Fear and Loathing at The Philadelphia Convention Center

Feb 24, 2012

While trying to come up with a display for Deborah's jewelry trade show booth at the Buyer's Market of American Craft in Philadelphia last weekend, we struggled to keep costs down by using whatever we had on hand. Our teaj dining room table, although heavy and hard to move, was the perfect size. But since we were planning to throw the wooden table, along with an assortment of other display materials -- lights, a rug, and so on -- in the back of my open bed pickup truck, we were reliant on a decent weather report. A 70 percent chance of rain led us to make a last-minute decision to rent a cargo van. The price quoted online for a day's rental was a reasonable (by New York standards) $79.00, but of course, as anyone who has ever rented a vehicle knows, you can expect to pay double by the time all is said and done. As much as it hurt to add another 150 bucks to our overloaded credit card, it would've hurt more to arrive at the convention center with a truckload of soggy materials, so we did what we had to do.

Once we were on our way, we found ourselves wishing for a downpour to justify the van's expense, but in the end, it didn't start to rain until we were finished unloading. Philadelphia is only about a two-hour drive from New York, and generally it's an easy round-trip — but driving the big-ass van through weekday traffic, loading and unloading, and then setting up the booth, made for a long day. If I had driven my truck, I probably would have crashed with Deborah at her friend's house in South Philly, but as it was, I wanted to get the van back before the rental office closed. I dropped Deborah off at her friend's place, kissed her goodbye and wished her luck, then drove the empty van through a steady rain, up the New Jersey Turnpike, and back to Brooklyn. I was too late to return the van that night, so I parked on the street and got up early to return it the next morning.

The DayGlo orange parking ticket glowed from half a block away. A vehicle with commercial plates parked on a residential street and observed by Officer Gray at 10:37 PM meant that I could add another $65 to the rental fee. "Shit," I muttered, stuffing the ticket into my coat pocket before returning the van. All part of the cost of doing business in the big city of dreams.

The Buyer's Market of American Craft was a four day affair, not including the day we spent setting up the booth. The first day, Friday, was a short one, consisting of a Jewelry preview that lasted couple of hours. I was enjoying a night of free-spirited bachelorhood when Deborah called from the back of a taxi cab on the way to her friend's house to let me know the preview had been a success. If things went as well for the rest of the weekend, she'd easily make back the money she spent on the venture. (No easy feat considering the booth alone -- one half of a shared space -- cost in the neighborhood of 1400 bucks!)

"Good news."

"I have to go," she said. "I don't feel so hot. The cab smells like smoke and the driver is heavy on the brakes."

"Okay, good night. I'll check in with you tomorrow."

Deborah called the next morning, earlier than I expected. "I got car sick in the cab. I was sick all night, throwing up. I didn't sleep. I don't know if I can make it through the day."

"Do you need me to come back to Philly and help out?"

"That would be great."

"It'll take me a couple of hours -- I probably can't make it before the show opens for the day -- but I'll get there as fast as I can."

"Okay."

I was about 20 minutes outside of Philadelphia when Deborah called again. She sounded weak. "I'm at the show. I passed out on the floor. They want me to take me to the hospital," she said.

"Oh no. I'm almost there."

"Okay."

Approaching the Ben Franklin Bridge, my phone rang again. It was an EMT calling from the trade show floor. "We're taking your wife to the emergency room," he said, and gave me the address of a hospital just a few blocks from the convention center.

"Sir, sir!" the toll clerk tapped against my car window with a pen. I thought she was going to scold me for talking on the phone. "You owe five dollars!" she said.

"They don't have EasyPass on this bridge?"

"You got in the wrong lane for EasyPass!"

"Oh, sorry, my wife is on her way to the hospital," I said, fumbling around for cash.

The woman couldn't have cared less, though who knows if she even heard what I said.

I tried to remember the directions I'd been given by the EMT, but it was a blur and I had to pull over to ask a traffic cop where the hospital was. I found the visitor's parking lot, parked the car and ran to the ER.

Deborah was on a small bed in the pediatric room, looking wan. Dark circles around her eyes, made darker by smeared makeup. She had an IV, a blood pressure cuff, an oxygen sensor on her finger, and about a hundred electrodes stuck to her chest — your typical ER setup.

A nurse took blood samples, but the vials lay on the counter waiting until Deborah's insurance info was accepted. Even then, only one vial was ever sent for testing, while the other four never left the counter. Although they diagnosed her with an inner ear infection, dehydration was the major culprit. By the time Deborah had soaked up two liters of IV fluids, she felt much better. She'd been so busy and stressed with the show that she neglected to eat and drink.

Not wanting to fall into the same trap myself, I walked to a nearby McDonald’s while Deborah rested, waiting for word on her release.

A crazy man caused a scene at McDonald’s, but that's not uncommon. He threw a tantrum because of a mistake with his order. Whitney Houston's funeral was playing on a TV in the corner. The crazy man's outburst sounded a lot like the preacher on television, except instead of brother and sister, he was calling the clerk and the manager asshole and motherfucker.

Deborah called and said they were releasing her.

"I'm a block away," I said. "I'll be there in a minute."

A woman who was at the trade show to assist a jeweler friend of hers had been kind enough to watch Deborah's booth for the day. I called her to give an update on Deborah's condition and let her know I'd be there soon to relieve her. "No rush," she said. "Everything is fine over here."

Although Deborah was feeling much better, she couldn't help feeling depressed. "I blew it," she said. "All that time, money, and work."

"You didn't blow it," I said. "You have two more days,"

"Only one and a half days. The show ends early on Monday."

"Don't worry about it. We'll start fresh tomorrow and make the most of the time left."

I dropped Deborah off and headed to the Convention Center, where I stood awkwardly telling potential buyers, "My wife wasn't feeling well this morning and left early. I can probably answer about 50 percent of any questions you might have, but Deborah will be here tomorrow. Please come by again."

No photos allowed without a photo pass

In addition to our dining room table, something else that we brought to the show is our Kate Moss mannequin. We figured the mannequin could be used to show off the long necklaces that are otherwise difficult to display, and she might add a little celebrity pizzazz to the booth.

Unfortunately, the Kate Moss mannequin didn't do anything other than freak people out. Some people chuckled uncomfortably after trying to talk to her, and others were visibly disturbed, making faces of disgust.

"What the hell?" said Deborah. "Hasn’t anyone ever seen a mannequin before? And these people are buyers -- for stores. I mean, this is a display, and this is a display mannequin. What's the problem?"

"The Uncanny Valley," the woman across the aisle -- who hand-cuts designs into pennies -- said.

"The what valley?"

“The Uncanny Valley," she said. "It's a theory about why people are creeped out by things that are almost, but not quite, human."

Apparently, when something that is obviously not human is given human characteristics -- a stuffed animal, for instance -- it becomes more empathetic, even endearing. But as something approaches being more human -- an animatronic robot, for example -- we begin to judge it by human standards, and it stops being cute and starts being creepy. The fact that the Kate Moss mannequin was the only realistic-looking mannequin in the whole show, and she was standing behind Deborah's table -- in a place where most exhibitors were standing -- caused people to mistake her for human. But she's not human (unfortunately) and thus left people feeling repulsed. So goes the theory, anyway.

But, whatever. Despite Kate pulling a practical joke on every other buyer, Deborah did pretty well and pulled in about seven orders on Saturday.

Deborah was sharing her booth with a jeweler named Melissa and her husband Brian, a couple from North Carolina, also doing their first trade show. Brian suggested that, regardless of whatever valley Kate Moss was lurking in, Deborah's booth might profit from a little rearranging anyway.

"I just had a rum and Coke," he said. "More like a triple rum and Coke, the way the bartender was pouring," (At either end of the hall, a bartender sold beer, wine, and mixed drinks.) "So I might be talking out of my ass, but I think you should move the table closer to the aisle."

It couldn't hurt, Deborah decided, and she allowed Brian and me to carefully pick up the table and move it. No sooner did we put the table back down on the floor than a buyer rushed into the booth, ready to place an order. We all looked at each other, amazed at what moving the table a couple of inches could do -- until Deborah informed us that the woman had been there earlier and that Deborah was expecting her. Still, the timing couldn't have been better for us to have a good laugh. Deborah finished writing the woman's order, and we were done for the day.

Monday, the last day of the show, was a slow one, and all the vendors were complaining. Not that the buyers weren't placing orders, but that there weren't more than a handful of buyers to begin with. Nevertheless, Deborah wrote two fat orders, sailing her well past the point of breaking even, and we were officially justified in declaring the show a smashing success.