Trimble said had never been done before. It was a collective effort between the city, the association and the film\u2019s marketing agency, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they want to do and give fan service to people coming down,” he said. “So there’s something that they won’t forget.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was a memorable experience for David and Becky Ashcraft. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw the whole cast of Super Troopers right down the street,” David Ashcraft said. “(They) we’re doing interviews out front of one of the activations.\u201d<\/p>\n
They said they didn’t want to leave San Diego and return to Fort Worth, Texas<\/p>\n
More than 135,000 people attended Comic-Con, bringing in an estimated $160 million to the local economy. More than $9 million of that was in downtown San Diego alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat’s pretty accurate,” Trimble said. “You know, it’s hard to put a number on it this early.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although Comic-Con is staying in San Diego through 20-30, he said the association will take a few months to regroup before beginning preparations for next year\u2019s convention.<\/p>\n
But the Ashcrafts have already made their own plans.<\/p>\n
\u201cI look forward to coming back,” David Ashcraft said. <\/p>\n
“We\u2019ll definitely be back next year,\u201d Becky Ashcraft said.<\/p>\n
And they\u2019ll be ready to spend more money at local businesses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Downtown San Diego was still bustling with Comic-Con activity on Monday. Now the massive pop-culture convention is over.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":414632,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-414631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414631\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414632"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}