Phoebe made it to 5.62 pounds (5 pounds 10 ounces) tonight
(Monday the 13th). Everything seems to be going well with her so
far. Vashti has developed another rash, probably related to the stuff she was
taking for the ear infection. She is in good spirits however and has been quite
energetic. She has been a handful while everybody is trying to adjust to the
new baby. Sacha is severely sleep deprived. I am sleep deprived to a lesser degree.
As far as Marblemount’s turn at hosting the main events of
Eagle Festival went, the weather was lousy both days. However, the turnout Saturday
was very good from what I could see. I was only there for a little bit to help mom
set up her vendors table in the Community Hall in the morning. I also helped a
little with the set up of the hall but this was mostly done after the meeting on
the previous Tuesday I think.
I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon doing my
presentation of the places I went in the mountains in 2012 for the Skagit River
Bald Eagle Interpretive Center in Rockport. This was surprisingly well attended
too. When I stopped in at the Marblemount Community Hall that afternoon on my
way to do chores there were a lot of cars in the parking lot.
Sunday the turnout wasn’t so good. Again, I wasn’t there
much, mostly stopping in to help mom break down and help pick up the hall a
bit. Go figure. The weather was about the same for both days but I would have
guessed that Saturday would have been the low turnout day because of the
Seahawks playoff game. It’s good to be wrong sometimes. It looks like I may
have also been wrong about my presentation robbing a potential audience at the
Community Hall. The folks at the Bald Eagle Interpretive Center were very good
about steering people up to Marblemount and I was able to get a plug in for the
activities there.
This all goes to illustrate the unpredictable nature of
tourism based ventures. Sometimes people show up, sometimes they don’t.
Sometimes they spend, sometimes they don’t. I noticed that there were a lot of
people rafting the river all day Saturday even though it was high and the
weather was nasty. I wasn’t out during the peak rafting times on Sunday so I
don’t know how that was. I noticed too, that the parking lots of all the motels
seemed to be mostly empty. There were no restaurants open anywhere east of
Concrete until about noon on Saturday. On the plus side for the Community Hall,
this may have led more people to the Hall which was the only place in the area
with hot food. We were fortunate that the power didn’t go out as it often does
on windy, rainy days. We have a generator at the hall but the power being out
tends to discourage people from coming.
It sounds like the Community Hall made between $500 and $600
on food sales and a bake sale for both days which isn’t great but wasn’t a
total bust either. There have been a few of those in the past. There was a lot
of time and effort put in by the Community Hall members to set up the hall and
clean it up afterward and to get the food, prepare it and staff the counters.
Mom made less than $200 at her table for both days. Her
table featured my photos on postcards and other items. I don’t know how the
other vendors did.
The amount of business mom did was about usual for this type
of thing, a table or booth at some kind of event or show. We figured out a
while back that the business venture with the photos is a hobby at best. It
took two days at 7 hours apiece to staff the table plus several hours of
preparation, setup and breakdown. So about 16 hours were invested for a gross
income of about $150. This breaks down to about $9.38 per hour. This is before
taking into account booth rent (which was cheap at this venue), transportation
(also cheap here), time invested to create the artwork and cards (lots and lots
of this), raw materials, equipment, etc.
Maybe a person could squeak by on this kind of income if
they could do this much business every day but this doesn’t happen. They don’t
hold festivals every day. And permanent selling location doesn’t do any better.
We (mostly mom) have had a lot of days of $0 business when she ran a gallery.
Another factor that kills this type of thing (selling art,
something that people don’t need to live their day to day lives) as a business
proposition is the time needed to create products to sell. This tends to eat up
a lot of time and when you are making things, you usually don’t have the time
to sell them. If the time needed to create products were factored into the
above equation the time invested would go from about 16 hours to probably 30
hours or more with a corresponding drop in gross income to $4.67 per hour or
less. So, to do this type of thing, you have to like it but also recognize that
you will need a regular job to make ends meet. Mom still likes it.
I like my
regular job. It’s a lot more stable and secure, I can support my family on
the wages and it comes with a good retirement plan and very good health care benefits.
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