Craft Lake City DIY Festival 2021

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,
 
It has been a busy few weeks… but a lot of fun too! This past weekend, Izzy & I had a booth at the Craft Lake City DIY Festival at the Utah State Fairgrounds! This is historically the largest craft fair in the state of Utah & with my wife’s amazing art still essentially new to the Beehive State, we were excited to let ‘em know about it!
 
We attended the event two years ago right after we had moved into our home… and it was pretty busy. There were lines to get in (we may have been early, I don’t remember) and hundreds of vendors of all sorts of craft from birdhouses to baked goods to quilts to watercolor paintings to jewelry to musical acts to upcycled picture frames to vinyl pressed shirts to skateboards to craft beer to tie dye and so on… along with a lot of different demonstrations by the artists & STEM students. It was a great time! Given the events of the past year or so, would it be the same?!? Let’s find out!
 
Friday was load-in day. Everybody’s routine is a little different given their situation… but for us, we load up the items in our Jeep (and in this case the Honda as well), drive to the venue early in the morning, unload our tent, tables, products & other staging items and start building our booth! A few years ago, in what we refer to as the “Year of Yes” we did between 40 & 50 shows in a year… so we’re able to set things up in less than an hour usually. We have had practice! Some pictures of the booth can be found at the bottom of this post.
 
Once we were loaded in, there were actually a few hours before the start of the show (I think other sections were loading in during that time), so we went and got some lunch before the festival opened at 5 PM & closed at 10 PM. There were some great bands & performers on the main stage (though their names escape me) and the crowd this first night was primarily vendors & people coming for the music. We still did pretty well though… so really excited for the BIG DAY TWO!!!
 
Saturday was the long day from 10 AM to 8 PM in the booth (though realistically 8 AM to 9 PM) and the temperatures were HOT!!! I was in a tie dye shirt & tie dye pajama pants… and it worked out pretty well… but we were hot. Spoiler alert: We ended up buying little four-inch fans for Sunday. As for the crowd, it wasn’t as big as 2019 obviously… but the crowd was amazing, enjoyed our stuff & seemed to have a lot of fun! The slowest part of the day was from 2 PM to 6 PM of course… because it was 100 degrees and no wind really… so I think they were hiding the building that had air conditioning. Hell, I stepped away a few times to cool down in there. Overall though, a great day, just a little sweaty.
 
Sunday was a pretty long day too from 10 AM to 6 PM in the booth, then tearing it down & driving home… but still a great crowd & a pretty good day! It didn’t seem as hot… but there was an overcast… from wildfires in the Western U.S. so the air quality was below nominal. We had our new fans at our side making the air move… and our new fans checking out Izzy’s art (see what I did there) so a great day! We even topped it off by selling our old washer & dryer for a pretty penny that night (around 11 PM). Sweet…
 
In summation, would we do Craft Lake City’s DIY Festival again? Yeah, I think so. The booth fee was pretty high for a show here in Utah based on others that we’ve done… but the crowd comes for the crafts, the venue is pretty good & well spaced out without being too distant overall, public transportation goes out there, ample parking, the vendors are amazing, the food was reasonable, heck even the beer was good!!! Shout out to SLUG Magazine & Proper Brewing for their Yacht Rock Hazy IPA & Stumblebee Honey Vienna Lager being readily available steps from our booth!
 
So what’s next for us?!? I’m glad you asked… we’ll be at an INDOOR event this Saturday, August 21st with the Utah Summer Dance Festival!!! Come check us out in the air conditioning & see some amazing performers with plenty of intermissions to refresh your drinks & check out the local vendors!!! The best part… it’s FREE TO THE PUBLIC!!! You have no excuses now!!! Come see us in the flesh!!!
 
Warmest regards,
 
Steve