GROUPIES SWARM ROCK DEALER IN MONTEREY

I have written a number of ficticional pieces on my website Starving Vendors and I would like to share them with you.

One time I visited a rock and gem show in Monterey and ran into a dealer there who claimed that he had 'groupies' that followed him from show to show. That was hilarious. I wrote a little story about what this topic.

GROUPIES SWARM ROCK DEALER IN MONTEREY
Monterey, CA As Jason Ringsby drove his beat-up 1978 orange van through the gates of the fairgrounds, he was able to escape from the reaching arms of over 200 screaming girls who had followed him in their cars from his previous show in Sacramento. With many of them running up to the fence and yelling at him, Jason drove past the security guard and proceeded to the space that had been reserved for him to prepare for this weekend's gem and mineral show.He is truly a rock star and noted expert in his field.

Widely known for his awesome stone jewelry and minerals, Jason has a strong following of young ladies who tail him from one location to another buying from him wherever he goes. Occasionally, some of these ladies will strip down in front of his booth and toss their undergarments at him. "I've got 5 boxes of panties and bras," exclaimed Jason with a huge smile on his face. "I'm thinking about putting them on my counter and selling them."

"That's one of the hazards of being a vendor," Jason added. "These girls follow me all over the place. They tail me to my hotels and wait out on the sidewalk for hours just to see me come out. I must sign over 500 autographs every day. My hand is getting tired. I need to take some time off to rest." Jason has been selling his minerals and jewelry at shows like this for the past 28 years and he really can't recall how and why this has been happening to him. "Yah, I've got my groupies following me all over the place. Sometimes these people will camp out for days on end. They stay in motels, their cars. Wherever they can bed down for the night." As for his night life, Jason certainly has no problems and is obviously the envy of the other vendors. "Yah, at the end of the day I usually pick out one or two and they take me to dinner and ... well, you know what I mean."

Looking for Consignment deals

Hi store owners, etc. I am looking for locations in the S.F. Bay Area/Central Coast, etc. to selll our shell products on consignment. Contact me at dstefa4621@aol.com if you are interested.

Here are some of the products we wish to sell that are located on our website
DandL CREATIONS and are hand-made by my wife. Picture frames, flower vases, etc. Thank you...dave

Show Reviews

As I mentioned, we have quite a number of reviews on events we have done and have pages devoted to a fair number of other events. I think that you will really find a good number of these reviews, etc., quite informative.

More recently we have done the Antioch Holiday Craft Fair, the EOS Winery (Paso Robles) Arts and Crafts Show, Monterey Columbus Day Festival, Homefront Festival by the Bay,

Other events include the Castro Valley Fall Festival, Pittsburg Seafood Festival

You can read about our 'Tales of Woe' which are stories about some of the worst disasters and trying times we had to endure at certain festivals this year. the Memorial Day Lake Tahoe Miller's Y event put us through living hell on earth, Worse weather conditions ever for us. Imagine snow in May? Rain, wind, cold 38 degrees.

There was the Chandler Ostrich Festival a number of years ago when we had to deal with a two-foot lake of water caused by torrential downpours of 36 hours of rain, Bad show also, poor booth arrangement,.

Strange, eerie happenings on Highway 126 in Oregon on our way to the Deschutes County fair, which ended up pretty bad. Over 230,000 people and hardly anybody buying from anybody. Good show to stay away from.

Monterey Custom House Plaza swamped with 35,000 people

Oct 11. Monterey, CA. I wish that was the title for this. Figures submitted to Craftmaster News for Monterey's Columbus Day Festival showed crowds supposed to be 35,000 in number. Well....I guess we have more people missing in action. There were quite a number of vendors at the event, but I don't think we had much more than 3,000 people visiting the show.

I've been doing events here for 14 years now and this is the absolute worst that I have ever seen. The promoter's did pretty good. They filled the place up with vendors (however, way too much jewelry) and had a decent number of food vendors and entertainment. Setting up wasn't too difficult, if you came early, but as time passes on, it does become congested.

Weather forecasts called for temps in the 60's and very strong winds sustaining speeds of 30 mph. However, we were pretty much spared the wrath of the winds. During the morning, the Parks Dept (of the Historical Park area) came to each booth to ensure that everybody was weighed down adequately. This is the first time I ever saw them do this and I wonder if previous winds at shows here have uplifted very many booths and they are very cautious.

So, crowds were low as compared to previous shows here and they just were not buying, having been even more scared off by events in the Stock Market this past week and many of them probably lost a lot of money as a result, making these shows more difficult than they already were. Sales were very low for pretty much everybody and the booths that had larger crowds surrounding them were merely engulfed by looky-loos.
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Monterey Columbus Day Festival Oct 11-12

Hi People. We'll be down in Monterey this weekend for the Columbus Day Festival at the Custom House Plaza. The weather looks decent and it'd be a great idea for you to trek on down to the area. Great scenery. Do your Christmas shopping.

We are DandL CREATIONS and we sell hand-made shell jewelry, fannypacks, shoulder bags, wrap-around skirts and a lot more. We will be located in Space 28 in front of the 'Museum.' Come on down and check us out.

Here are some reviews of recent shows we have done:

Homefront on the Bay, Richmond Oct 4-5
Castro Valley Fall Festival Sep 13-14
Pittsburg Seafood Festival, Sep 6-7

If you are a vendor, there's at least two shows in the Bay Area that I would recommend staying away from. The Orinda Holiday Bazaar (nice event and a great effort by the promoters, but NOBODY buying...they've got money here, but they don't spend) Last year's review.

And I would stay away from the Vacaville Harvest Days Festival at the Nut Tree. Did it two weekends last year and virtually everybody did poorly. Was located next to the Pumpkin Patch and people just ran by, grabbed their pumpkins and got the hell out of there. They force vendors to pay $25 for a 'police permit' where you MUST give them yours SSN and Driver's License number and be treated like a criminal when they run a check on you. Absurd.