This was a new event to Sun City. The group putting it on has been making these presentations in various places in the larger metro. They coordinated with our rec center offices which coordinated with our craft clubs, asking if we wanted to be vendors for the event.
The downside? Before anybody got inside the area to buy food, or inside the auditorium to sit and eat that food while watching the stage entertainment and do some possible shopping, they had to buy tickets at $10 a head. Before they got as far as our club's booth, they had to get past a lot of outside vendors and a long line of indoor ones. Once they did we had a limit of 3 6-foot tables to set up on. Several members of the club decided they wanted to do this anyway, one took charge, and I mostly just passed along emails.
I became just another club member for the event, sending a small selection of my pieces in exchange for 6 hours of volunteering over two days. Mine was a sit-down job, taking the tags once a sale was made, attaching them to the card which gets filled out for every store item before going to the treasurer for payment of our commissions, 80% of the sale. The club gets 20%.
I did a special project for the club to sell there. We were encouraged to create things with Italian themes. I already had earrings made with wire wrapped millefiore beads. Since that theme wasn't required, I also sent other items. In keeping with the theme, however, I discussed with the supply room head pulling out several pieces of glass from the half price sale last month. These were already pre-cut in small sections appropriate for making wind chime pieces, three strings each in each chime either all green, white or red, the colors in the Italian flag and in the order they show on it. With a couple issues and a limited supply of the glass (like red turning orange in the kiln) there was enough to make two chime sets to sell there. Since I didn't pay for any of the supplies, by arrangement the total sale of the items went to the club.
Both sold.
Another member made glass plates with a flag pattern, and both of hers sold there. A third member and one of the organizers for our club has a special style in twisted sterling hearts that all sold out the first day. She got a very nice check. The rest of us generally sold a couple things here and there.
So much for our participation in the festival. I promised to provide thoughts on the event as a whole. I can sum it up, short version, in a single word: LOUD! When you have to yell to be heard, to talk with customers or among yourselves during all the slack times, it makes the time spent there less than wonderful. Ironically the best entertainment was also the quietest, with drums and applause being the loudest things going on.
The first time I watched was a surprise. My Saturday shift started at the beginning of the festival, and while I sat I people watched. There were several youngish men wandering around in costumes that I took to be heraldic uniforms of some sort. Don't ask me - I'm not Italian. They were also carrying square flags in similar patterns on long poles. Instead of looking over any of the wares as they passed they were purposeful, going from here to there in twos or threes. I figured more was to come, some purpose to be revealed. When the drums started up outside, several older men with fancier uniforms entered, followed by our flag carrying crew, moving in a pattern through the clusters of tables and chairs up to the cleared central open floor in front of the stage. That's when the entertainment began, twirling the flags in grand swoops, tossing them high and catching them, tossing them to another who tossed theirs back. I never saw a flag drop. The highlight was when they started making towers of men (and at least one woman I finally saw), standing on the head of another while twirling their flags in new patterns, and finally a tower of three tall. The applause punctuating various high points was very well deserved.
The rest of the entertainment was the LOUD! part, music at full volume. A lot of the songs were familiar even to me. There were sets designed for dancing and the floor was occupied, once a very skilled dancing couple broke the ice. The three go-go-girls up on the stage shaking their tinsel tiered dresses looked silly but very familiar as something from my very early adulthood. Other long sets of music were just instrumentals, including a solo accordian, with a couple selections with a trio of tenors singing one of the most famous arias from an opera I couldn't name but have heard often on AGT competitions. It's a favorite of Steve's as well.
The irony is that when the MC got the mic, he couldn't be heard. I could see him talking, caught soft snippets of sound occasionally, but sincerely hope he wasn't telling the crowd anything important. Should he ever have to clear out the crowd in a hypothetical emergency, nobody would know.
I didn't try any of the food. Prices were a bit high for my budget, but several club members bought pizza from a nonstop open air grill/oven, and others a dessert that wasn't called gelato but looked like it. All of them encouraged the rest of us to go try some. Even if I'd wanted some, the pizza line kept a couple of our members away from the table for over a half hour each. Besides, there'd be plenty of pizza at the club volunteer recognition party on Monday.
I heard today that Facebook was full of comments on the festival. The one getting the most reaction in the club was from somebody complaining that the antique cars weren't there. They came for the cars. Where were the cars? Now I don't follow these things, but we all chuckled when one of our members informed us that the car show was last weekend.
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