Roseburg day 1
Jun. 26th, 2015 10:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offcntrHot.
That's going to the watchword this weekend in Roseburg. 100 degree temperatures predicted Friday and Saturday, "only" in the 90's on Sunday.
Set-up is Friday morning, with the show opening at noon. We usually try to arrive around 8 am, after the first rush; the Art Center cones off the right lane of Harvard Avenue for us to park and unload. Our booth is right on Harvard, so with the right parking spot, we can unload right into our space.
This time, Denise and I are both eager to start early. We're out of the motel lot just at 7 am, parked and unloading ten minutes later, and it's already 70° out. Traffic is light at the curb, as it turns out. Every second booth space along Harvard Ave. is vacant.
The Umpqua Valley Summer Arts Festival has been shrinking in recent years. Last year, a large swath of booth spaces to the west of us went unclaimed. This year the preliminary map showed a good 20 spaces fewer than last year, but when we arrived, we found that half the spaces in our neighborhood didn't sell. The every-second-booth trick is actually rather clever. It doesn't make the show look empty, unlike last year, and every booth gets to be, effectively, a corner booth.
Not that I want a corner booth. My set-up faces inward, and doesn't look that good from the outside. I compromise by putting a couple of platters on the outside of the grid panel, so customers coming from the west have something to see. It's the best I can do.
Denise and I deal with the heat as best we can. We've got a big Coleman contractor's thermos that we filled with lots of ice and water this morning. Salt tablets. We move the booth sides up and down (and tie the back panel to the fence) to make sun shades. We take turns leaving the booth for the bench under the big fir tree, whose shade is pretty impenetrable.
As we sweat through set-up, we wonder why we do this every year. But then the first customers spend $150 on bunny pots half an hour before the show opens. Long-standing customers return to say hello and add to their collections (one of them bringing a list to help her remember what she has and hasn't given her granddaughter). A ten-year-old girl proudly picks out a pig bank to add to her collection, and pays for it herself. By the time the last sale, a pie plate, happens half an hour before closing, we've sold almost as well as last Friday in Edmonds, at least in the same hundreds range. The rest of the weekend won't be nearly so good. But maybe it won't be so hot, either.
That's going to the watchword this weekend in Roseburg. 100 degree temperatures predicted Friday and Saturday, "only" in the 90's on Sunday.
Set-up is Friday morning, with the show opening at noon. We usually try to arrive around 8 am, after the first rush; the Art Center cones off the right lane of Harvard Avenue for us to park and unload. Our booth is right on Harvard, so with the right parking spot, we can unload right into our space.
This time, Denise and I are both eager to start early. We're out of the motel lot just at 7 am, parked and unloading ten minutes later, and it's already 70° out. Traffic is light at the curb, as it turns out. Every second booth space along Harvard Ave. is vacant.
The Umpqua Valley Summer Arts Festival has been shrinking in recent years. Last year, a large swath of booth spaces to the west of us went unclaimed. This year the preliminary map showed a good 20 spaces fewer than last year, but when we arrived, we found that half the spaces in our neighborhood didn't sell. The every-second-booth trick is actually rather clever. It doesn't make the show look empty, unlike last year, and every booth gets to be, effectively, a corner booth.
Not that I want a corner booth. My set-up faces inward, and doesn't look that good from the outside. I compromise by putting a couple of platters on the outside of the grid panel, so customers coming from the west have something to see. It's the best I can do.
Denise and I deal with the heat as best we can. We've got a big Coleman contractor's thermos that we filled with lots of ice and water this morning. Salt tablets. We move the booth sides up and down (and tie the back panel to the fence) to make sun shades. We take turns leaving the booth for the bench under the big fir tree, whose shade is pretty impenetrable.
As we sweat through set-up, we wonder why we do this every year. But then the first customers spend $150 on bunny pots half an hour before the show opens. Long-standing customers return to say hello and add to their collections (one of them bringing a list to help her remember what she has and hasn't given her granddaughter). A ten-year-old girl proudly picks out a pig bank to add to her collection, and pays for it herself. By the time the last sale, a pie plate, happens half an hour before closing, we've sold almost as well as last Friday in Edmonds, at least in the same hundreds range. The rest of the weekend won't be nearly so good. But maybe it won't be so hot, either.