Bigfoot Days 2021

Bigfoot Days - Cancelled due to COVID-19

Another cancelled stamp. Another date that was going to mean something and now means something different.
Bigfoot Days in Estes Park, Colorado — scheduled for Sunday, April 18th, 2021 at the Estes Park Events Complex — has been cancelled, and we wanted to come to you directly with an update and with some thoughts about where the Sasquatch Syndicate goes from here.

When the Town of Estes Park reached out about Bigfoot Days, we said yes immediately. Of course we did. After the year that 2020 was — Emerald City Comic Con cancelled, the entire conference circuit dark, the booths and the autograph lines and the community conversations that sustain this organization simply gone — the idea of a free, family-friendly outdoor event in one of the most beautiful settings in the Rocky Mountains, with live music and food and vendors and the kind of open-air format that felt genuinely possible in a world still finding its post-pandemic footing, was exactly the kind of lifeline we needed. Estes Park is a Town Signature Event with full municipal backing. The concept was strong. The location was extraordinary. The Sasquatch Syndicate's name was on the flyer alongside the Rocky Mountain skyline and we were genuinely excited about what it could become.

And then it was cancelled.

We are not going to pretend this one didn't land differently than the others. It did. Because Bigfoot Days was not just another conference slot — it was the signal we had been waiting for that the path back to live events was finally opening up. Instead, that stamp across the flyer tells us the path is still longer and more uncertain than any of us hoped when we were telling ourselves that 2021 would be the year things returned to normal.

They have not returned to normal. And the Sasquatch Syndicate has to be clear with itself, and with you, about what that means going forward.

The conference circuit was never just where we went to shake hands and take photos and sell merchandise — though we loved every second of all of that. It was a primary engine of the funding and momentum that kept this organization running. AlienCon, the International Bigfoot Conference, Rose City, Emerald City, the Sasquatch Summit — those events fueled the Syndicate in ways that went far beyond weekend booth revenue. They generated relationships, media attention, creative feedback, community investment, and the kind of organizational energy that is very hard to manufacture in its absence. When they went dark, a significant part of what powered this organization went dark with them.

We cannot wait for the world to give us back something it may not return to us in the same form. That is not a sustainable posture, and it is not who the Sasquatch Syndicate is. We did not build this organization by waiting for conditions to be perfect. We built it by moving forward under imperfect conditions and figuring it out as we went.
So that is what we are doing.

The honest reality is that 2020 forced something the Sasquatch Syndicate had been building toward anyway — a serious shift into video and digital media. When the conference floors went dark and the merchandise events dried up, we turned the cameras on ourselves and started learning. And learning is exactly the right word for where we are. Video production is a different discipline than podcast production, different from a conference booth, different from everything the Syndicate had built its public identity around from 2016 through 2019. The curve is real. The learning is ongoing. There have been moments of genuine progress and moments of genuine humility, and we have experienced both in roughly equal measure over the past year.

What we can tell you is that we have not stopped. The video work that began in 2020 — raw, imperfect, and built on the same passion and commitment that launched the podcast — is continuing into 2021 and beyond. We are learning the medium. We are getting better at it. The Sasquatch Syndicate YouTube presence is growing, the content is evolving, and every episode we produce teaches us something we didn't know when we started. That is how this organization has always operated — show up, do the work, get better, keep going.

The broader strategic shift is also underway. The live conference model — the booths, the merchandise events, the floor presence that defined so much of our public identity — is stepping back while we build the organizational infrastructure that does not require a convention center to function. That means accelerating the development of the cartoon and comic concepts that have been in progress since those early Emerald City appearances when we first put sketch ideas in front of a pop culture audience and watched them respond. It means investing in digital and broadcast in ways that can reach this community regardless of whether any of us can get on a plane and set up a table. It means building something that survives the next disruption because it is not dependent on any single model of how we connect with you.

This is not a retreat. It is a recalibration. The Sasquatch Syndicate has spent five years building one of the most recognizable brands in this research space — from a podcast with a speaking slot at AlienCon Santa Clara to an organization that brought Bob Gimlin to Pasadena, introduced him to Erich von Däniken at dinner, put Dr. Jeff Meldrum in front of a sold-out Dallas convention center, earned a conversation with the New York Times, and documented a 17x9-inch impression in the deep woods of the Olympic Peninsula that was verified by two of the most credentialed names in the field. That is not the record of an organization that folds when the conference circuit goes quiet. It is the record of an organization that finds another way.

We are finding another way.

To the Town of Estes Park and everyone who worked to make Bigfoot Days a reality — thank you. The Rocky Mountains deserve a great Bigfoot event, and we genuinely hope that day still comes. To every fan who saw our name on that flyer and started making plans — we are sorry the circumstances made this impossible. To everyone who has supported this organization through two years of cancellations, pivots, and uncertainty — your patience and your loyalty are not taken for granted. Not for a single day.

The Syndicate is still here. Still working. Still learning. The direction is changing, but the mission is not.
More soon.
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By Chanelle Elaine, Chief Marketing Officer Sasquatch Syndicate Inc.