Richmond Homefront Festival by the Bay
Richmond, CA
Oct 4-5, 2008.
NOTE: The 2009 Homefront Festival is only one day
and booth Fee is $150 for vendors.
This once-popular SPINNERS,
and
now a has-been singing group arrived at the Homefront
Festival an hour late, performing just three numbers as they stiffed the
promoter's for a huge sum of money while dissapointing a couple hundred
'fans' who had been waiting patiently for them.
Saturday, Oct 4. Setup
'officially' began at 8:00, but we arrived there around 7:45 and located our
space quickly unloaded and set up our booth. As the morning went on, the area became somewhat
congested. There were a number of canopies that apparently were set up
on Friday and at least 4-5 had been upended by the wind. Uh uh
uh.....we're right on the edge of the water and you should know that you
need to weigh things down as you would expect strong winds on occasion,
especially with those ugly looking clouds and bad weather rolling in and of
course the rains that plagued us through much of the day. However,...
these were not the vendor's canopies that blew over, but rather ones that
the city had set up Friday evening.
This was the second year for this
festival and they had approx 40-50 booths, of which perhaps 15 were actual
vendors selling an array of merchandise. This is a nice community-type
event whereby the local crowd and others from around the Bay can learn about the history of the area
as it pertains to WWII (Rosie the Riveteer, etc.). Also, there was
some
entertainment....the Spinners appeared at 4:35 in the afternoon and I could
have sworn that they only played three songs in front of several hundred
people that had congregated in the vicinity of the stage.
Here's a link to their schedule....I guess they head off to the
United Kingdom for their next gig. Don't quite know how you can make a
living playing just three songs though but then again, that's probably all
the songs these promoters could pay for. I expected at least 45
minutes worth. Glad I didn't travel far to hear them....I was in my
booth and could hear the entertainment from the stage area. There was
excitement in the air before they hit the stage as people rushed by my booth
to grab a spot on the grass. But then again, people were rushing past
our booths all day long anyways. Kind of looked like an Easter Parade
at times, too.
There were approx 8-10 food booths selling ribs, Filipino Food, Chinese,
etc.and of course, good ol' Kettle Corn.
So, when you get down to it and barring any miracles from happening on
Sunday, I can safely comment that this event is one terrible show for vendors, as this
is just not a buying crowd. Hopefully, nobody traveled very far for
this one. There is no charge for admission, so that
means that you are going to attract the local riff-raff, for which the city of Richmond is
well noted for and vendors selling smaller items, particularly jewelry have
got to keep their eyes open at all times, even though it is rather difficult
to keep from falling asleep at this one and must be on their toes as the
hand is indeed quicker than the eye. Need to display items in such a
way that they aren't telling the local crowd to 'take me.' Generally
speaking though, the people were pretty nice overall. Paid $150 for
this event as it is perhaps worth nothing more than $75 ...sorry.
However, I will take my hats off to the organizations putting on this event
as the theme of this show is a great idea and this event does 'work' for
certain groups, etc., but for vendors...itsnay, ootsnay for sure.
Here's a link
to a good article about the event in the Contra Costa Times and is quite
informative.
Sunday, Oct 5. Another day at the office.
Late crowd as usual on Sunday. Seemingly less people than yesterday.
Did a little better but overall, terrible show for vendors. Perhaps
half a dozen vendors left after Saturday and I don't blame them.
They advertised 10,000 people in Craftmaster's but we are missing at least
7,000. I didn't see them, that's for sure, So, I guess that it's
back to Cup O'Noodles dinners again. Times are tough for everybody.
All we can do is show up, set up and throw up. That's about it.
Will not see me there next year...no further comments necessary
