Dumb sponsors

I was at the Ann Arbor art fair too and this post is to The Guild and other promoters about your sponsors.  It seems that the Guild does a really poor job of scrutinizing their sponsors.  In the last two Guild shows (May Birmingham) I have had the unpleasant spots by the sponsors.  Okay the sponsors spend $2000 to have a booth spot, but why do they think they own the whole walkway.  It was slow and the one sponsor across from me, Detroit Free Press had a couple of yahoos heckling the crowd as they walked by.  Well it would be okay if they just bothered the folks walking past their booth, but they would shout out to the folks in front of my booth that was across from them.  Max from The Guild stopped by and I mentioned to her how bad those yahoos were.  She did go over and talk to them, but as soon as she left the hillbilly boy was on the phone and got in a serious talk. They went back to heckling the crowd.  Next to them was another sponsor some gutter helmet thing.  At least they would only bother the crowd in front of them (their spinning wheel broke).  The Detroit Free Press had a very dirty and cluttered area, not very professional at all.  When it came to break down the gutter folks had some kids in an old U-haul pack up.  We the artist could not bring our vehicle in until we were broke down.  But the sponsors had to park right in the way so no one could get by.

At the Birmingham show I had the Ohio sponsor next to me.  They had a spinning wheel so you could win something.  Talk about a carnival atmosphere! 

Bottom line if you are a promoter check out your sponsors and are they really something that you want to have at your art fairs, or do you want rude and obnoxious, dirty and uncaring bunch of crap sellers?