Day One in NY

We arrived at about the same time as the show opened and were pleased to see the number of people. In addition to the usual crush of ABAA members shopping the shadow show before the Armory opens, there were a considerable number of "real humans". This is always a nice thing to see...

There was steady traffic from 8 in the morning to about 2pm. There was then a painful lull (literally, as far as my feet were concerned) that picked up a bit around 530 or so and stayed rather busy until about 8pm.

As can be seen in these images, we really did just one lit case. We ended up adding a small (four foot) table on site...giving us both a bit of horizontal space for some atlases and, more importantly, a means to hide my computer and printer when not in use. We also stacked our Pelican cases and draped a black cloth over them, providing a bit more reasonably presentable space. We were adjacent to Don Lingren and he did the same thing with his Pelicans...It looked like we planned it...scary.

The last two images show both sides of our case. We ended up using one of the "see through" cases...allowing me to set it up "displaying" to both sides. This worked, frankly, better than expected.

Sales on the first day were solid, nothing exceptional, but not unreasonable, either... We found some good things to purchase and the chatter was overall, quite positive.

We were back in the far corner, which worked well for us. Better yet, we were right across from the fine folks at Biblio.com books). This made for a good time both days (Save a tree, Buy used as they got grumpy and twitchy in an entirely different way than bookdealers *g*. Truly, it was a pleasure having them nearby during the fair...they genuinely love what they are doing...and are really quite good at it. Unlike some others that will not be mentioned (or linked to) here, Biblio is genuinely striving to improve it site to benefit its booksellers....a novel idea these days...

Champagne with fruit and cheese in the afternoon. Pleasant music. Engaged people. Not a bad afternoon.

Addendum: We had dinner at Ruth's Chris Steak House for Suzanne's birthday. She likes red meat and RCSH is famous for their steaks....and well, suffice it to say their tag line could be "Why Pay Less". The steak was, to be fair, some of the best I recall. Overall, however, I really expect "more" for what dinner there entails...great sides, great, salads, great everything. They do have outstanding steaks...but everything else was simply good. It is, clearly, a spot for business folk on expense accounts. Did I mention that the steaks them selves were outstanding...