Thoughts On The Food Show
It was like walking through the Sacramento Greyhound Depot with a frosty twelve pack of Steel City Reserve tall boys. As I walked down the aisle, I watched as the eyes scanned my badge for the fateful word "PRESS," whereupon they took their best shot at launching the line that they thought might make them my new best friend. It was the winter fancy food show and all the vendors were looking for love."Oh hey, would you like to have a glass of water," the astute publicist enquired. "I guess so," I politely replied. The lime infused water tasted disappointingly like a flat lime-flavored Calistoga. She put on the full-court press. I explained that I wrote for an agricultrual paper, The Capital Press. "That's like the biggest and best ag paper in the west," she intoned. She was good. She suavely alerted her client who began finishing up with his guest. He was listening with one ear while managing to not appear distracted. "So you are going to write a big article about us in The Capital Press," she vociferated clearly and loudly, "we realy work hard to support farmers."
I had two choices, I could write story there on the spot, or I could move on to the next booth and see what might present itself. I listened to what her client had to say and I was polite about it. You have to be because working a tradeshow is a strange sort of shucking-and-jiving; part cheerleading, part carnival-barking, all marketing. You have to market everything and you have to make split-second reads of your audience. It is a workout, the ultimate sales training. It is exhausting.
It is the kind of work that often drives me to drink; a short trip by most standards. As an unattached observer, three days at the Fancy Food Show is an interesting experience. As a member of the press, a target, it is surreal. The granular memories of the three days quickly melt into one extended sensory overload. The florescent lights, the cacophony, the myriad smells, the innumerable samples, the interviews with the hopeful, the demented, the successful and the disingenuous were too confused to be left alone with the scattered undirected thoughts swirling about on my brain. "The longest trip in the world is between your ears," a wise man once said. Strange times evoke ingenious methods.
Old friends are summoned on cellular phones. Networks are created and webs, spanning continents, sexual orientations, religious or party affiliations and nationalities, are woven and tightened, bringing the nascent community together. Most of my webs end up back in the wine pavilion. Cork are popped, screws are capped, glasses are filled and glasses come back. Allegiances are formed, songs are sung, jokes are told, and plots are sprung. The international fraternity of food professionals is in session.
I left this show after drinking of the milk of human kindness with my friend Bob Leslie. Bob is loved by many throughout the world because he is a good man with whom to do business. You live and die by your good name and Bob's name is impeccable. I trudged down Market Street carrying eight bottles of wine. I laughed as I reflected upon what my name might mean to some people. “Most Folks Don’t Understand,” I reassured my self. I didn't care how I looked because I felt fine. I knew that all of the folks at the show and I were kin in a very diffuse way and I warmed by the thought of it. I want to write about all of them. I wanted to capture the essence of the whole thing, to be able to convey it to people who were not there. I stopped and looked around.
The buses were loud, the faces were alive even when they were callow. The pavement was still inexplicable dirty. The sun had already retreated behind Twin Peaks and that strange San Francisco winter chill, differing from its summer cousin by only a few degrees and the temperament of its moisture content, began to dig into the back of my neck. Eric Dolphy once said that music belongs to the air. “Once it happens it is gone forever, and you can never really capture it again.” This is the futility of the journalists work, to capture that which cannot ever really be captured. I was jostled from my deep thought as I was run into by another pedestrian talking on his cell phone.
“I don’t really care exactly what happened, for chrissakes” he yelled, “just give me the essence of it; what is the fucking message and why do I care?”
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posted by Brian J. Kenny @ 3:03 AM
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