It’s going to take a while for me to fully process what transpired this past weekend at the Shadow Art Fair. On the whole, I’d say that it was a success. There were a few things that didn’t go as well as I would have liked, but, on the whole, it was great. If I had to point out one negative, I’d say that it was too crowded on Friday night. I don’t know what the maximum occupancy of the brewery is, but we must have been close to reaching it. I haven’t been able to confirm it yet, but there are rumors going around that people were being turned away at the door at some point. While I don’t know if that’s true, I do know that both parking lots were full within half an hour of our opening our doors, and, later in the evening, people were telling me that they were parking as much as five blocks away. While great for the event (believe me, not many “craft fair” kinds of things suffer from over-attendance), I don’t know how good it was for the business of our vendors. I may be wrong, but I suspect that we all would have done a bit better sales-wise on Friday if people weren’t so packed in. I think all of us vendors would agree, however, that it was one hell of a good time. The music, the beer, the enthusiasm of the crowd for what it was that we were doing – none of it could have been any better.

My friend Brett, who played Santa at the event, mentioned to me at some point that evening that we, the people behind the Shadow, might have become “victims of our own success.” To some degree, I think he’s right. There were certainly points when it all just seemed too enormous to handle. But, I think, on the whole, we did a pretty good job of navigating our way through it.

Without the bands and the late-night hours, Saturday was a bit more low key. We still had a hell of a lot of people, but the flow was more leisurely. We got a lot of families with kids. People stopped and talked more. My guess, and I could be way off, is that we had 1,800 people over the two days, with most vendors splitting their sales pretty evenly between the two.

I could go on for hours and hours about the event, all the cool things that were there, and all the rest of it, but I suspect that it’s probably better to just throw open the door to comments and let you hear what other, less biased parties, thought of it. (Some local blogs, like Ypsi-Dixit and Sam’s Thoughts, have already started threads of their own.) So, let me know what you thought? Was the vendor mix good? What, if anything, were we missing? Did you like the addition of music? What do you think we could do to make our next event (tentatively scheduled for the weekend of July 20) even better?

And, lastly, I’d like to thank all of you who made it possible. Thanks especially to those of you who came out to spend your holiday money locally. On behalf of all the zine makers, record labels, clothing designers, photographers and other artists that were there, I’d like to tell you that we really do appreciate your support. It means the world to little folks like us. And, with that said, I’d like to thank the vendors, who, knowing about the success of our last event, really stepped up their game and came though with tons and tons of new, exciting, inspirational stuff. (On one hand it kind of sucks in that everything else is, in a sense, competition for the products that Linette and I dream up, but I really do believe that competition is good. And, it’s because of that that I’m really excited to see what everyone comes up with next time. I know we all went home thinking about what worked, what didn’t work, and what might work the next time around.) And thanks to VG Kids, WCBN and the Corner Brewery for their sponsorship, which allowed it all to happen. And thanks to all the bloggers, friends, community members, members of UM and EMU faculty and student body, downtown business owners, etc. that came out to shop or just peek in out of curiosity. And thanks, of course, to the other members of the Michigan Design Militia who planned this whole thing. None of this would have happened if not for Jennifer, Tim, Melissa and Molly… Oh, and an extra-special “thank you” to my friend Nina, who came out and worked the table with me on Friday night, at just a few minute’s notice, when it became clear to Linette and me that Clementine wasn’t going to be able to stay with her grandparents. (She was getting over a stomach bug and really wanted to be near her mother.) I couldn’t have done it without her.

[The above photos were taken in a five-minute span of time on Saturday morning, during an uncharacteristically slow point in the action. Better photos can be found on my friend Amanda’s Flickr page.]