This year’s Art Fair morning, May 11, 1975, dawned in a fickle humor, teasing and tormenting all those hoping for a perfect day with alternate promises of blue skies and threats of rain. She made good both promise and threat. The Paper’s Pancake Breakfast was the morning’s first victim. Between 8:30a.m. and 12:30p.m. customers had been moved into and back out of Joe Lange’s garage several times. In spite of its peripatetic character, the breakfast cleared $189.00 for The Paper.
Meanwhile, many artists had arrived early and had begun setting up their displays, from time to time scanning the skies dubiously. A few of the fainthearted gave up with the first discouraging shower, but most persisted and were rewarded about 1:00p.m. with a complete turnabout in the weather. Scattered applause broke out when the sun broke out of the clouds. For nearly three hours the weather was as good as any past Art Fair has enjoyed, although the crowd was smaller, presumably because of the earlier rain. Many of the neighborhood fund-raising activities did a brisk business during this period. The following is a list of the fund-raisers and their receipts to the nearest dollar. •
Washington Heights Barbecue $208.
Washington Heights Plant Sale $169 (held the previous day)
Boy Scout Troop 98 Garden Cafe $312.
Rosedale Neighborhood Assn. Cake Sale $257.00.
Hamilton School Sweatshirts and TShirts $60.
Neighborhood School Flea Market, Snow Cones, and Balloons $846.
Unschool Plant Sale $90.
This year’s House Tour, like those in previous years, was not intended to be a fund-raiser. Receipts from the sale of House Tour tickets are used to help defray expenses of future House Tours and to support the work of the Residential Service. This year’s House Tour ‘receipts amounted to $360.00.
By four o’clock, our “place in the sun” had been given to someone or someplace else, and the deluge began again in earnest, bringing the 1975 Art Fair to a damp and hasty close, While most had taken refuge on Kingsbury porches, the clean-up crew, with postalservice devotion, was not stayed from its appointed rounds.
Original photograph caption
Art Fair ’75. The Paper, June1975,page1. Photographer not credited.
Originally published in The Paper, June 1975.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1975_06.pdf, printed page(s) 1; PDF page(s) 1.
