Tuesday Load

The new sidewalk is just about perfect, and here shows my Tuesday load, arriving home. The big number of baskets is my kid's shirt sale, which is one of my Tuesday options. I have found if I take the hats and bags, and Jell-O of course, I can take one type of sale shirts. Women's, men's, or kids, or maybe at some point, tank tops, are gradually being whittled down from my vast piles of items that are no longer in my Saturday stock.

With the new wide sidewalk and the stepping stones I temporarily installed next to it, I can fully turn the trailer for easy access when unloading. It's smooth and efficient and a pleasure.

Finally we had decent weather for a Market, in this year of rain every weekend and cold on Tuesdays. It was supposed to be 85 but the clouds kept it down to just warm and pleasant. The crowds still look larger across the street but the booths are crowded quite close together over there, so it looks busier. We have so much space even our high of 27 booths yesterday didn't fill it. There were many more people enjoying the benches and the quiet and we even had a mandolin player for a set.

It doesn't feel terrific yet but the vendors are a friendly and inclusive group. Now if we could only attract a few farmers and more food carts. I noticed the hot food offerings across the street were many; lots of booths that are not technically food booths are serving food, and it seems rather unregulated. Sales on Tuesdays are improving, and lots of Bach Festival participants were spotted, some even spending their cash.

My average for the 6 Tuesdays this season is around $90, not too far from my average last year, so that is encouraging. My lows are lower and my highs are too, but it is all leveling out, to a sort of consistency. People are catching on to the idea that there are interesting things happening on both sides of the street.

Country Fair puts a hold on my Tuesday attendance for a couple of weeks though I will try hard to be there next week, which shows last year as one of my highest. The very highest last year was the last one I went to, October 19th, and I have no idea what that means. Most of my retail theories are hot air, since there is not a lot of logic to how things play out downtown these days, if there ever was.

What I'm saying about the farmers is that they are in a growth phase. That's all I can say.

In a sweet kind of serendipity, I got the little job of OCF Archeology back prints, and D.J. brought me the "art", an old Chelamela shirt we made back in the 80's I believe. I searched the files and found the original art, which is so much better than a copy taken from an old stretched-out t-shirt. It's funny to see my old, awkward lettering on the logo. Looking through the drawers and boxes of art, I am again struck by how many hundreds of t-shirt designs I have done over my working life. Someday a retrospective would be fascinating (to me, anyway).

I'm still fairly panicked about getting everything done in the next two weeks, but nothing to do but keep working until the day to leave. I've managed it every year so far, so I don't know why this would be an exception. The trick is to do it without any emotional meltdowns, and maybe I will accomplish that from here on in. It is nice to have some quiet Tuesday time to think and to do whatever busywork and connections I can do downtown for a few hours. Tuesday Market is sweet.

But Saturday is rocking. Now surely this week it will not rain. We all need a sunny day.