June 19th and 20th was the weekend for Supanova Sydney in Sydney, Australia.
The show was not without problems, the biggest being one of the exhibitors. Apparently, there was a vendor set up with extremely controversial merchandise. They openly displayed and sold items such as rising sun flags, swastikas, and items with extreme fascist statements on them. Despite numerous complaints from vendors and attendees, they were not evicted until Sunday.
Initial complaints were lodged by vendors on Friday night during setup. It seems that the vendor was spoken to and they removed a few very visible flags, but nothing else was done.
If you continue along this thread by King_Owl, he underscores the history and meanings behind some of the symbols and phrases.
Per Twitter, it seems that Supanova was aware of this as of the 19th and stated that the vendor was being removed.
The vendor was not removed until Sunday, as they admit in their Facebook post.
There were complaints all over social media during the whole weekend regarding this vendor. There are reports of the vendor harassing attendees and other vendors. There are also numerous comments that the vendor had been reported to convention officials.
Despite the complaints, Supanova chose to do nothing. It’s understandable that it is difficult to remove a vendor during a show, but many other shows have handled similar situations by having the booths covered and then removed after hours.
Supanova’s response to this was unacceptable to most people.
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