Hotel or car?

Actually, every venue we have ever worked with does have issues with people sleeping in their cars. We do not recommend this.

However, a hotel room split 4 ways is fairly cheap. You may want to recommend checking out the room share board.

The police would also take issue with you sleeping in your car. It is not a safe thing to do in a big city.

Don't forget its July too! There's no guarantee you'll find a shaded spot so your car may be dangerously hot even at night.

Even if you sleep with windows cracked and think you'll wake up at sunup, no guarantee you will. The temperature inside a car can rise 40-50 degrees in a half hour to an hour. If the overnight temperature was 80 (not unlikely in July), you could be facing a 120-130 degree car at 6AM.

There no guarantee you would wake up before it got dangerously hot. Humans naturally have a period during sleep where they can't control their body temperature. So you might not wake up.

EVER.

Death is an unlikely outcome, but not unheard of. Heat stroke is very likely, and if you can't afford a hotel room, you definitely can't afford a trip to the emergency room in a strange city.

Don't sleep in your car.

Article on car temperatures, even on relatively cool days:
http://mednews.stanford.edu/releases/2005/july/hot-cars.htm

And here's one on heat stroke:
http://www.medicinenet.com/heat_stroke/article.htm

I wouldn't do it/ I've done my fair share of trunk napping in a 98 Blazer, and it wasn't really all that comfortable.

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My LJ

Err.. sleeping in your car is'nt only stupid .. it's actually ILLEGAL .

and you'd miss a lot if you ended up with a ticket

I've slept in my car for brief periods while travelling (catching naps at well-lit truck stops), and while I was comfortable doing so (I have a very large sedan), I would not recommend it for more than a few hours at a time, and not for consecutive nights. It's hot, it's unsafe, it's uncomfortable, the hotels will have you towed/arrested, and it's a very good way to make the cops think you're a homeless vagrant or other such trouble maker.

If you can't afford a hotel room, do yourself a favour and just wait for the next con. There's a furry convention held almost every single month anymore, and a venue as large as Anthrocon can't simply vanish overnight. Save your money for the next one, because doing one con well will be much more fulfilling than doing a bunch of cons each on a macaroni-and-cheese budget