I should start this by saying I’m not a quitter and I’m
pretty intuitive so on occasion my intuitions and my drive to persevere battle
it out in my head. My participation in the Siesta Key fine arts festival or lack-thereof this weekend was a perfect example of that.
Lets begin a few weeks ago when I applied/signed up for the show. This show was not my first choice, I was waitlisted at another show and hadn’t made it in off the waitlist yet so I decided to apply to Siesta Key at kind of the last minute. It was within 30 days prior to the show so I had to pay a $50 late fee (totalling $400) and as I was on the phone with the company deciding whether to pay or not I was, even then, totally dragging my feet. I was asking if it was a Saturday morning set up (which if you don’t know what that means, good for you. it means you have to wake up at 4 am to deal with the clusterfuck of a set up on a tight street- that’s the only reason that there would be a Saturday morning set up because if it was easy, you would be able to do it Friday, but they don’t want to shut the street down an extra 12 hours so you have to deal with this at 4 am) which it was, ughh, and I don’t remember what else I asked but even then I was trying to talk myself out of it. Sometimes I just don’t get good vibes from shows, and I knew this was one of them.
So now skip to my actual 24 hours prior to the show…. I leave from like 2 hours north to drive down running a few errands along the way. I have a policy about going to places where people make minimum wage, which is… well don’t. But where I get my paper prints printed, I just cant avoid it and there are ALWAYS problems. That’s a whole other topic in itself, but what should have taken an hour took like 5. So after basically an entire wasted day of dealing with this printing, I had to deliver these prints to a gallery I am in over in Clearwater beach which I had the pleasure of driving to at 4:30 pm on Friday in an RV. Super duper. After all of that driving disaster, I finally headed on my way to Siesta Key for the evening to go to bed early and get up at 4 to begin my show set up…. So I thought.
Lets begin a few weeks ago when I applied/signed up for the show. This show was not my first choice, I was waitlisted at another show and hadn’t made it in off the waitlist yet so I decided to apply to Siesta Key at kind of the last minute. It was within 30 days prior to the show so I had to pay a $50 late fee (totalling $400) and as I was on the phone with the company deciding whether to pay or not I was, even then, totally dragging my feet. I was asking if it was a Saturday morning set up (which if you don’t know what that means, good for you. it means you have to wake up at 4 am to deal with the clusterfuck of a set up on a tight street- that’s the only reason that there would be a Saturday morning set up because if it was easy, you would be able to do it Friday, but they don’t want to shut the street down an extra 12 hours so you have to deal with this at 4 am) which it was, ughh, and I don’t remember what else I asked but even then I was trying to talk myself out of it. Sometimes I just don’t get good vibes from shows, and I knew this was one of them.
So now skip to my actual 24 hours prior to the show…. I leave from like 2 hours north to drive down running a few errands along the way. I have a policy about going to places where people make minimum wage, which is… well don’t. But where I get my paper prints printed, I just cant avoid it and there are ALWAYS problems. That’s a whole other topic in itself, but what should have taken an hour took like 5. So after basically an entire wasted day of dealing with this printing, I had to deliver these prints to a gallery I am in over in Clearwater beach which I had the pleasure of driving to at 4:30 pm on Friday in an RV. Super duper. After all of that driving disaster, I finally headed on my way to Siesta Key for the evening to go to bed early and get up at 4 to begin my show set up…. So I thought.
When I arrive, I check my email to see where the overnight
parking is. “why didn’t you look at this before the day you need this
information” you might ask? BECAUSE I HAVE A SHOW EVERY WEEKEND DAMNIT! And if I
cluttered my mind with information that’s not really pertinent yet… well why? Why
would I do that? But if this information had been available to me before I
signed up for the show I wouldn’t have, but of course this is part of the
confirmation email after you’ve already paid.
I found out there is no parking. There is no Friday night parking although we need to show up at 4 am on Saturday morning, there is no Saturday day parking even though I have to be at the show all day Saturday, there is no Saturday night parking, there is no Sunday parking. So that was sign #1, or 2 depending on how you want to look at it. So I hop on couchsurfing.org and turns out I actually had sent some requests out to some people in Sarasota a few weeks ago and one guy had given me his phone number so I called and asked to park there that night (Friday). Everything was cool, I cruise over there, its pretty convenient to the show, fantastic, I hang out with the roomies for like 20 minutes then go to bed. I wake up at 4 am to realize that someone is parked behind me blocking not only me, but someone else in!!! at that point I started to consider just bailing on the show, but at this point, I’m still not quitting. So I have to go into this house at 4 am to bang on a door of someone I met for like 20 minutes and see if they can wake up the person who is parked behind me to move her car. I felt like such an ass, and although I was extremely apologetic I cant go back to that house again ever. Sign #2 or 3
I found out there is no parking. There is no Friday night parking although we need to show up at 4 am on Saturday morning, there is no Saturday day parking even though I have to be at the show all day Saturday, there is no Saturday night parking, there is no Sunday parking. So that was sign #1, or 2 depending on how you want to look at it. So I hop on couchsurfing.org and turns out I actually had sent some requests out to some people in Sarasota a few weeks ago and one guy had given me his phone number so I called and asked to park there that night (Friday). Everything was cool, I cruise over there, its pretty convenient to the show, fantastic, I hang out with the roomies for like 20 minutes then go to bed. I wake up at 4 am to realize that someone is parked behind me blocking not only me, but someone else in!!! at that point I started to consider just bailing on the show, but at this point, I’m still not quitting. So I have to go into this house at 4 am to bang on a door of someone I met for like 20 minutes and see if they can wake up the person who is parked behind me to move her car. I felt like such an ass, and although I was extremely apologetic I cant go back to that house again ever. Sign #2 or 3
After this whole debacle, I’m on my way, I drive over to the
show and the little information I have about my placement in the show is that I
am booth #81… and…. That’s pretty much it. The map that is provided for this
particular show and all shows run by this company is an excel sheet. Most shows
print out like a google earth of the show area and photoshop little squares on
there to show you where on the planet your booth will be. Nope, not these
guys. So I roll up to one side of the
show, drive in through the “road closed” signs and look to see what booth #s
are there. I’m at the total wrong end of
the show, so I make a 17 point turn and get out of there to find a side street
to get to the other side of the show and roll in… Damn, still not at the other
end, I’m in the middle and there is NO way I’m making it to my booth from
here. So I begin my patent-pending 17
point turn and I hear yelling. Immediately I think it’s someone yelling at me
so I stop, turn off the music and roll down the window. To my surprise (I didn’t see the actual
beginning go down) I guess a drunk and possibly homeless guy on a bike had
ridden his bike into an artist’s really expensive outdoor metal sculptures and
fallen over and the yelling I heard was from the artist as he was running over
to this guy before he threw drunky’s bike and started literally beating the
shit out of him. The guy was on the ground and this dude was kicking him. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this in real
life but I’ve watched a lot of Dexter and Breaking Bad so it didn’t really
phase me. Not even at 5 am. So finally, I exit and make my 3rd
attempt and finally get to the appropriate entrance for my booth. I pull in,
look for my booth. Find 78 and 78a about 40 feet from 83-84. The booth #s are
written (in a pair because the booths are back to back) with a black sharpie on
dark grey duct tape stuck on darker grey asphalt in a pitch black time of
night. I’d be willing to bet I have the best night vision of anyone
participating in that show, as I am definitively the youngest and my eyesight
has always been really good (thanks dad!) and I can not for the life of me find
either 79-80 or 81-82. They don’t exist.
And I cant start setting my booth up just anywhere in this 50 foot blank area.
So as I’ve been searching for my space with my RV in the middle of tents, I
realize I am not going to be able to get out of here because the other booths
between me and the exit have started setting up and there isn’t anywhere near
enough space to get a vehicle past them. So I get them to move their stuff for
a minute and get the makin waves mobile back out into a nearby parking lot :
ehh.. maybe 150 feet from where my spot may or may not be. So my only option is to dolly my stuff over
which I decide to do. I don’t know what sign we’re on at this point, but its getting ridiculous
that I’m not listening. So as the
Universe’s big fat, “listen biatch, don’t do this show” I’m dollying my first
of maybe 5 loads of stuff down the road, my dolly tips over with my 2 HEAVY
bags of tent poles, 4 bags of portable walls and tent canopy and sides because
roads in florida since it’s underwater are slanted so water wont stand on them. I reload my stuff onto the dolly and it
happens again. In total, my dolly tipped over 3 times on the way to where my
booth may or may not be and at that point I surrendered. I don’t know what the
reason is, but I am not supposed to be at this show, its not that I gave up, I
am no stranger to hard work or the Saturday morning set up, I’ve done lots of
them. Nor was it that I couldn’t find my
booth, my burning desire to not quit was finally overtaken by intuition after
sign # whatever we’re on, (weren’t you supposed to be counting?) And I decided
to go home. At that moment my mood
changed completely, I was stoked for this weekend, I feel like where I need to
be in the universe is working on this big, epic, awesome, challenging triptych,
and maybe that was the only thing that I was being told, or maybe something else
I don’t know about yet, but that’s it. That’s why I bailed.
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