Left the bay area yesterday to start setting up for the state fair in Sacramento. In Alameda I was doing mostly float this with splat balls on the sides, I had one helper.

For this fair I have two booths, pitching magic mostly float this and Svengali in building c, and splat balls in building a.

I raised my prices last fair, and people are paying it, so I'll keep it the same for this fair.

The fair starts on Wed. and runs 18 days. I will be happy if I hit 50 miles at this fair.

Set my booth today, I heard a rumor that their might be someone else with splat balls here, so that could hurt my numbers.

I also see that someone is doing squirmmles here. Someone did them in Alameda and did ok when he was in his booth. We will see how they do here.

Will, do you ever ask for or get an X (exclusive) on your stuff?

For the shows I work, this normally isn't a problem. There may be ten jewelry joints and five T-shirt spots all competing with each other, but only one magician -- me. I've only had this problem once in the past five years.

Some guy at an Xmas Bazaar was selling toys, and one of them was "TV Magic Cards." But he didn't demo them right and didn't package them well. Plus, once I knew about the other guy, I made sure to tell all the tips that my trick decks looked like REAL cards, because they didn't have the words "Magic Cards" printed on the backs. I'd say "if you want to fool somebody, you don't want to publicize the fact that you have a trick deck, do you?" (Thanks to S. David Walker for that line).

The end result was that most of the kids bought my decks, even though they were more expensive, and the guy took most of his TV Magic Cards home with him. But I also told the show organizer that next year, I wanted to be the only one selling magic tricks, and she agreed. SETH

Some asians are doing splat balls for half the price in another building. My worker kept the price the same and did 8 yards. So I'm not so worried about it since it is such a big fair. But it will cost me. They can't gurantee exclusivity. Great thing about magic is less competition by far especially with the floating. I think this will be a great fair for me and my workers.

Squirmles are here and the guys working that stoped by more then once and drooled over my turns and takes.

And what are "yards"???

A yard is carny slang for $100.00

Just more braging and B.S.and talking like hes hip and really "with it"

Splats are doing better than magic, even with competition, very interesting, but I have a very good worker on splats and it is cali.

This guy isn't even pitching anymore, he has his own agents now!! SETH

I do work the magic booth during the prime hours and cover the splats for breaks, but I'm relaxing a little this fair. I have good workers. Tomorrow I think I'll spend most of the day in the water park since it will probably be slow. Overall it was a good week and I'm happy with the numbers, but would have liked to sell more magic. But the crowd is tight.

I wasn't there for the last weekend and have not done a final tally, but the total take looks to be close to 50 miles. Ok I guess. Me & my crew will be in the same spots next year.

Fairs coming up:
Humboltd
Oregon
Puyallup
Central Washington
S. Cali (?)
Arizona

I thought that you LEFT .

I knew it was to good to be true...Go away Will....

Don