This is a hugely popular street festival, with very iffy qualifying standards: the festival "is specifically for Exhibitors who are Artists, Crafters, pre-packaged Gourmet Products vendors or Eco-Friendly businesses with Five employees or less and Non-Profit Groups only" says the application.

The pictures tell the story. There were a few genuine artisans, I saw photography by Emerson, but no Emerson, and amongst the multitude of buy/sell the ever present Baltic Amber Importers.

I did not think the food at the fair was particularly noteworthy, although it was above the usual standard. I liked the french fried artichoke hearts with crab topping. Instead I think I will append pictures of our meal at Quince, a 1 star Michelin restaurant that I got into solely by knowing an important local food person. The dishes: nettle soup with fried squash finger & house made cheese, white asparagus with raw fried egg yolk, scallops with morels and potato puree, corn soup, zucchini carpaccio with fried stuffed squash blossoms, corn stuffed ravioli, pasta with mushrooms (I begin to get a little vague thanks to all the wine consumed), squab with fois gras, a mushroom, rabbit, and finally desert: white peach soup with lemon sorbet, pistachio souffle with semifreddo, perhaps a mango gelato with some very tasty creams, strawberry soup with sorbet and fried strawberries, and then some more deserts so that we did not go away hungry. Food is art.

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  • No, I didn't do the show. It was a busman's holiday. The person in Emerson's booth told me he was not there, as "he had several other shows that weekend". The photos are taken on my i-phone, so they will never be as pretty a Nels' photos.
  • Wow, I can see you have learned how to add photos to your blog posts ;)

    What a mess this event is! and what a shame not to be able to bring good art to the streets of San Francisco. Were you part of the show? If so, how did you compete with this other fabulous jewelry?

    I laughed when I saw Emerson's booth. He was probably there, but asleep in his truck, as he now officially lives in Berkeley.
  • so many of these almost shows could be great except for being controled by merchants or local (we don't want outsiders )artists. The other shows in SF suffered from the same mentality. Sausalito broke out of that but then started charging shameless booth fees. Huge market mostly untapped. too bad.
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