Zoo Con 2024
It’s 2:00 AM Central Time and I’m sitting in the lobby of the Donald E. Stephens convention center in Rosemont Illinois. I’m there for Midwest FurFest, one of the largest furry conventions in the world. I’m just quickly taking a break from a party to scarf down two hot dogs before I get back into it. In front of me, a person of some gender is doing shockingly good break dancing to an audience of just me and the few other people bothering to take small breaks from their conversations to look up at the spectacle. I’m happy.
And I don’t just mean kinda happy, I mean happy in that deep down in your soul kind of content way. The way where the world seems to slow down and align, into one perfect moment so tangible you’ll be able to remember it for decades and decades to come. I’ve just come from a party. But not just any party, an honest to god zoo party. One where there were no masks, no talking around the subject, no euphemisms. Just people who happen to love animals talking to other people who love animals. And not a small number of people. There were about fifty of us all crammed into one small room. A room that got so hot that we ended up spilling out into the hallway to get a break. Some of them were just faces passing by that I probably won't think of again unless I happen to run into them some other time. Some were strangers that became friends I hope to hold on to for years. And some were people who I've been talking to about this whole zoo thing to for ages now, who I forever more am going to have a face in my head that I can put to the name. Something that means so much more when so much of what we do is hidden so deeply. Inside the party, there were stickers and jewelry exchanged, liquor was served in party-appropriate dog bowls, and snacks were aplenty. But the best part was just the people.
We talked about everything. We talked about our home towns, what we loved about our partners, what we thought about recent pop culture events, how cute dogs are just in general. Much like with people in general, there was an amazing variety of things I got to chat about. We swapped cooking tips and recipes with a few other people that loved to cook. We talked about our favorite kinds of dog food that our partners seem to love. We talked about League of Legends because god fucking dammit Tarro can you go one minute without mentioning League. In fact, through this party I found out someone I’ve been playing League with for nearly six years on and off was also a zoo and we just never happened to bring it up with each other. I met their lovely partner, we exchanged bewildered greetings and hugs, and promises to visit if we’re ever in each other’s neck of the proverbial woods.
And, I cannot stress enough just how many people there were. I already mentioned that there were about fifty people there, but this was far from the only zoo or zoo-coded event that took place over the course of the weekend. And there were plenty of people that I only saw at other events but not this one, or vice versa. An unfortunate reality of the world we live in is that everything needs to have a layer of secrecy on top of it. Part of that secrecy is exclusivity. You need to know someone to get in. And not every event is run by the same people. So, it’s very easy to miss out on one or two things over the course of the weekend. That said, the Telegram group for the largest of them was at 100 members. And that’s accounting for just those interested in attending a very explicitly zoo party. We make a lot of assumptions when it comes to how many zoos there are. 2% to 8% is a really huge range, and even then both of those numbers can be incredibly contested. But what I can say for sure is that there were AT MINIMUM more than 100 zoophiles attending the same convention as me, and at least fifty packed in the same tiny room living their best zoo lives.
That’s incredible, isn’t it? ConFurence is widely regarded as the first furry convention, and its year zero had 65 attendees. To say that that room was akin to the first zoo convention isn’t that far off. Their first real year, they had 130 attendees. I don’t think it would be anywhere complicated to get the same numbers.
The zoo community is amazing. We’ve got our edges here and there, but look at how we’re growing, and at everything we’re creating. I don’t want to make it seem like we’re creating new zoos, but I get messages all the time from people who have been struggling with their attraction for years only to finally decide to look at things in a new light after stumbling onto our zooey patch of earth here on the world wide web.
Life is complicated. Good times never last. But small moments like this give me so much hope. Being able to be my whole, authentic self in a room full of other people gives me room to dream about what the future might look like another few years down the line. It’s not going to change overnight, but we’re going in a direction that has me really excited for what’s going to come. Thank you so much to everyone who helped make these events happen, I don’t know if you’ll ever read these words but you know who you are. And thank you so much to everyone who came. Even if we never spoke, just know that your presence there was unironically inspirational.
The future is looking bright, dear readers, and it’s looking zooey as hell.
