Or the San Mateo Italian Festival.  We had previously done this show 5-6 times up until 2003 and quit doing this event because my wife and I both retired from our jobs shortly afterward and we started doing county fairs up in Oregon.  I mean real jobs, okay?  Well actually, we worked for the U.S.Postal Service and we can question if that was a real job.  Just kidding.  My wife had worked at the San Mateo Post Office here for 22 year's.  We were unable to head up to Oregon this year because of my wife's health condition and that trip is dearly missed.

 

Sunday, July 25.

We arrived there around 6:20am and found a small number of vendors setting up.  Excellent.  If we came later when it was congested, it might be a lot harder.  We were in space 114 down near 1st Avenue.  When we arrived, we found that the people in space 116 had arrived and their vehicle and trailer were extended over into our space.  So, we parked behind them and had to unload quickly before the other vendors on the other side of us arrived.  I am thankful that those people arrived before us and didn't take too long to unload.

 

WE UNLOADED MUCH OF OUR stuff onto the sidewalk and then pulled out the canopy from the van and set it up.  We quickly took out our 16 grids and positioned them along the perimeter of the canopy and then removed the remainder of our goods from the van and I drove down the street only to run into a bunch of vehicles going out and coming in.  Wow, I got boxed in over there and had to wait for several vehicles to move.  I decided to turn around and go out the other way  and cut through where the car show was and park two blocks down.   I returned to my then returned to our space and we finished setting up.  The weather was somewhat overcast for the early part of the morning, but we did have sunshine through much of the day.

 

NOTE:  I am writing this during the wee-hours of the morning on Monday and I have the Jerry Springer Show on Channel 20.  I could swear that I see a good number of the audience members that looked like what I saw in San Mateo. Amongst the wonderful crowd out there were tatooed individuals out there along with the local bangers and boppers;  young mama's pushing those baby carriages and the wife-beaters AND the husband-beaters.  A scene so common at many of the festivals that we do. More simply put, the crowd at the Street Fair was mostly caucasian, Mexican and some Italian's or people claiming to be Italian along with the decent law abiding citizens of San Mateo and Foster City and other intermediate points on the Peninsula.  One would assume that individuals on this side of the Bay are more affluent and are more at a social advantage than people in the East Bay and out in the valley.

 

THINGS STARTED OFF pretty decent and we had some early sales before 11:00.  They had a parade that started at 10:00, but wasn't very long and was over quickly.

 

SALES TAPERED OFF around 11:00 and it was quite slow for us and everybody until around 2:30.  Pretty good-sized crowd, I must say and I would think that was about the time people got ready after church or their Sunday breakfast-lunch gatherings.  Hope they ate before coming out, because there weren't very many food vendors at this event.  Maybe 5 or 6.  We also seemed to be missing another 20-30 vendor's from this event because they did not have booths all the way down on South B Street and there was a good number of 'aisleways' between several of the booths.  We had an aisleway between our space and 113, which was excellent because I was able to hang merchandise on the outside of my grids.

 

OVERALL I DON'T THINK THAT many vendor's prospered here.  The crowd was more of a ho-hum Sunday gathering of gawkers, grabbers and walkers.  We did not have a huge mixture of dogs for this event like we had in Foster City.  You did not see the usual 'pee-ers and butt sniffers' strutting down the street with their owners in tow.  You know what I mean.

 

RIP OFF REPORT.  We had a turquoise necklace set displayed on one of our upright cases.  Somebody ripped off the earrings which were in a plastic bag attached to the necklace.  I hope that person's ears melt.  Just wait until I catch the next person attempting to steal from us.  When I was in Tyson Wells, I saw a guy who sold rings and had 8 cameras installed all around the place.

 

THEY WANTED DISCOUNTS.  A good number of people were asking for discounts and I did give a few.  My prices are low enough and these people wanted my stuff at lower-than-Flea-Market prices.

 

FORTUNATELY, sales did pick up for about an hour or so and we did not have a disastrous day.  We had to sweat it out, as we saw thousands of people walking down the street during the early part of the afternoon just walking in a straight line, not even bothering to turn their heads as their children rushed into booths, playing with people's merchandise.

 

THE LOCAL CUISINE.  Stumbled across Jeffrey's Hamburgers over on South B.  I had already eaten but I took a walk into there and it looks pretty good.  Got an area outside in the back to eat your food.  Will be trying this place soon.  Dying to try their mushroom burger.

 

THERE WERE A NUMBER OF VENDOR'S that did remarkably well.  This guy next to me was selling license plate frames and he kicked butt.  I saw people continuously going inside his booth buying his products which did consist of a number of Italian-themed plates.  Another vendor two spaces down from me was selling hats for $5 each and had 10-15 people continuously at his booth, which extended for at least two spaces.  I would say that by the end of the day, he must have had a huge pocketful of those five-dollar bills.

 

AS I STATED PREVIOUSLY, there were not too many food vendors.  You had your usual Spaghetti sellers and a few other one's around the food area, but not like I saw 7 year's ago when I was there.  On my end, we did have one that was selling Italian Sausages (of course) and I picked up one for $5.00 which was decent.  Not nearly as good as the one's I get at the Castro Valley Fall Festival and not as large as the Lockeford Sausages we get at many of the events.

 

THERE WERE THREE ENTERTAINMENT stages and we had one located about half a block away and they played some dreadfully loud music that drowned out many of our customer's comments.  Somehow, I got the impression that many of the people scampered down the street hastily trying to get away from those loud sounds.  They also had another stage on the other side of the fair that, I do believe had music more suited for the Italians and I would much rather have listened to them instead, like we did year's ago when we were located just 5-6 spaces down from them.

 

WE BEGAN PACKING AROUND 4:45 and by 6:05 we were pretty much done except for the canopy and grids.  I got in there with the van shortly afterward, loaded up and left quickly as the other vendor's were bringing in their vehicles.  Got out of there before all hell broke loose.

 

Anybody with something to say?   comments@starvingvendors.com