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2 Expo
The last time I had a stall at this was in 2000, when several of us got
pitch space off a friend who had block-booked several square metres. At
that stage I had only a limited number of books and a few slave contracts,
so it's not that surprising that I didn't make a lot of money. Also, having
recently been dumped by a favourite playmate, I was grumpy and miserable
throughout the event - which was probably another customer-deterrent.
After that I decided that I'd leave the Expo well alone, as my stock ranges
have never been heavy on clothing and jewellery, and the Expo has always
drawn its biggest customer base from people wanting something new and
shiny to wear to the Rubber Ball. However, given the exreme likelhood
that neither Miss Deadly Glamour nor I will be bothering with Erotica
this year (it seems that the Erotica organisation really does want to
get rid of all independent, small erotic traders in favour of big dildo/dvd
suppliers and a whole load of tooth-whiteners, feng shui consultants and
laxative merchants - we know where we're not wanted) it seemd like about
time to give Rubber Ball Weekend another go. I can't say it was exactly
a mistake, though I've had more profitable weekends. Plenty of people
did seem to want books and t-shirts, and the gossip was good all the way
through. However, reading the post-weekend comments on various discussion
websites, not every one had as much fun as they would have liked, with
many complaining that a lot of traders they expected to see were not actually
around. Now, the Expo is not cheap but it's not as unreasonably priced,
from a trader's viewpoint, as Erotica, and there's certainly very little
in the way of biomagnetic bracelets/pickled fish/bathroom fixtures cluttering
the place up, so where's the problem? Well, it could be in the timetabling.
The Rubber Ball was formerly held on a Monday night and, though the first
special Rubber Ball trading market was organised by the Whiplash Market
people in 1996, it wasn't till 1998 that the Rubber Ball Weekend was actually
arranged and marketed as such. Still, for the first few years it was a
matter of something TG-related on the Saturday night, something lower-key
on the Sunday and the Ball itself still on the Monday. Frankly, moving
the Ball to the Saturday night makes having a selling event on the Sunday
fairly pointless: even those who want to shop for something other than
Ballwear tend not to haul themselves out of bed until pretty late on the
Sunday afternoon, and then they're so hungover they forget to bring their
credit cards.
There really doesn't seem to be much logic behind the idea of dumping
the main event of the weekend smack in the middle of it (is it that the
younger generation of perves, as well as all their other conformist failings,
don't like taking half-days off work to recover from a party? Are they
all too
wet to go to work with a chronic sleep-starved hangover like what us proper
deviants used to do?) The addition of a Sunday night finale party was
another enthusiastic scheme that didn't seem to have worked that well,
if the frantic comping of everyone with a pulse on Sunday afternoon was
anything to go by. Not many people have been around long enough to remember
that the 1998 Weekend, flawed though it was, tried to offer enough diversity
of stuff to do for just about every inclination and, indeed, every pocket:
there was a film screening, a gala dinner and a day of workshops and discussion
groups, with the Ball itself as the? er? climax. However, if there are
unarguably good reasons for sticking the Ball on the Saturday night, then
perhaps the Expo should be cut to a single day and the Sunday feature
lower-key events - ones that start late-afternoon , for the sake of those
who really need a lie-in.
Now some people will no doubt explain that the Sunday Expo serves very
well as a 'low-key event' with nice socialising opportunities and I would
like to politely suggest that these people go fuck themselves. From the
trader viewpoint, too much emphasis on the terrific socialising opportunity
offered by a market, expo or other trading event makes your innards sink
though the soles of your boots. Sure, it's nice to socialise, but not
when it means that the punters hang about in front of one's expensive
pitch yakking at each other, blocking the sightline of potentially interested
customers but never actually buying anything, put their empty glasses
down on one's fragile stock without even asking - and don't even get me
STARTED on the ones who think that stallholders really want to hear all
about their favourite fantasies/entire life experience of BDSM. We don't
unless you're going to spend some money.
On a brighter note (I suppose) to finish with, I do hear that there was
actually a dungeon at this year's ball. Which is kind of amusing when
I remember how I and a friend were all but thrown out of the second ever
Rubber Ball for daring to give a man a couple of swats on his clothed
behind with the new whip he'd brought along to show us? Times do change,
don't they.
ZJK
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