Stuff we don't miss

The other day a customer was commiserating with me over the closure of our downtown store, and she asked if we missed the First Friday artwalk gatherings downtown. I'm afraid I answered "No!" a little too quickly and enthusiastically.

Don't get me wrong: we love to throw a good party, love a big crowd, love to see customers and friends. And part of First Fridays was fun like that. It's a night for galleries and shops to open their doors to a whole new crowd of people. It's a night to treat everybody to drinks/snacks, be a part of the festivities, and hopefully sell a few things (or make some connections for later). The best are in July and August, when Bend is full of visitors, nights are balmy, the streets are buzzing with activity, and everyone is in a good mood. Those were the times we would come home exhausted but happy.

Part of it was not fun (I can say it now). It's expensive, even if you just stick to two-buck Chuck (which ain't $2, by the way). We agonized over every little thing: like spending $50 on a case of small plastic cups or going cheap (and greener, too) with ugly paper cups (paper eventually won). There's a lot of prep, shopping, gathering, schlepping. Also, in our case, since we had two stores at the time (down to one now), there was a certain amount of panic in closing our River Mall Ave. store early so we could get set up, drop the dog off at home, run and get ice, etc.

There were the two-fisted drinkers, the ones who would walk in with a big ol' sloshing glass of red wine from somewhere else (totally illegal). There would sometimes be a few tears shed (by me, the next day) upon finding a linen pillow with a big wine stain, or a hole where something was stolen. Ugh. There were the obnoxious pick-up artists who thought maybe we were a singles bar. And, we never ate dinner until long after the last lights went out, all the stuff got cleaned up, and we stumbled home at 10pm or later, slightly comatose. Our tradition was a little comfort plate of scrambled eggs and toast. I can sure stand to skip dinner, but poor Robert has this burning metabolism that needs fuel, or else he falls apart. I always made sure we had a little bowl of nuts or something to keep us going. And that leads me to one of the funnier stories of our artwalk career.

One night we were very busy. All I had left for our "emergency" snack was a handful of stale Japanese rice snacks from Costco. Pretty pathetic. I put them into a tiny bowl and hid it behind a display on the wrap counter. Robert had skipped lunch, too, so I knew this wasn't going to do it for him, only two thirds of the way through our 14-hour day. A nicely-dressed couple comes in, takes some sangria (this was our go-to libation, recipe available at our shop), and kind of gives a cursory glance around. Next thing I know, he nods to her (as in "Honey! I found the food!"), reaches way across and behind the front desk display (right in my face) and sticks his hand into our little bowl of rice snacks. Stale rice snacks. How he saw it I'll never know. Maybe x-ray vision.

"Oh!," he says to his wife as he takes a bite. "Ugh. It's just Costco stuff." She rolls her eyes and makes this little gutteral "ach" sound of disgust. They make a beeline for the door, sangria still in their hands. I call over to Robert with this kind of suppressed half-laughter, because I'm trying not to snort and burst out in real laughter. But I can hardly help myself, it was so funny. Like we were trying to pass off some horrible snacks to our visitors. Snacks that were hidden in a tiny bowl for none to see.

I looked at our half-filled bowl. The guy had just stuck his paw into our pathetic little dinner. And he didn't like it! Not one bit. I threw the rest out and started counting the minutes until we could go home and make scrambled eggs with herbes de provence.