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Vendors leave in a huff

Sunday, August 11, 2002

By Lori Shontz, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Brian Callnan spends every weekend on the road, traveling to various arts festivals around the country to sell his picture frames, planters and other wooden creations.

With a baby due in February and the wisdom gained through four years of experience, he researches his destinations carefully.

But he wasn't prepared for what he found Thursday night after a 12-hour drive from Vermont to participate in the Shadyside Summer Arts Festival this weekend.

Instead of a street festival, he found grass. Instead of the 150 vendors he saw promised on the event's Web site, he saw maybe a dozen. Concerned, he cornered the festival's executive director, Ed D'Alessandro, and was told that other vendors were late.

When he showed up Friday morning near Reizenstein Middle School and didn't see 149 other vendors, he got angry. It got worse when few customers came, and still worse when he discovered two other arts festivals -- both crowded -- were going on at the same time a few blocks away.

"I don't sell junk," Callnan said. "I can't afford to blow a whole weekend."

His fellow vendors -- some of whom had driven from as far as Maine or Texas -- felt the same way. Most left the festival in a huff Friday afternoon, saying D'Alessandro had deceived them into thinking that the festival was an established festival, in its 32nd year, that could deliver 150,000 patrons. A few held out until yesterday morning, hoping that customers would come when they didn't have to work.

By yesterday afternoon, only three artists and three food vendors remained, along with a musical stage in the middle of a field next to Reizenstein Middle School on which a 6-year-old girl performed a clog dance for maybe a dozen people.

"It just disintegrated," said photographer Dan Gaser of Carrick, who had sold five photos in two days.

Callnan, like several other vendors, moved to one of the other festivals, Arts on Ellsworth, on Ellsworth Avenue, the site of last year's Shadyside Summer Arts Festival and the event he thought he had actually entered.

Other vendors went home, having lost not only their entry fee -- which ranged from $100 to $3,000 -- but also the cost of transportation, hotel rooms and equipment.

"I never meant to mislead anyone," D'Alessandro said.

The confusion is understandable. D'Alessandro is operating the Shadyside Summer Arts Festival at its third location since 1998, when the Shadyside Chamber of Commerce got rid of the festival and replaced it with another festival, promoted by a Florida company, on the same Walnut Street location. The new festival on Walnut Street became known as "Shadyside ... the Art Festival on Walnut Street."

D'Alessandro, who owns the name "Shadyside Summer Arts Festival," moved his festival to Ellsworth Avenue.

After the 2001 festival, D'Alessandro and the Ellsworth Avenue Business Association parted ways. D'Alessandro said he didn't want to be restricted by businessmen anymore. Jim Schneider, president of the Ellsworth Avenue Business Association, said the rift was caused because of six or seven bounced checks, totaling $6,000, that D'Alessandro had written to the association and never made good on.

In addition, Schneider said, his association was unable to get a permit for this year's festival until it paid $3,000 to the off-duty police officers who had worked security last year, money that was supposed to be paid by D'Alessandro.

This year, D'Alessandro took his trademarked festival name and started a new festival at Reizenstein Middle School. He said he expected that people would park at the school -- an easier task than finding a space near Walnut Street or Ellsworth Avenue -- attend his festival, then walk "a few blocks" to the other two.

Instead, customers flocked to Walnut and Ellsworth and skipped the festivities at Reizenstein.

"I thought people would park here and walk around," D'Alessandro said.

The distance from the Reizenstein field to the edge of the Ellsworth festival is about three-quarters of a mile. Once the artists at D'Alessandro's festival discovered the distance from their field to the two street festivals, they weren't surprised at the lack of patrons.

"It's just a total loss," said John Francis, a potter from South Fayette who sold nothing in two days.

Vendors were further angered to discover the variety in the booth fees.

Francis paid $100; his next-door booth neighbor, Gaser, of Carrick, paid $250. The Neese family of Saxonburg paid $800 for a kettle corn booth, the same amount Peg Borro of Philadelphia's Cosmic Catering paid for her chicken and wrap booth. But Colorado Prime, a grocery home shopping network, paid $3,000.

"It depends on what they're selling," D'Alessandro said. "That's very common at a lot of shows. If you're selling something that costs $5 or $1, that's a big difference."

Lori Shontz can be reached at lshontz@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1722.