The Cost of Performing at a Comic Book Festival in Las Vegas

The reason I wasn’t in my apartment on Halloween was because I spent the weekend as a guest at the Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival. The festival took place in a library, which made it extra wonderful. It was also a library with a fully-functioning stage in the middle, which was a nice change from my usual experience of performing in hotel conference rooms.

I earned $710 for one day of performing and selling merch at the festival, which, you know, makes independent musicianry look like a sustainable career. But let’s take a look at my expenses and see if I made any profit:

$5.60: September 11 Security Fee, paid out of pocket, for the Southwest SEA-LAS flight leg I booked on points

$243.10: Southwest LAS-SEA flight I did not book on points

$4.99: Uber to metro stop (I can take the metro to the airport, but it was raining and I had a lot of bags, so I took an Uber to the metro)

$13.32: Pallino, lunch at Seatac airport before flying out (I didn’t eat lunch at home because I would have had to eat lunch at 9:30 a.m.)

$8.00: Internet on outbound Southwest flight (wrote one piece)

$30.60: Taxi, airport to Bally’s Las Vegas

$0.00: Bally’s (the convention put me up at Bally’s for free, which was the best thing ever)

$43.23: The Buffet at The Bellagio (and when did Las Vegas buffets get so expensive?)

$0.00: I was going to tip The Buffet, but they told me not to

$3.50: Bottle of water (sigh)

$18.24: Taxi from Bally’s to the convention venue

$0.00: Got a ride from a fellow convention guest back to Bally’s

$0.00: Apparently if you ask for things in Bally’s, you have a good chance of getting them for free. I got free in-room internet. One of the other convention musicians got free tickets to the High Roller, a 550-foot Ferris wheel ride. So we went. It was amazing.

$21.08: Yard House, one plastic cup of beer and one plastic cup of wine (Las Vegas is one of the few places where you can drink while walking outside — which they encourage — but this is really much less exciting than it sounds, and I spilled most of my wine on myself while walking)

$65.24: Public House, dinner — I told my friend, when we were walking in, “you know this is going to cost $70 each, right?” But that seems to be the case in all Vegas restaurants, because I was totally comparing prices online before we went. And the sad thing is that the food was only okay.

$10.00: Housekeeping tip (always tip your housekeepers)

$14.30: Taxi, Bally’s to airport (why was it so much cheaper this time?)

$10.57: Breakfast at Vegas airport

$8.00: Internet on return Southwest flight (wrote two pieces)

$4.92: Sbarro, lunch at Seatac airport (if I had waited to have lunch until I got home, I would have eaten lunch at 5 p.m.)

$10.00: Taxi from metro to home (looks like Uber is cheaper, at least on this short trip)

Total Expenses: $514.69

Net Profit (before taxes): $195.31

YAY! I came out ahead!

Photo credit: Paul Gorman

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