Over the years I have attended, worked with and organized hundreds of festivals and events. With this new series, "INSIDE with the Festival Nomad", I want to give you an "inside" look at some of the festivals and events that I have been involved with or that I have visited. Along the way, I have had a lot of fun and sometimes frustration, but I have never been bored!
Our Worst Show
Our Worst Show,
by far, was the Metro Home Show held
in the Toronto Metro Centre. The show started off like most shows, pack the
truck with framed art and our booth, drive to the show site, get in line for set-up,
set-up and then participate in the show. All very routine! This was our first
time (and last) participating at this
show. We didn’t know what to expect in terms of the number of visitors, but we
were hopeful. It was Toronto after all, drawing from millions of people. We
were so confident that the show would be busy that we asked Judi’s Mom and Dad
to help out at the show. The day started began slowly, but we weren’t worried.
This was the normal for these types of show. The afternoon wore on and then became
early evening, dinner time for most people. Still no worries! Then came 7:00
pm, 7:30 pm and 8:00 pm. There were no people and I mean NO people! I told Judi and her parents that I would go to the other
parts of the show to see how they were doing. NOTHING! The halls were empty! I walked to the main lobby. There were
people there, but the room was very quiet. It was Thursday, August 2nd, 1990, “Operation
Desert Storm” was in full swing! Bombs were dropping on Iraq! All eyes
were glued to the lobby’s television sets! I went back to the booth to let the
others know what was happening. Judi and her mother decided to take advantage
of the quiet time and sat alone in the entertainment area listening to the
small orchestra. They were there to entertain show “visitors” (no visitors
there at all). The weekend never recovered.
No-one was interested in attending a consumer show! This was, by far, our worst
show and, as a result, we and other exhibitors lost a lot of money! This was not
a great time in the world. Troubling to say the least!
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