Capital City Fur Con’s Nitro-powered crash and burn

by Patch O'Furr

Contact-starved furries are having a bad year. Only a few conventions opened before COVID-19 made so many cancel and cut off the hug supply. (Quick, send emergency plushies before the furries go rabid for hugging anything that moves! Or set them loose in riot zones and tell them the cops need hugs.)

Capital City Fur Con was among the few that happened successfully, and it was a first-year con… so months later, it’s extra noticeable to see it blow up with a mushroom cloud of absurd drama. At least it makes a show. It also makes a lesson about a fandom full of DIY power. Uncritical nerdy love is good for starting your own art, stories, or even a sexy furry news site — but not just any dummy should start a con.

The dummy of this story is CCFC’s (ex-) chair, Nitro. He may now be hiding out in a luxury yiff bunker, with hopes to be forgotten in the furor about a pandemic/recession/uprising, because he allegedly took thousands of dollars for charity but failed to give it to them. That’s illegal.

I try not to go too deep into the drama of cons. It has to be egregious, and even some with clowns on staff have great volunteers who strive to make others happy. Even when cons don’t go right, they still make happy experiences. (Spoiler: which aren’t included here.)

Of course it’s the law that every con has to have weird stuff, and it’s hard to get the truth about it from all sides, like learning about orgies in private rooms and which ones are really worth getting into. (For example, the failure of Rainfurrest has a popular video from Internet Historian, but we might not verify all the bonkers stuff in it unless the infamous Diaper Guy was an undercover cop with a wire hidden in there.)

You can still watch this helpful summary of the controversy, then CCFC staffer Shadow the Wolf’s recounting of “gross financial mismanagement” by Nitro.

See, it’s special to get inside info about how things went wrong. And there’s more than the outstanding financial stuff. It’s a lot to cover so I’ll just tell a few lowlights from memory. (Imagine you’re hearing from a sincere furry doing their best after a couple of marijuanas.)

  • Before the con, I was tipped about controversy with a potential alt-right security staffer who you might not want to trust with securing you or your info.
  • Controversy boiled over when the con denounced staff of another con for pointing this out, with an official letter. (When do cons bicker in public?)
  • That furry was seen visiting the White House in a used murrsuit. (Look, no shaming, I’d deploy the SPH to disrespect Cheeto Mussolini and Make America Great, but being on his team? I’m not that dirty.)
  • “Popufurs” were spammed to death about being Guests of Honor, until CCFC had 2.7 GOH’s per attendee. (OK, actually 7 for a few hundred attendees.)
  • Some weren’t actually announced, and pricey room compensation wasn’t paid (to staff and maybe GOH’s.)
  • On the first day of the con AN AVALANCHE OF SHIT got unleashed…
  • Furries risked getting shot? That was the fear when a “rich people inauguration ceremony” happened in the hotel, with politicians and armed security giving beady eyes about potential costumed assassins. Con-goers were told to avoid giving them a reason for hunting season. No pup masks OR ELSE!
  • Due to this genius scheduling, a bunch of panels were rescheduled to nonsense times without notice and didn’t happen.
  • The hotel contract hadn’t been honored with payment on time, and there was a deadline. If not paid NOW the con would get shut as firmly as I’d get kicked out of the White House for peeing on Trump’s rug (or whatever you call that thing on his head — hey can you imagine him doing a pee tape with a furry? Yes, you probably can if you’ve been watching the news, that wouldn’t even get 15 minutes of notice.)
  • A con bickering online with another con is one thing, but how often to they BEG other cons for thousands of dollars?
  • A staffer was badgered about paying $15 grand in college money (I don’t think the money was actually given though.)

  • No Non-Disclosure Agreement HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
  • For months after the con there were ALL CON MERCH 50% OFF sales (were there any sales accounted for?)
  • Finally, when all this came out, the allegations of charity money deception led to a lawyer assessing the potential fraud charges.
  • Read his Twitter thread about this Fandom’s Most Wanted Public Animal #1. It’s conveniently blog-formatted for you here.

Capital City? More like Crapital City… if I had a band, that would be the name of it, and the album would be Presidential Furry Pee Tape.

Here’s the part where I give sympathy to everyone who had a good time and put in their hard work, and hope this all gets sorted out!

UPDATE: You wouldn’t think it could get worse. It gets worse.

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