Saturday, July 12, 2008

Wine and Art Festival

Got to the Carbondale Wine and Art Festival about 9 p.m. in time to help pull down tents and chairs at 10. It was still pretty crowded but the crowd was pretty mellow, with only half a dozen people up dancing to the Ivas John Band. The rest seemed happy to wander from booth to booth, sampling and buying, or sitting at the tables, sipping and chatting. A much more relaxed event than evening at the Carbondale Pig Out.

The artist's pavilion was pretty quiet but then it was getting dark, the time of day when people are wanting to drink wine and listen to music, rather than buy art. The pavilion was a block away from the wine tasting area and I heard a couple of complaints about that. However, since only one artist brought a test and Main Street's limited number of tents were used by the various wineries that also didn't bring their own, the pavilion was the best solution to keep them out of the sun, rather than let them bake on the asphalt all afternoon. I did hear the guy who did the collages, at least, was quite happy with his sales.

I heard attendees were already asking when the next W&A Festival would be and urging Main Street to host one twice a year. Main Street, from what I understand, was hoping for 500-600 attendees. Rough estimates last night, after the staff had been on their feet several hours, were between 800-900. Pretty successful, esp. for an event that relied on WOM and publicity to get the word out, since the ad budget had been spent on promoting the May date for the event.

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