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Here we go again
Jun. 14th, 2020 11:19 amDenise and I have been doing Saturday Market since 1993; 2020 will be our 28th year as Off Center Ceramics. (Pulp Romances is a little younger, I think.) With the current pandemic, though, we faced some new choices.
I really want to participate again. It's not so much financial--since her folks passed, we inherited enough to live comfortably without really needing to work. But what am I, if not a potter? It's been my identity since, oh, the early 80's. There's also our community: not just friends among the other vendors, but among our customers. We've got people who've been visiting us, buying our work, for years. They're more than patrons, they're practically family.
So we sent out the postcards (and e-cards), sorted the van, re-jiggered the display, preparing for opening day. That just left the question: Would Denise come along?
As I said, we'd been doing this together since the very start. Our set-up is a smoothly oiled collaboration, from putting the hinge pins in the shelf unit to each having our own boxes of pots to set out, organized in our particular system. Problem is, Denise has arthritis, a serious case. She's been on heavy meds since before we were married, and since arthritis is an auto-immune disorder, that means immunosuppressants.
You see where this is going.
We really didn't want her to hang around Market all day; quite apart from exposure to the customers, it was predicted to be cold and rainy. Not good for the joints. Whether she came to help set up or take down was the other question. In past years, she'd sometimes come down with me for set-up, then catch the bus home. Not a good option now. She could take the van home, drive back for take-down, but I get itchy if the van isn't there right when I need it in the evening. She even offered to bring the car down, something our previously-poor and eco-conscious selves just hate to do.
Ultimately, we decided I'd do Market solo today, see how things went. Because I had a new booth set-up, and knew it would take longer without Denise, I left an hour earlier than usual, arriving downtown at 6:15 am. The info booth was still being set-up, only food booths were stirring, and about three or four folks at the Farmer's Market.
Set-up wasn't too bad, about 45 minutes to get booth and structures up and everything out of the van. I'm glad I started early, because I got everything under cover before the morning showers.
One of the things I did to accommodate the new normal was shorten my display bench by a foot, to allow easy access to the front of the booth from the vendor side. (In the past, the bench and shelves were connected, and I'd have to go out the back and the long way around to get the front again.) Surprisingly, this had little effect on the amount of display space available. What I lost in table space, I made up with shelves that were previously inaccessible. I had to use one fewer book display, but still had a nice showing of Denise's work, including some pretty new marbled-cover journals, and I was finally able to use a nifty pie-plate rack I made years ago for a half-booth space at Clayfolk, and stored in the shed ever since.
What Market did to accommodate was to close every second booth. Our booths are numbered, and this weekend, only the odd-numbered spaces were in use, guaranteeing at least 8 feet between neighboring booths. Those of us with reserved spaces checked in to claim them by Wednesday; the remaining 82 were placed in the lottery and given out to non-reserve vendors (or those whose reserve space had an even number) at 8:30 Saturday morning. They had a pretty good turn-out, though there were still a lot of unclaimed spaces. Only four booths in use on our stretch, three on the east side of the block. Food Court was also spaced out, with no tables, and a Jerk Chicken trailer parked in front of the unused stage.
Farmer's Market was, oddly, less intimidating to me than a few weeks previous, when it was spread out over two full blocks. They were back in their usual location, spread out like us, alternating empty spaces, filling up their closed-street cul-de-sac, and running further down Oak Street. I went over at 9, after I finished setting up, and came back with a pint of sugar snap peas, four pints of strawberries, and a quart of peaches.
It was a very good day, business-wise. I had three sales before 9:45 am (we officially open at 10), was over $300 in pottery, $40 in paper products by the end of the day. People were mostly... sensible. About 75% of them wore masks, almost all correctly (I think I counted only 6 noses sticking out). The ones who didn't were split between big family groups, teenage/college aged couples, and eccentric solos. Crowds were not huge, but steady, a balance between opening-day eagerness and threatening weather caution.
People were also mostly more thoughtful about touching stuff. I didn't have any signage discouraging it, but came prepared with a spray bottle of sanitizer and paper towels, to wipe down pots that had been handled after the fact. They were generally good about letting me show them the plates, or dessert plates, only handled things they were buying, or at least seriously considering. It went well, with one exception.
She was an older woman, grey hair in a pony tail, yellow rain jacket, no mask. Very chatty as she picked up a fox mug, put it back, pulled out the lid of a fox french butter dish as I explained the function. When she lifted up the top of the stack of dessert plates, I asked if I could show them to her, so I wouldn't have to disinfect them all after. Oh no, don't bother, she huffed, turning around and striding off, I'll come back next week.
At which point, she was too far away for me to tell her that, one, I wouldn't be here next week (alternate booth openings), and, two, I didn't think the virus was going to magically disappear by then. People...
Some of whom were lovely. The woman from Belarus, ten years resident in Eugene, there with two friends and her brother from the old country, showing him my work and explaining everything in Russian. He practiced his two phrases in English on me ("Glad to meet you" and "Thank you very much.") I don't have any Russian, though I know a little Serbian from an ex-girlfriend, so said "Zdravo" and smiled a lot.
And then there was the Asian family. Mother, Father, daughter waist-high on me, all masked up. They stopped by around 3:30 pm, admired the pots, talked with me a little about my process. Came back half an hour later, both adults with their phones out taking pictures. Turned out they were talking with their friends in China (at least four faces on the screen), showing them the Market, or possibly just my pottery. I got to show the daughter the stegosaur bank, and the Chinese friends the elephant. We spent about 15 minutes talking and show-and-telling, and they said they'd woken the friends up for this, which certainly made me feel special.
Had a brisk rain shower around 1:30-2 pm, but as I'd put the rain pin in the frame (to keep the roof taut) and had the sides up, I was nice and dry. It threatened showers again around 4:30, but was dry and even sunny at load-out.
I call that a win.
I really want to participate again. It's not so much financial--since her folks passed, we inherited enough to live comfortably without really needing to work. But what am I, if not a potter? It's been my identity since, oh, the early 80's. There's also our community: not just friends among the other vendors, but among our customers. We've got people who've been visiting us, buying our work, for years. They're more than patrons, they're practically family.
So we sent out the postcards (and e-cards), sorted the van, re-jiggered the display, preparing for opening day. That just left the question: Would Denise come along?
As I said, we'd been doing this together since the very start. Our set-up is a smoothly oiled collaboration, from putting the hinge pins in the shelf unit to each having our own boxes of pots to set out, organized in our particular system. Problem is, Denise has arthritis, a serious case. She's been on heavy meds since before we were married, and since arthritis is an auto-immune disorder, that means immunosuppressants.
You see where this is going.
We really didn't want her to hang around Market all day; quite apart from exposure to the customers, it was predicted to be cold and rainy. Not good for the joints. Whether she came to help set up or take down was the other question. In past years, she'd sometimes come down with me for set-up, then catch the bus home. Not a good option now. She could take the van home, drive back for take-down, but I get itchy if the van isn't there right when I need it in the evening. She even offered to bring the car down, something our previously-poor and eco-conscious selves just hate to do.
Ultimately, we decided I'd do Market solo today, see how things went. Because I had a new booth set-up, and knew it would take longer without Denise, I left an hour earlier than usual, arriving downtown at 6:15 am. The info booth was still being set-up, only food booths were stirring, and about three or four folks at the Farmer's Market.
Set-up wasn't too bad, about 45 minutes to get booth and structures up and everything out of the van. I'm glad I started early, because I got everything under cover before the morning showers.
One of the things I did to accommodate the new normal was shorten my display bench by a foot, to allow easy access to the front of the booth from the vendor side. (In the past, the bench and shelves were connected, and I'd have to go out the back and the long way around to get the front again.) Surprisingly, this had little effect on the amount of display space available. What I lost in table space, I made up with shelves that were previously inaccessible. I had to use one fewer book display, but still had a nice showing of Denise's work, including some pretty new marbled-cover journals, and I was finally able to use a nifty pie-plate rack I made years ago for a half-booth space at Clayfolk, and stored in the shed ever since.
What Market did to accommodate was to close every second booth. Our booths are numbered, and this weekend, only the odd-numbered spaces were in use, guaranteeing at least 8 feet between neighboring booths. Those of us with reserved spaces checked in to claim them by Wednesday; the remaining 82 were placed in the lottery and given out to non-reserve vendors (or those whose reserve space had an even number) at 8:30 Saturday morning. They had a pretty good turn-out, though there were still a lot of unclaimed spaces. Only four booths in use on our stretch, three on the east side of the block. Food Court was also spaced out, with no tables, and a Jerk Chicken trailer parked in front of the unused stage.
Farmer's Market was, oddly, less intimidating to me than a few weeks previous, when it was spread out over two full blocks. They were back in their usual location, spread out like us, alternating empty spaces, filling up their closed-street cul-de-sac, and running further down Oak Street. I went over at 9, after I finished setting up, and came back with a pint of sugar snap peas, four pints of strawberries, and a quart of peaches.
It was a very good day, business-wise. I had three sales before 9:45 am (we officially open at 10), was over $300 in pottery, $40 in paper products by the end of the day. People were mostly... sensible. About 75% of them wore masks, almost all correctly (I think I counted only 6 noses sticking out). The ones who didn't were split between big family groups, teenage/college aged couples, and eccentric solos. Crowds were not huge, but steady, a balance between opening-day eagerness and threatening weather caution.
People were also mostly more thoughtful about touching stuff. I didn't have any signage discouraging it, but came prepared with a spray bottle of sanitizer and paper towels, to wipe down pots that had been handled after the fact. They were generally good about letting me show them the plates, or dessert plates, only handled things they were buying, or at least seriously considering. It went well, with one exception.
She was an older woman, grey hair in a pony tail, yellow rain jacket, no mask. Very chatty as she picked up a fox mug, put it back, pulled out the lid of a fox french butter dish as I explained the function. When she lifted up the top of the stack of dessert plates, I asked if I could show them to her, so I wouldn't have to disinfect them all after. Oh no, don't bother, she huffed, turning around and striding off, I'll come back next week.
At which point, she was too far away for me to tell her that, one, I wouldn't be here next week (alternate booth openings), and, two, I didn't think the virus was going to magically disappear by then. People...
Some of whom were lovely. The woman from Belarus, ten years resident in Eugene, there with two friends and her brother from the old country, showing him my work and explaining everything in Russian. He practiced his two phrases in English on me ("Glad to meet you" and "Thank you very much.") I don't have any Russian, though I know a little Serbian from an ex-girlfriend, so said "Zdravo" and smiled a lot.
And then there was the Asian family. Mother, Father, daughter waist-high on me, all masked up. They stopped by around 3:30 pm, admired the pots, talked with me a little about my process. Came back half an hour later, both adults with their phones out taking pictures. Turned out they were talking with their friends in China (at least four faces on the screen), showing them the Market, or possibly just my pottery. I got to show the daughter the stegosaur bank, and the Chinese friends the elephant. We spent about 15 minutes talking and show-and-telling, and they said they'd woken the friends up for this, which certainly made me feel special.
Had a brisk rain shower around 1:30-2 pm, but as I'd put the rain pin in the frame (to keep the roof taut) and had the sides up, I was nice and dry. It threatened showers again around 4:30, but was dry and even sunny at load-out.
I call that a win.