The SCA's main event has always been the Salida Town & Country Parade & Festival. The event is free to everyone and includes food, craft and information booths, Kids activities and live entertainment. The parade which kicks off the Festival is also free to enter and is always a great draw for the kids and adults alike to enjoy. The parade Features local school bands, clubs, farm equipment and of course the silly clowns in their small cars. It's a great event for Salida and an even better way for the community to come out and have fun! Held in downtown Salida, north of Modesto.
These are the Entertainer's that will grace us with their talent at the festival. Sadie Brown is a wonderful country Singer that has been at our festival many years. Dale Brockhaus is a great contempory christian music singer and has also graced us with his talent in the past festivals. Hero's choice is alternative rock and is back to perform with us also. New comer to the festival this year is Victoria Matthews and we are excited to have her participate. We will also have a performance from The Art of Dance and demonstrations from Robert Taylor's Shudo-Kan Karate. We appreciate these artists giving of their time for our enjoyment. Be sure to come to the entertainment stage to see them all!
Saturday, August 22. The booth fees for this event were quite reasonable. $75 for commercial, like us and $50 for A&C. Can't go too nutso over that? The information for the show said that it starts at 11:00 am and ended at 4:00 pm. So, we left home at 6:45 and drove down to Winchau's Donuts (spelling is correct.... formerly Winchell's but Chinese took it over) in San Lorenzo and picked up a bite to eat on the way. I love the name, it's so hilarious. Saved money on a new sigh, at least.
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THE TOWN OF Salida is located on Highway 99, just south of Ripon and we arrived there around 8:00. A lot of people I've talked to have never heard it. I guess this event just hasn't put it on the map, ya know? So, if the show starts at 11:00 that meant we had 3 hours to set up. However, as we arrived at the event, I saw that 90 percent of the people were already set up and open for business. I most definitely didn't miss a darn thing, though. Amazing. I checked in and got my space number and was given directions to our space. I guess there were about 2 1/2 blocks of booths and I would say that 40-45 of them were vendors There were other non-profits and 5 food booths.
LARGE SPACE. We drove over to our space and I immediately noticed that it was 15 feet wide. Wow. Love it. That means that we have lots of room and we can have all sides open with easy access. Perfect, or was it? The booth arrangement was great. Vendors on both sides of one block and other non-profits farther down. Food booths were on the grass along a side street grouped together. There was a large ball field in back of us where they had a stage area and other bouncing stuff for the kids.
IT TOOK US 2 1/2 HOURS TO SET UP, but there weren't too many people there. I guess they began lining up on adjacent street for the parade. We were located in a long parking lot. The parade started around 10:00 and really wasn't very long. I heard some parade sounds......drums, cars going by, but every time I glanced over I really didn't see anything. An invisible parade? I was really busy trying to set up our things because I knew that we could get crowded after the parade finished. Crowded? Yah right.
I started to think to myself that the parade would end at 11:00 and people would walk around and get something to eat. Maybe listen to the music. But then I realized that this place might be a ghost town by 1:00 There aren't that many people in this town and those people would come out for the parade. Shouldn't be much of a reason for others to come later one..... and of course, that has to be one of the reasons the show ended early at 4:00. Where would more people come from? Do we have groupies that follow particular vendors all over California and swarm their booths at every show? One time many years ago, I walked around a gem and mineral show in Monterey and this one seller actually told me that he 'has groupies that follow him from show to show.' H-I-L-A-R-I-O-U-S. Yah, right. Actually, there are people who buy from the same vendors at various shows, but I just had to laugh at the way he said it. He was so serious and he sounded like people traveled hundreds of miles just to see HIM. Yah, I can just see 50 people running and yelling as he drives down the street toward the show. Waving their autograph books and panties and throwing their bras at him.
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SPECIAL APPEARANCE: Baby Buggy Race winner, Hector Romero will appear outside the main entrance driveway of Home Depot on Monday morning at 8:00am and will be signing autographs.
THEY ROLL UP THE STREETS AT 5:00 ON SATURDAY NIGHT and that's why they end the show at 4:00. Everybody out!!! Gotta roll up the streets...let's go. Haven't you been to a lot of towns that rolled up the streets at 5? Zombies coming out of their graves just as the sun is going down. Everybody out. I'm gone, baby. Could swear that I saw a few zombies walking around earlier in the day. Just walked right down the middle of the street staring forward, not bothering to look left or right.
Seriously, people aren't going to travel more than a mile for this event. They are smart to have this event for only one day because they would absolutely dilute it if they dared stretch it to Sunday. Never, never, never. There have been instances over the year's that promoter's had decent one day shows and they got greedy (charging higher fees) and extended to two days and those shows ended up being ghost towns on Sundays and fewer people on Saturday. However, with this show, it could never happen because you always have to get new vendors every year simply because the people of Salida DO NOT SUPPORT THE VENDORS.
We did pick up some sales the next couple hours, but not a lot. Neither did anybody else. I guess we only had one sale over the last 2 1/2 hours as there really weren't too many people around. Maybe they had to do their grocery shopping miles away and get back home before nightfall. Shhhh... what happens in Salida stays in Salida, okay? Ya ain't kiddin about that one. They do not have big spenders out here in the valley and most of the shows here have been pretty slow for vendors. Ripon, Ceres, etc. Bye bye Balboni for Hughson. That baby is gone. Other vendors that I talked to did poorly and I guess that many wanted to pack up and go by 2:00. There were some that packed up early and carried their stuff to their cars. During the morning hours, I wanted to ask people how they did last year, but could find few that did.
SNIFFING DOGS were numerous throughout the day as they would run up to one another and...well, you know. But I didn't see any large dogs. They were all under a foot tall.... and some of them dressed up like they were going to be in an Easter parade. Or, maybe they marched in the parade during the morning. I'm wondering how come there weren't any larger dogs. Where are they? Seriously, I saw maybe 20 dogs today and they were all little pooches. Where did the big ones go? I know the economy is bad, butt....... Or maybe they all took their dogs to the Good Guys Car Show in Pleasanton this weekend to keep them company while they sit around for three days in back of their cars. Hey Bowser, why don't you run over there and pick me up some ribs. I'll give you the bones. Hey Ralph, anybody touches ma cah. chase them away. Sick em, Frazier. There are some shows that people just love to show off their dogs...like in Foster City. Winchester Bay (OR), etc. Or maybe they have the Doggy Olympics someplace?
So, people if you are feeling left out because your friends are dragging their dogs all over town, now there is hope for you. You've wanted a dog all your life, but you just don't want one for 365 days a year. I hear ya. Try one of the local rental centers. Rent-to-own franchises are springing up all over the place. Here are a couple local places where you can pick your pooch.-
DON'T YOU THINK THIS GUY (booth, above) IS STICKING OUT KIND OF FAR? Like all the way to the middle? Whoa.
THIS DIDN'T SEEM ($50-$75 booth fee) LIKE A BAD DEAL, but people just weren't buying. I spoke to about one dozen other vendors and 10 of them said that this was their first time there. Guess what? They are going to have a whole new crop of vendors next year. I saw it in Craftmaster and decided to give it a try.
THIS IS A NICE SMALL TOWN EVENT but people do not drive more than 3-4 miles to come here and the vendors couldn't possibly be more than one hour away. Nobody is coming up from L.A. for this one. Just no money and no pesos here. This show is very organized though and the promoter's know what they are doing. They'll always be able to get 30-40 vendors for the show because of the price and this is a weekend with few good shows. We just can not sit around on a nice weekend. I think that they put on one of the more organized events, but nobody is going to make any money here and you can consider yourself lucky if you actually caught the fee. Some people did not. I know some people who zer0ed out today and they are n0t t00 happy.
DA WEATHER. It was a 'cool' day here with temps only around 90 degrees. It can get much hotter, believe me. The clouds came rolling in during the early part of the afternoon and kept temperatures down and an occasional breeze made it rather pleasant. However, it did get more humid.
GRUB REPORT. There were 4-5 food vendors. One Kettle Korn, shaved ice, a hog dot booth and another with sausages. and yet another one selling a variety of sausages and another which I can't recall what they were sending. I picked up a Bratwurst from the same guy I bought from in Hercules. It was okay, but nowhere near as good as Lockeford, the king of Bratwurst! If we rate Lockeford as an 8.5, then we can rank this one as a 5.73943. Sorry, but nobody's Brat's can come close. I have had a couple good Pollacks at some shows and some real Major-league Italians, especially in Castro Valley at the Fall Festival.
I did get some shaved ice, a cherry for me and an orange pineapple for my wife. These are really good when the weather is hot and a good way to cool down is to just take little spoonfools at a time.
NOTICE THE MOTOR HOMES? They provided no electricity for the food vendors, so we had a couple people bring their motor home$ and ran their generator$ all day.
In the picture on the right, you see them selling Pepper Steaks? They were charging eight bucks for those. Honestly, where do you get the idea that these people are going to pay that much for a $andwich? They might pay that in other shows butI just can't see it and I really didn't see too many people buying. These people just do not have the money. The sausage booth to the left of them is where I bought our lunch and their Bratwurst is quite reasonable....$5.00. Same price as the Big L down the road a ways. I think I saw them at 2-3 other shows this year. In past year's I have seen them sell a German Potato Salad and that was pretty decent but they no longer carry it.
There's the good ol Kettle Korn. Didn't buy any this time, even though I could have used some to nibble the afternoon away. Actually, I have been eating a lot of Caramel Corn lately at other shows, but this one wasn't selling any. Honestly, even though the stuff tastes good, you can only eat so much. I guess 15 times a year is enough.
They had some entertainment there and it wasn't too bad until early afternoon, when some 'hard rock' group or whatever they call it took over and it was pretty loud and not too entertaining unless you are doing drugs. Instrumentals drubbed out the vocals. Catch my drift? Only saw a few people sitting around listening to them. Didn't see any groupies nor did I find any panties or bras on the ground. So, this group definitely WAS NOT FAMOUS.
PACKING UP. We began packing around 3:15 and I brought our van up to the space at 4:00. Clear sailing. We were out of there at 4:30. I thought that things were going to be congested and have to wait for people to move, but I surprisingly had no problems.
MY RECOMMENDATION is to stay away from this event when it comes time to sign up in 2010. If you live there, you can attend it next year. What else you going to do there? I realize that organization's here need to make money and if you want to help, then just send them a donation of $50, but don't waste your day over here. Sorry to say, but many of these people really don't give a shit, a damm or even a rat's ass and they could care less whether you come here or not. Sorry. Thank you so much for the sales, but many of them didn't buy anything. I just feel sorry for the promoters of this show who really do put on a nice organized event for the people of this community. I'd like to thank the people for coming out to the show and you may visit us in Riverbank (maybe) and Ceres, but we aren't coming back here and you will not see us in Ripon in February. People: Support your local festival. A lot of the money goes to organizations and causes that affect you and your families. These shows can not be successful without vendors. Support them also.