The June Jubilee is a local town event that includes a car show, craft show, kiddie events, and an abysmal petting zoo. I was super excited to set up my booth for the first time. My boyfriend Eric helped me the entire time which was absolutely wonderful. I had a great space, and I thought my display looked really nice. The show started at 11:00 and at 11:01, I had made my first sale. Things were good. However, that was also my last sale. I wasn't really all that disappointed as I did give out a lot of cards and brochures as I was trying to drum up some custom orders for glass etching.
The food concessions made a killing selling enormous sugar-coated funnelcakes, giant sodas, greasy sausages, and the usual festival fare to thousands of already unhealthy looking people. It is disheartening when someone approaches passing a greasy turkey leg from one hand to the other and then handling your hand-made items with the leg hanging out of their mouth...or kids dripping blue colored snowcones all over your display....
The biggest draw or main event that I could see was a Ronald McDonald clone on a trailer telling really bad jokes, performing mundane magic tricks, and making balloon animals. Other kids jumped their way to nauseousness and vomitous in the oddly shaped (you be the judge) space shuttle airjump. The silliest and most annoying of the attractions was the mini plywood-constructed train apparently powered by a riding lawnmower that transported young and old paying riders around the park.
The so-called petting zoo was the worst I'd seen and begged for animal activists to come in and save the animals. There was a pot-belly pig that was most unhappy in a very small enclosure. I never saw him move. A goat kid was placed in a small plastic poorly made enclosure which I saw a 2-year old lean over and fall into, thus collapsing the enclosure, bumping his head on the ground, and nearly crushing the baby goat. Then there was the rabbit in a tiny rusted bent-up wire cage without water. In another rusted bent wire cage were 2 ducks sitting in a tupperware bowl of filthy water. Two "fuzzy" chickens occupied another cage and pecked at the dirt ground..although I didn't notice any seed there. Parents paid money to let their kids ride miniature ponies around in a circle, led around by seemingly uninterested animal handlers.
I did meet some nice sellers there and I know they didn't do well there either. Hopefully their next shows will make up for it. Personally, I don't think I'll try next years June Jubilee.
0 comments:
Post a Comment