8.27.2007

Philadelphia Folk Festival August 17-19 2007

Set Up: August 15 2007

Set up as usual went awesomely smooth. K and her friend K was with me so having the extra hands made things go very quickly. Like in past years the booth is on one heck of a hill so getting the tent even is tough and getting it to zip closed is tougher. I used some wood to shim up the one table because after a few days it started sinking into the soil and became very unstable. We were able to beat the heat some by turning on the fan as soon as we could, but it was a hot and sunny day. We set up everything except the soaps, got our credentials and called it a day.

Day 1:
It could be said that the day was slow. I don’t think it was any slower than two years ago, but it certainly was slower than last year. I am sure that a few things were the reason, first it was insanely hot, second, I didn’t know the headliner this year and last year it was Arlo Guthrie, so I am sure attendance was higher last year, and third, last year I had a corner booth with great visibility and this year I didn’t. Couple those things with a sagging economy and rising gas prices and it is easy to see why on the whole I didn’t expect this year to be as good as last year. C brought KB with him in the evening.

Day 2:
This was the best of the three days sales wise. The weather was very nice and not too hot. It was dry and dusty though, so dusty you could see it hanging over the festival at night when you looked at the lights in the parking lot. The displays were dusty, the soap was dusty, and there was really no way to prevent it. After the show the soaps needed to be washed and racked to dry again. The displays needed to be hosed down and the tent, well the tent was disgusting.

Day 3: Rain, rain, and more rain. For a day that just had a 30% chance of rain, we had a 100% chance of being rained out. The show was supposed to end at 9:30, and they pushed it back allowing crafters to leave at 7:30 and then ultimately 6:30. We couldn’t bring the cars into the field because of the rain, anytime, no matter where you were set up. May crafters were upset at this as they had to haul things quite a ways in the rain to their vehicles. We started packing around 6:45 and were on the way home by 8:30. Drenched to the skin, pretty cold, and very tired when we returned my demeanor was brightened when I counted sales, almost as good as Saturday and much better than any rained out show that I am ever at. I’d be happy for those sales anytime it rains.

As usual this is my favorite show. It surpassed sales projections given the weather and other variables. The people are great, the music is excellent, and I can say that this show is the one show a year that I truly have fun at. I enjoy others, but this one is like a little mini vacation for me, it is almost too good to be true that I can make income at it as well as have so much fun.

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