Blerd is the word!
Hundreds of black nerds, or “blerds,” will descend on Dumbo this month to celebrate science fiction, comics, and their own nerdy selves. One of the founders of Blerd City Con, which will happen at five Dumbo spots — including The Dumbo Spot — on July 29 and 30, says that there is nothing uncool about being a nerd.
“A blerd is a black nerd and if you want to define nerd, I try to go to the cool side — we are cool, smart, and beautiful,” said Clairesa Clay. “Our tagline is ‘Celebrating the nerdiness in you.’ There’s a nerd inside of everyone.”
Clay, a Bedford-Stuyvesant resident, was inspired to create the fest after she came across the word “blerd” in an article about Afro-futurism. She instantly related to the term.
“I was like, ‘That word encompasses everything you are,’ ” she said.
She worked to compile a festival program that would be familiar to any con-dweller, with panels on typically nerdy topics such as computer hacking, comic books, and cosplay — but with black characters and issues front and center.
“The difference is this is bringing race to the forefront instead of it being placed to the side or not at all,” she said. “But we’re into the same thing — we have cosplay, anime, the same conversations.”
The weekend conference will include a few panels of specific interest to black fans, including “The World of Wakanda,” about African superhero Black Panther; “A Right Not to Die,” a discussion of incarceration and police brutality, and the “Black Folks and Martial Arts” panel, which will illuminate how black people have mastered the sport, said Clay.
“We wanted to celebrate the black folks that have been in martial arts,” she said, pointing to majority-black films like “The Last Dragon.”
Other weekend highlights include the cosplay ball, where attendees will dress up as their favorite characters, and a celebration of the late author L.A. Banks, a black woman who wrote the celebrated “Vampire Huntress Legend” series.
Blerds usually get together at small meet-ups throughout the city, said Clay, but she is pumped to head the first conference where they can all hang out. And it seems like other black nerds are excited to let loose too, based on the reactions she’s gotten to the upcoming weekend.
“There’s so many blerds, I like that people are embracing their nerdiness,” she said. “When I tell people about the conference they respond with such joy.”
Blerd City at the Dumbo Spot (155 Water St. at Pearl St. in Dumbo, www.blerd
