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Event Name: Arts Alive

Location: Northside Park (125th Street), Ocean City MD

Promoter: Town of Ocean City - Special Events

Dates: June 15-16, 2013

Show Review

I have participated in this event for 5 or 6 years now and have always enjoyed the event. Pluses: Friday all day set-up, friendly and attentive staff, lots of booth sitting volunteers from the local arts organizations, in most years, you can park right behind your booth to set up, tear down and you don't have to seek out any designated really inconvenient or expensive parking facilities, juried event, nice prizes for artists, attentive local police overnight security. Negatives: weather variability (wind, rain, storms, heat) over the historic record of the event, some inexperienced exhibitors (but we all have to learn somewhere and they passed jury muster)

Friday - My wife and I left later in the afternoon b/c winds were supposed to be 15-25 mph - and b/c we didn't have out acts together to get the h_ll out of Dodge. Arrived about 6:30 PM to calm to light breeze conditions... went ahead and decided to get tent and walls set-up. Had tent up and sidewalls attached, stabilizer bars in, pro panels set up and leveled, panel feet zip tied to sta-bars, canopy hooks installed and zip tied into sta-bars. As we were finishing the last few tasks, we were closely watching a storm which was moving from due north to due south... on an evening when none were predicted. Police security can by as we were nearly done and said that a thunderstorm was approaching which had reportedly produced a waterspout north of our location.

We saw it coming, too and it looked a lot like a bow wave type of approach boding a violent wind profile... We had everything zipped up and clamped down just as it was starting to blow a bit and spit rain. It looked very threatening with a wall-type cloud, and low hanging, stringy clouds which seemed to head right for us. Since it was nearly overhead, we moved to a different part of the facility east of out tent position. As we parked, the wind really picked up and then, like a wall, there was about a minute's worth of really high velocity sustained gusts. We watched with dismay as several tents appeared to be taking the worst of this and/or falling. I thought I saw our tent visibly damaged by these gusts and started back to it.

Well, we arrived back and indeed, our tent had taken a hit - the top was partially blown off. The wind had gotten under the gap between wall and top and inflated the tent. However, the clamps held the wall zippers and the two of the four Velcro attachment points for the top let go - acting effectively as a safety valve. I got up on top of the set-up table and removed the center pole of our EZ-Up Express II and took the rest of the top off. Nothing inside the tent was hurt, but we could see that others were not as fortunate. We had 160 pounds of weight in weight bags, 9 pro panels and 6 sta-bars holding our tent down. The reason that there wasn't more damage was that zip tie-ing the whole structure together added rigidity and aggregate total weight to the structure. So our tent didn't move, but the top popped off partially with no damages to tent, top, or contents.

On our side of the lagoon there was one EZ-Up-type that was down and broken, and another which had a bent leg. There was also an expensive barrel dome-type tent which had also sailed about 25 feet from it's location and was crumpled with one leg under the dome and another bent at a funny angle.

The EZ-Up-type with the bent leg had luckily had the back door zipper open up while the winds were blowing - taking the worst of the sail effect away. This tent was also anchored well with stakes and ropes. The tent which looked like toast was also a pop-up whose owner we knew and whose paintings were inside set up on display panels - the operating words are "were inside". They weren't currently. The artist and the artist who was set up next to this EZ-Up arrived and quickly assessed the damage. I went over to assist. The paintings were almost all undamaged despite being tossed and panels toppled. We stored them in the artist's neighbor's tent and disassembled and stowed the racks. Then we disassembled the top and sides from the damaged tent. The tent suffered canopy cross-member damage along the canopy perimeter - with a couple of them having sheared right at the fitting which acted as a pivot point. Conceivably, this was mendable, so we gently folded the tent up as there were no bent or bowed parts. The Ocean City Police security were very helpful and several of them were working to secure the damaged tents and any scattered merchandise.

We then went to the crumpled dome tent. When it flew, it looked like it took off nearly straight up as it only seemed to have knocked over a couple of the glass display units and there was a good bit of broken glass from a couple of shelves which shattered. We gently stood the dome back up and it stayed up. We didn't check the interior of it for damages, but later found out it had suffered a bent or broken leg which would have to be replaced. We did find the exhibitor's name and phone numbers in one of the totes on a card and called it - leaving a message.

The common factor in all the tents that we saw that flew was insufficient weights or tie-downs.

We left the rest of the recovery efforts to security and park special events staff who arrived shortly after the gale. They gathered up and matched tents with spots and secured what they could from further damages. As I said, staff and security at this event are stand-up folks. We went to our hotel and checked in (Using the Corporate Lodging Consultants card which saved us about 50% of the normal weekend in season beach resort room rate). We ordered pizza and wings and made a couple stiff margaritas in our take-along Magic Bullet.... I later spoke to the daughter of the dome tent's owner and briefed her on what we had seen.....

End of Part 1 - Stay tuned