International Festival of the Winds, Marina, CA

May 10-11.  I had been looking for a decent event for Mother's Day weekend and did not have much success over the years.  I found this event in Craftmasters' News and decided to give it a try.

Things started off poorly on Saturday morning as we drove down Highway One.  I passed the exit and continued on toward Monterey.  I did not bring a Google map and thought that I would recall the correct exit, but we had to go back and forth before finally exiting.  Probably should have just continued on down to Monterey and spend the day there.

When we arrived at the location, I was kind of confused as to where we had to enter the ballfield, where the event was being held and did a circle-tour before sighting what was apparently a small entrance.  We drove in and found our location.  It seemed pretty nice because we were able to park the van in back of our space.  Little did I know at that time how handy the van would be that day.

It was a bit cool and cloudy as we began setting up and the winds picked up during the day.  Our canopy was facing the wind, so it was even colder.  Crowds were late in arriving and they mostly paid attention to the festivities. My neighbor's booth went airborne a couple times flying about 10 feet away, landing up against my van.  There were other canopies that went up in the air also.  There were only 3 actual vendors, so that speaks for itself and sent a message to me right off the bat.  And yes, I got the message loud and clear as hardly anybody bought from the vendors and we froze the entire weekend.

The Monterey area is a very nice area and you get loads of tourists, but not at this event.  Mostly people who lived in the area braved the windy, cold, foggy weather to attend the festival, which was actually held in two areas of Marina, here and down on the beach, about two miles away where they had other festivities.  Crowds were rather small and mostly families attended.  There were some people flying their kites in the area of the booths and they became entangled around our canopy.

The van came in handy as my wife and I took turns throughout the day retreating back there to warm up. 

One lady was looking at our things and asked why there were so few vendors.  Well, I told her the  reason why is that vendors do not return to this show because nobody is buying and sales are very poor.  If vendors do good, then they tell other vendors, etc. and then you have quite a number of vendors.  However,as you can see there are only 3 vendors, so obviously this is not a good show.  As for me, I will not be back next year and I'll tell my fellow vendors that I did poorly here.  The vendors you see here today are not returning next year.  People just do not buy.

So, as she left our booth she told me that she would tell her neighbors to come over to the festival.  But did she buy anything?  Hell no.

This is a decent event for families and is fun for the kids, but only for locals.  However, I would tell 'Vendor Nation' to stay away from this one.  You are not going to make any more here because the people will not spend.  The promoter's do their job and they have a nice festival, but no vendor in their right minds should do this event.