Avondale Art-B-Que

Atlanta’s weather in June can be a real gam­ble. Some­times it’s just pleas­antly warm, other years things turn bru­tal early. 2010 is an exam­ple of the lat­ter, which meant there was only one word to describe the Avon­dale Estates 2010 Art-B-Que on June 12 – 13: HOT.

Let me repeat that. HOT!!!

Cop­per Dancer Designs was assigned a spot on one of the side streets, about halfway down the row. We had some shade in the morn­ing, but dur­ing the after­noon we got more sun than we really needed or wanted. Stay­ing hydrated and not too over­heated was our real chal­lenge that week­end. Sadly, the heat was so extreme that atten­dance was way down — not that many peo­ple wanted to come out to eat really good bar-b-que, lis­ten to a wide vari­ety of music rang­ing from pretty darn good to pos­i­tively awful, and shop for funky arts and crafts. We got a lit­tle relief from the heat on Sun­day, as we were able to move into a much shadier vacated spot right next to the Smoothie Cart, hee hee. Even so, the theme remained broil, baby, broil.

Sales were dis­ap­point­ing for pretty much every­body, except pos­si­bly the King of Pops — a very pop­u­lar man, espe­cially when he came around in the after­noons with his lit­tle push­cart. Sunday’s Mimosa pop (con­tains Real Cham­pagne!!) was superb, but Saturday’s Grape­fruit Mint pop with REAL mint leaves was the most exquis­ite thing I had tasted since I don’t know when.

The week­end was cer­tainly not a total loss, though. We met some won­der­ful artists, par­tic­u­larly Cindy Sheffield Michaels, a Decatur pho­tog­ra­pher who does mar­velous abstract work. Scha­dia and Nazeem came by our tent, bought a bracelet, and pro­nounced our work a per­fect fit for their upcom­ing Haflanta event in August. The bar-b-que we ate for lunch both days was utterly tasty, even though to Andrea’s dis­ap­point­ment only pulled pork was avail­able. The peo­ple who did ven­ture out into the heat were quite com­pli­men­tary of our work. We enjoyed our smooth­ies and pops immensely!! And we finally, finally were able to get pho­tos of our booth setup so that we can apply to some of the upcom­ing fall shows!

Really, the only hor­ri­ble neg­a­tive was the weather, and that’s some­thing no one can con­trol. Rumor has it that Bart Webb, who puts on the event, is con­sid­er­ing an ear­lier week­end for Art-B-Que next year, and if so we will cer­tainly give it another shot.