To be held on March 17-18 2012.  Booth fees up to $100

Saturday and Sunday, March 20th and 21st, 2010, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., in Downtown Jackson.  Here's a vendor application for you to print out.  Booth fees are only $90.  Good deal but the weather here is always questionable and the place is saturated with well over 300 booths.  Is there enough money to go around and will the people be spending?  Those are two big questions.  Good luck.  I will not be doing the event this year.  With the good weather, look for large crowds this year.  However, it'll be a slow-moving congested crowd down around the banks and the creek and they will not be buying.  There is a lot less money going around this year and there are too many vendors to divy it up. 

INFO:  The Annual St. Patrick's Day Dandelion Days Celebration is a family-oriented event, and it's lots of fun! It includes an outdoor bazaar and flea market featuring antiques, relics and collectibles, arts and crafts, and much more. There is also lots of fun, food, street entertainers and even a 5K run. But Dandelion Days is also known for its rich local community flavor, one thing that makes it so popular. In fact, a great many attendees come from outside the county to join the fun! Not least of all, Dandelion days is the Jackson Lions Club's largest fundraising effort and benefits student scholarships and community events.

Several areas for booths.  Wells Fargo Parking Lot, Main Street and adjacent areas.

WEATHER OUTLOOK (2009):  Rains are moving in and heading across the state.  Will probably reach down to Jackson early Sunday evening and let's hope we can make it through the event.  Always got to deal with the weather this time of year.

REVIEW

Saturday, March 14.  Arrived in Jackson around 6:45AM.  Twas dark.  Drove over to the area where our space was located.  Near BofA parking lot along the creek.  Spaces in the lot crammed together and not much space where we were at.  Wondering how we are all going to get out of there tomorrow....especially if it's raining.  Hopefully, some people will leave during the day allowing more room for us.

THE SETUP.  Maybe 80-85 percent of the vendors set up yesterday.  We didn't want the added expenses of a motel stay, so we decided to come early Saturday.  It took us just about 2 1/2 hours to set up and there were people walking around by 8:30.  By 10:00, there were quite a few people there.  The weather was pretty nice all day with temps in the low 60's and occasional cloudiness.

FRIDAY SETUP.  You can setup on Friday if you choose, but you have to 'report' to a parking area a couple miles past town and wait until 6:00PM, when the parking lots clear out.  You are given a 'group' number and when your group is called, you drive down to your space and set up.  Obviously a lot of people like to set up in the dark.

SLOW SALES.  Sales were slow for us and the same for most of the other vendors.  Some people did good.  I recognized many of the vendors from year's before occupying the same spots.  Gosh, where else can you get a space for $90.  Good buy.  Fortunately, we had a few extra feet between my space and the next, so we could sell from the side, which is important to us.

VENDORS.  Saw many of my vendor friends spread out all over the place.  Nice  talking to them and exchanging stories.  For many of these people, this was their first event of the year.  For us, this was our 6th outing.  Not much going on in California because of the poor weather.

Looked like there were over 300 vendors spread out all over the place.  Two Bank parking lots...BofA and Wells Fargo.  Main Street and many nooks and crannies throughout the 6 or 7 blocks that the show encompassed.

THE WEATHER is going to be a big issue on Sunday.  Checked the forecasts and most of them are saying RAIN.....no showers, but RAIN.  It's supposed to start around 9:00AM, according to Accuweather.   Weather.com does not show rain.  Weather Underground shows 'rain likely' with a 50 percent chance.  Probably be in no hurry to get there in the morning.  Opens at 8:00AM?  Uh uh.  Late crowd.  Our booth is located on a slope, so I can picture the rain water gushing through the back of the booth next to the curb.  Everything's up off the ground.  One time we were located in the parking lot (BofA) and it rained hard and we had water continually flowing through the booth.  Lot's of water....had to keep our feet up off the ground.  A couple year's ago, we had rain and some settled on the top of the canopy and turned to ice by the time we arrived there in the morning.  Also had several icicles forming and hanging down from the canopy...Maybe 6 inches?

FOOD.  All the food booths were non-profit.  I didn't look all the way at the top end of Main Street.  I did not even see a kettle korn.  In a way, it's nice because the non-profits can make some money fixing up some food, and that is basically what THIS show is all about...put money in their coffers.  Came across  a business on the street cooking Italian Sausages (with onions). Boy, did that ever smell good.  Was tempted, but walked over to a Chinese Restaurant and picked up some tomato beef chow mein.  Not really great..not enough tomato sauce and probably no black pepper sauce, two important ingredients used to provide an exceptional taste.

PANCAKE BREAKFAST.  The Lion's Club put on a breakfast for $6.00 a plate.  Pancakes, ham, eggs...coffee, milk, oj.  It was okay.  Not bad.  Should give a discount to vendors, but doesn't matter.  Normally we don't get breakfasts, but it was to be a long day and needed to 'maintain' our energy.

SUNDAY, MARCH 15.  It was raining as we left Hayward around 6:45.  No rain much of the way with a few sprinkles after Lockeford and no rain in Jackson, thank gosh.  We opened up around 8:45 and there were very few people walking around.  Turned out to be a beautiful day with temps in the mid 60's.  Light crowds throughout the morning.  Where were the people? 

SALES.  Very slow for us and just about everybody else as well.  Don't know of anybody who had a good day.  Our first sale came at 1:00PM.  I thought that we were going to go 'zero' for the day.  Wow.  You had a halfway decent crowd today, but nobody buying.  Just a bunch of dogs stopping in the middle of the aisle and licking eachother's butts and other bodily parts.  I guess that's the highlight of these people's Sunday.  Seemingly, everybody comes there to socialize..... people AND dogs.  Get the mutts out of the house and take them to the 'Dandelion'.

BOOTHS.  I hate to say this, but the total number of booths should be cut in half.  There are booths all over the place and is impossible for a good number of the vendors to show a decent profit.  I say to get rid of all the vendors in the Bank of America area...too crowded and cramped up and fill out one of the other streets with about 30-40 vendors where there were no booths.  The booth fees are only $90 and that provides a lot of vendors the opportunity to participate in the event.  Is it fair to draw this number of vendors to the event and to not  give them the chance to show a decent profit for their efforts?  Actually, I really didn't see a lot of visitors buying from vendors, so I'm not too sure if it would have a dramatic effect by reducing the number of booths.  Bottom line is that there are way too many vendors there competing for the 'few' dollars that the visitors are spending.   A large number of the vendors do return to this event year after year.

However, this is a nice event...and the weather was excellent.