June 25, 2018

Risking Rain and Selling Books at Hershey Culturefest 2018

Saturday was a long day. We hauled out the canopy, the books, the catalogs, and the cookies and drove to downtown for Hershey Culturefest 2018.

This was the first show run by the historical group after they split with the downtown merchants group last year. I told you about the Artfest and flower show in a previous post, so we were curious about the cultural angle on this show.

emmanuel nsingani — Emmanuel Nsingani from the Republic of Congo brought world music flavor to the Hershey stage.

There were several differences. This time, the park was cleared of booths and a temporary stage turned over to musical acts throughout the afternoon.

The merchants were organized in the parking lot behind the park, next to the volunteer fire station. This was different from Artsfest, the larger festival, that had booths in the park, on Cocoa Avenue, and the triangle of land near the Hershey office building.

Of the two, I liked this organization better. The paths between the booths were narrower, which mean less walking for the customers, and it seemed like there was a little more activity due to the smaller space.

Assuming that the rains were going to hold off. The week before, the forecast looked like Mother Nature was going to give us the middle finger. Zero rain in the days before the event, zero rain afterwards, and a guarantee blast in between.

The morning didn’t promise a bountiful day. I loaded the car during one rain shower, and we got up the canopy and sorted the merchandise before the second came down. There were the usual stresses in setting up, helped by a nasty surprise of finding one of the struts had lost its nut. Daughter stood on the cardboard table and pushed it back in.

The skies continued threatening, but the rain stayed away for the rest of the day, and it turns out we had one of our best days ever. Eighteen books sold. Not only that, but our two recent books – Flowers and Casebook – were among the big sellers. After several years of seeing good sales of Styles and Writers Gone Wild but little else, this was very welcome.

It’s always fun to sell a book, but the real pleasure was in seeing the people we know (waving to Anne, Robin, Chelsi, and James), and meeting people I wish we had more time to know better, like the reader who liked Mark Twain as much as I do, and those who were curious about the mechanics of self-publishing.

During the slow times, we took turns wandering the fair and seeing who was around. I came across Jack Myers, who does 40 shows a year selling varieties of Mediterranean Basil Salt. I tried a sample on tomatoes, and it was delicious: crunchy, salty (of course), but with an herbal overtone.

We talked vendor to vendor, about his shows, and he handed me his schedule. In July alone, he’ll stop at the Kutztown Folk Festival, the vegan Bethlehem Street and Food Festival on the 14th, the Reggae Festival at Linganore Winecellars in Mt. Airy, Md., on the 21st, and the Hanover Dutch Festival on the 28th.

Did I mention he’s 81 years old?

Amazing.

I also stopped at a couple of jewelry booths. Both of them were interested in seeing “Dictionary of Flowers and Gems,” and we loved seeing their work. Afrikan Girl Kuns uses gemstones, crystals, metals and leather to create Afrikan-influenced designs. They also do custom designs, restorations and repairs.