
Wow. Every bit as bad as I thought it would be and
worse. Got there at 6:30. They were putting up the canopies that we were
being FORCED to use. Ours was still laying on the ground. No big deal, I
just arrived there a little bit ahead of schedule. Set up was set to begin
at 7:00. My part of the canopy was up at 7:12 and I then came on over with
my van. Somewhat difficult to set up. We put up our grids, which were quite
unstable, as I mentioned before and then we put up our merchandise.
Most of the crowd (crowd? What crowd?) came before noon
and a large majority hung around to watch the entertainment, which was
subpar until the young lady's began performing around 1:30 and that sparked
things up.
It was overcast and foggy all day long and a bit breezy
at times. Common for this area... I lived in Pacifica just over the hill and
in 7 months in 1981 I only saw the sun for 4 days. Not too many people
arrived during the afternoon and the crowds dwindled down. Sales were poor
for us and a number of the other vendors had a bad hair day also and this
just not worth it. Very cheap crowd. Free admission, so would you expect?
Event was held in a parking lot at Serramonte in back of Target. Kind of
spread out and they could have placed booths in closer proxmity to one
another.
During the latter part of the afternoon we felt the
large canopy being lifted in the air and being plopped back down on the
ground. Kind of like an earthquake? I thought we were goners. The wind had
parachuted into the canopy and jolted it around. Canopies were not properly
weighed down. My grids almost toppled over and were now leaning inward about
two feet and I tried to push them back into position and wasn't able to.
A few minutes later, one of the lady's in charge of
the event just happened to be passing by and I told her what just happened
with the canopies and what it did to my beautiful display. She said that she
saw what happened when she was standing down on the other end. I told her
that these canopies are unsafe and I was going to remove all my things
tonight and not come back on Sunday. I asked for a refund for one day and
replied extremely bluntly, "NO, YOU ARE NOT GETTING A REFUND.' I just shook
my head. "This is not my fault, your canopies here are dangerous. They are
not properly secured" She told me that the men were going to come tonight
and secure the canopies better. Hell, they should have done it correctly in
the first place. So, we do not return on Sunday...... that's the end of the
Daly City Fil-Am Festival for us which we had been associated with for 8-9
years in the past. Salamat, arriva derchi, hasta la vista, adios, zai jian,
au revoir, shalom .... GOOD BYE.