We drove down there and set up on Friday afternoon around 3:00.  Didn't see any other vendor's setting up; as there was action down on the other side.  We located our space and set up our canopy and grids and then put up the side covers before 'securing' it for the evening.  We dared not leave our merchandise inside.

July 10.  We arrived there around 6:45am and there was a good number of vendor's setting up by then.  It was a bit overcast with a slight breeze.

THE CROWD WAS very light during the morning hours and sales were sluggish for virtually everybody.  Last year this event was held on the other side of the mall and had poor visibility.  It has now been moved over to an area adjacent to Sunday's Farmer's Market and is visible from Mowry.

SORRY I MUST QUESTION THE SUCCESS OF THIS EVENT as I just can't imagine a 'summerfest' at a mall.  I don't really see too many shows succeeding at any mall, to tell you the truth.  If there are any promoter's out there that can turn this show around it has to be the current one's, Festival Productions, which include the dynamic duo of Jeff and Jerry Cambra.  They are the best, but occasionally they end up with a show or two that are absolute doozie's.   Think about it.  Why do people go to a mall?  I don't think that very many people would buy from vendor's.  I think that this event might do better along a couple street's.  True, they chose this location for the event, but I think that a majority of the 'shoppers' are those that are heading over to or coming back from the mall and this causes the actual crowd count to be exaggerated.  I just can't see where people would come here for a festival of this nature.  Take it to the streets is my advice.

THERE ARE THREE FOOD BOOTHS HERE as opposed to around a dozen non-profits that they had last year. 

FOR LUNCH, I DECIDED TO drive down Mowry over to Chipotle, located along Paseo Padre.  Ever since discovering this eatery last November, I have visited 4 of them and always end up getting a Steak Burrito Bowl (with avocado) for both my wife and I and it was pretty good.  I had some thoughts about visiting the food court inside the mall, but passed on it.

HOW DO I KNOW THESE ARE MALL-SHOPPERS?  Believe it or not, actual festival-goers like to bring their dogs AND I do not recall seeing any dogs here at this event.  I do not recall seeing any.  Virtually all of the people that we saw at this festival are heading over to the mall to shop.  I just do not think that this event actually draws people to it.  Did see a number of wine drinkers floating around.

COULDN'T HELP BUT NOTICE another Chiropractor having it's workers or whatever the hell you want to call them standing out in the middle of the aisle trying to solicit people.  Thank gosh this was at east 10-15 booths down from me and did not affect my traffic flow.  I happened to be walking down the aisle and heard somebody ask me a question and I noticed that these people were from the chiropractor booth and I just completely ignored them as I was approached in the middle of the aisle.  These chiropractor's are the biggest culprits of this practice.

WHILE I WAS HEADING HOME ON highway 880, I was approaching the Jackson Street exit over in Hayward.  Suddenly I saw the car in front of me in the far right hand lane swerved quickly to the right.  I saw that he was avoiding a small mattress taking up half the lane and I quickly swerved to the right myself to avoid it.  As I drove farther down the highway, I saw a pickup truck stopped in the emergency lane and a guy was walking out of it and was heading toward the mattress.  So it seemed to me that he had the mattress laying in the bed of his truck (no pun intended) and somehow, it had flipped out and went to sleep on the highway.  I exited just after that and I'm wondering how (and if) he retrieved the mattress and hopefully he will be able to sleep tonight!!

July 11.  Well, Jeff and Jerry, whatcha going to do?  This show turned out to be a real dud and I don't know how you are going to fix it.  I have a feeling that you are going to give it another shot next year, but I don't know what more you can do.  Regardless, you will need to find a brand new crop of vendor's for this one.  It was rough.

THE FARMER'S MARKET was there this morning and a bunch of us vendor's got there before 8:00am in hopes of picking up some sales.  The weather was great again with occasional breezes.  I had two sales in the first couple hours and I don't think that very many sales were generated with the other vendor's from getting there early.  Nice farmer's market though.  They had quite a number of booths there with a good variety of fruits and vegetable's.  Some of the people did walk around our booths.

FOR SOME REASON, we did have a number of people who said that they did not hear about the festival.  The Chamber of Commerce claims to have done heavy advertising in the newspapers (huh?  Newspapers.  Do they still have them?) They said that they had posters in stores, etc.  Well, whatever people they managed to draw just did not spend very much money.  I seem to be confused.  We spoke to a lady with the Chamber of Commerce and she told us that the vendor's did good.  But when I spoke to around 10 different vendor's, they most certainly did not tell me that they did good.  I don't know.  Somebody kidding around.  Who's kidding who?  I looked inside my wallet and there's no kidding there.  It's just a bad show, plain and simple. 

IT'S REALLY CRAZY when you do a show and people are spending their money and you get good, lively crowds.  But this one, people just don't feel like buying.  Maybe because you've got the mall there or maybe it's just the people of Newark being a bunch of cheapos.  I don't know.  We've got a bad economy right now as we all know.  I've been doing shows for 17 years now and I can't figure these things out.