Cons at… a history museum and a BART station (again)?

You can host a convention anywhere if you believe.

A convention center? Obviously. A hotel? Definitely. A shopping mall? Yep. An aircraft carrier? Again, absolutely. The X Games? Believe it or not, yes.

Naturally, the same applies to museums and rapid transit stations too.

The Bay Area has enjoyed an influx of festivals and cons as of late that celebrate anime and adjacent East Asian culture like gacha games. While convention centers remain the premier venue type, these events can be major economic boons for other hosts too. Carrier Con, for example, is held on the USS Hornet as a way to drum up funding for the Alameda-stationed aircraft carrier.

Of course, unconventional venues mean unconventional snags that a proper con center wouldn’t have like strange floor plans and having to respect the fixtures already in place. The latter is especially apparent when San José Made hosts its annual SJMade Fest at History Park and BART the Let’s Glow! BART Anime Festival in Fremont.

While San José Made does have events at actual convention centers, such as the Summer Fair at Santa Clara’s last month and ILLO Mart at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center this upcoming weekend, SJMade Fest has been at History Park annually since 2023.

Located at the south end of Kelley Park, History Park is a 14-acre museum showcasing 32 buildings throughout San Jose’s history between 1850 and 1970. It is an open-air village with attractions such as the 1888-built Dashaway Stables for horses and carriages, the office of 19th-century doctor Henry Hulme Warbuton, and an Associated Oil Company gas station that operated from 1927 to 1971. Some are authentic buildings that were deconstructed and moved into the park over the years, while others are reproductions using the original blueprints.

“To San Franciscans the museum will seem like a land-based version of the completely outfitted museum ships of the Hyde Street Pier,” wrote San Francisco Chronicle correspondent Margot Patterson Doss about the then-San Jose Historical Museum in 1977.^[1] “To Los Angelenos, it may seem more like a Hollywood film lot of Main street for Sinclair Lewis’ Babbitt. To anyone who sees how charming, parklike, and spacious this San Jose of the 1800’s was, it may well seem like Eden.”

Carol Ritchey for the Merced Sun-Star said five years later, “The great part about this museum is it is not just a building, but a collection of restored or reconstructed buildings where you can see and learn how people once lived, worked, and thought.”^[2]

On the fringe of the park is Southern Pacific 1215, a locomotive built in 1913 and serving the line until 1957. It sits next to other train cars and right by the Coyote Depot, which was built in 1869 for the Southern Pacific Railroad line through the city.

Food tents in front of Dashaway Stables.
Credit: Justin Nguyen

The depot was brought into History Park in 2024 and currently sits on a pallet foundation awaiting restoration. At the time of SJMade, there was a banner asking visitors to “[h]elp us lay the foundation for exhibits & educational programming at the Coyote Depot! We need your support to fund the Depot’s rehabilitation and restoration,” accompanied by a QR code leading to this donation page.

That Xzibit “Yo dawg” meme from the 2000s would be perfect fodder to highlight the museums inside the museum: the Chinese American Historical Museum at Ng Shing Gung, the Portuguese Historical Museum at the Imperio, and the Việt Museum at Greewnawalt House all take residence in History Park. The Portuguese Historical Museum, a replica of the first império built in San Jose in 1915 (the Chapel to the Holy Spirit), was among the buildings at the heart of SJMade Fest.

The two-day SJMade Fest ran on the final two days of May from 11 AM to 6 PM. 131 Off-Road‘s intrepid reporter made a detour on the 31st as part of a lunch run.

While this wasn’t exactly a convention, it followed much of the same beats. The vendors are all artists, thereby making it like an artist alley, there were food tents, and even a stage for live music. The only thing keeping it from being a “convention” by the traditional definition was a lack of panels, but the main stage basically filled that void with dance classes and other events.

Again, it’s not an anime con so IPs from there or gacha games and the like didn’t get much representation outside of a few vendors selling stickers and charms and other items from properties like Honkai: Star Rail and Umamusume. SJMade caters to a general audience rather than just weebs, and the latter demographic had already been at the San Jose Convention Center for FanimeCon the week prior so everyone was still recovering from that. This worked fine for us as it meant food made up the bulk of our spending that day, with the only other purchase made being a Silence Suzuka sticker.

“Workplace went to get lunch and we ended up at SJMade,” Justin tweeted. “As if my wallet hadn’t suffered enough last week”.

It wasn’t a long stay for him as he was on lunch call, but it healed the post-Fanime blues to some extent. Of course, Anime Expo in July killed the blues for good.

*Love Live!* itasha at Let’s Glow!.
Credit: Justin Nguyen

Said blues sort of resurfaced in the following months since AX is, you know, AX. Anime Impulse Bay Area and OffKai Expo took place in the following weeks, but the trip down to Los Angeles took a massive financial toll that meant follow-up cons so soon weren’t worth it.

Fortunately, BART decided to run it back with Let’s Glow! two months after AX. It was held last Saturday at the Warm Springs–South Fremont station, not too far from Tesla’s factory (meaning there’s a parking lot reserved for Tesla employees), and admission was free to all like with SJMade Fest. We covered the first BART Anime Festival last year, and were eager to see what the expanded premises were like for 2026.

One of the main knocks in 2025 was the tightly packed Artist Alley, which surrounded a single bus stop lane and created a massive queue. We surmised BART had underestimated the amount of people who would show up, resulting in only one half of the station being used for the festival.

BART thankfully took notice for 2026 and expanded the festival campus to both sides of the station. The eastern parking lot was used for the Artist Alley with several lanes and booths. The west side, where 2025’s Artist Alley was, remained in use for an itasha car show and some VTuber screens. The crowd was massive in 2026 too, but it didn’t feel like congoers were stuck in an assembly line if they wanted to browse.

“It’s insane how long some of the artist alley lines are but it isn’t horrible,” a friend of Justin remarked before lamenting how few Project Sekai products there were (but following up that she “struck a little bit of gold” with Mizuki and Ena acrylic standees).

Speaking of VTubers, they had their own concert. SanFlare also returned to provide wotagei performances, but this time expanded its classes so that students would perform at the end (doing so to Yoasobi’s “Idol” from Oshi no Ko).

It was a fun way to burn five hours on a Saturday evening. Not so fun for the ol’ wallet, though. Shit, we were just glad to find an artist selling a Girls’ Frontline print and decals.