 |
Goodnight, Irene:
Report from the Florida Fiery Foods Showby Dave DeWitt
It was six o’clock Thursday morning, October 14, 1999, and I was sitting in the studio of the Fox Television affiliate in Sarasota, Florida. I had driven over to the station from my brother Rick’s house before sunrise under clear skies and a temperature of 72 degrees, but don’t let those balmy conditions fool you--I was about to get clobbered by the weather.
"You’re doing a show in Tampa?" asked the weather lady before I went on camera with the host of the morning news show.
"Yes, the Florida Fiery Foods Show at the Tampa Convention Center," I replied.
"You’d better look at this," she said ominously. She ushered me over to a video monitor and pointed to a weather map and a storm over Cuba. "That’s Irene. She’s just been upgraded to a hurricane."
"Uh oh," I murmured.
"And look at the storm track," she continued, switching the image on the monitor. "It’s headed right toward Tampa. Scheduled to hit dead-on Saturday morning."
"But you’ve had some hurricanes change direction already this season," I protested, remembering Rick’s jokes about the false alarms.
"Not this one. She’s going to increase in intensity over the gulf and clobber Tampa head-on. Your show is toast--you should cancel it."
Bummer, I thought, but I kept a positive outlook. "Set-up for the show is in two hours," I replied gamely. "The show must go on."
At least fifty percent of the broadcast was devoted to hurricane coverage, including such inanities as the following.
Host: "Now let’s go live to Susan for a report on all the hurricane-related accidents."
Susan, standing in the dark at an intersection in perfect weather: "Well, since the full force of hurricane hasn’t reached Florida yet, there are no accidents to report. But we’re expecting some."
Damn, I thought, they want the hurricane here. It’s big news and they want a story. Devastation. The weather lady wants to be out on the street with the trees falling around her!
I was able to promote the show on the air and gave the host and the weather lady a taste of some hot sauce and the 1999 Scovie Grand Prize Winner, one of Mrs. Tahiti Joe’s Chipanero cookies. But the gist of what the host had to say was, well, if the hurricane misses us, be sure and go to the Florida Fiery Foods Show.
As I drove up to Tampa, I pondered the circumstances. There was a hurricane. It was moving north. Maybe it would stall. Maybe it would move west and hit Texas. Maybe it would head east and clobber Miami. Maybe we were doomed. Who decided if a show would be canceled? I had never canceled a show in all my years of producing them--even during a blizzard in El Paso, I kept the custom car show open. I had no show hurricane experience.
At the Tampa Convention Center, the mood among the exhibitors setting up their booths was better than I expected. Most were from Florida and they had experienced all kinds of storms. And besides, some said, this was a minor hurricane, just a few miles an hour above a tropical storm. By the end of set-up on Thursday, we were missing six exhibitors--not bad for a threatened hurricane. I found a copy of the Tampa Tribune, and there was a blurb about the show on the front page! The headline, above a color chile pepper photo, read: "Trail of Flame." But ominously, right next to it was another headline about Irene heading toward the Gulf Coast and a map that showed the hurricane hitting land at Tampa. Our partner on the show, Bren Ankrum, began getting lots of phone calls from attendees and the general public. Is the show canceled? No. How’s the weather? Clear so far. Is the airport open? Yes.
The show opened at 9 a.m. Friday morning. Landfall from Irene was still scheduled for the Gulf Coast of Florida sometime Saturday morning. Clouds had rolled in and the wind had picked up, but the weather wasn’t bad--yet. Attendees and buyers showed up telling us about how the media was going nuts over the approaching storm. At 9:20, a panicked exhibitor ran up to me at the registration booth and said, "There’s no traffic in aisle C!" I explained that there were plenty of people in the hall, but it would take time for them to move from the middle of the hall, where the entrance was, to the extremities. And I said, "By the way, the show’s only been open for 20 minutes!"
We started getting calls from Mary Shiroma, who was handling public relations for the show. Television producers were canceling show coverage and switching to hurricane coverage. By the end of the day, we lost five live appearances on Tampa television. The Convention Center manager on duty told me that the mayor was meeting with his staff and any cancellation of events in city facilities would come from him. Fortunately, that did not happen. The show would go on unless the weather really got bad.
Then my sales rep from Thunder, one of the big radio stations that we were running spots on, called and said that they had received a complaint from Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus that I had hijacked their trademark by referring to the show as "The Hottest Show on Earth."
"Tell them that they’re the greatest. We’re the hottest," I replied.
As the hours passed, trade attendance was off, and we could tell that from the pre-registered attendee badges that we not being picked up. However, there were buyers at the show, and deals were being written. The clouds got darker and the wind increased even more in the afternoon. Exhibitors were getting nervous. "There’s a light flickering over my booth," one complained. The ceiling was thirty feet high and we would have had to tear down his booth and bring in a scissor lift to fix it. An exhibitor wearing a yellow badge came up and asked, "What color are the exhibitor badges?" Another exhibitor griped that there were not enough leaves on the huge chiltepin plant just inside the entrance. A disgruntled attendee complained about having to pay for parking. "Tampa is the sixteenth largest market in the country," I explained. "Everyone pays for parking downtown in a big city." But he was having none of that explanation. "Don’t you reimburse us for parking?" Shaking my head, I thought, Sure, and we’ll pay for your plane fare, hotel room, and dinner, too!
Six o’clock arrived and Mary Jane, Bren and I were, frankly, relieved. We had made it through the first day.
Friday night, Irene changed course. Instead of making landfall at Tampa, she was now scheduled to hit south of Naples and her direction was to the northeast, not due north. Tampa just might be spared the brunt of the storm. But that didn’t mean that the weather was good. The wind was gusting to 35 miles and hour and there were intermittent rain squalls as we opened the doors Saturday morning. The general public attendance was slow all day Saturday, but quite a few people showed up. I watched one couple buy bottle after bottle of sauce, put them in plastic bags, and hang the bags over the back of the stroller with their year-old baby girl. Finally, the weight was so much that the stroller fell over backwards, spilling the girl onto the carpet. She was unhurt and grinning. Her parents were a pair of embarrassed chileheads.
Exhibitors started shouting out "Hot! Hot! Hot!" and they were echoed by other exhibitors. The mood was picking up. But some exhibitors were still nervous. I was on stage just ready to begin my cooking demonstration when an exhibitor came rushing up and said, "There’s a cloud of flies in aisle G!"
"Find a frog," I snapped, my patience at an end.
Saturday night, Bill Wharton and the Ingredients played at Skipper’s Smoke House. Exhibitors and attendees got in with their badges and were served free Ybor City beer. The place was rockin’ as Bill went through his repertoire of swamp blues and rock. After an oyster dinner, I started bogeying on the dance floor with my niece Emily DeWitt, then with Mary Jane. No one there had ever seen me dance, but at least I had a good time no matter how spastic my technique. The highlight of the evening was a slow dance number from Bill and the band: "Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene, I’ll see you in my dreams." By now the hurricane was clobbering the east coast of Florida and Tampa was safe. The Sarasota weather lady was probably eating crow while I was gobbling down those oysters.
The sun came out on Sunday and show attendance improved. Fully three-quarters of the pre-registered attendees didn’t show up, but at least the general public attendance was pretty good compared to Saturday.
"Where are the cigars?" asked a man buying a ticket. "Cigars?" I replied, mystified. "Certainly you must have cigars. This is Tampa." I realized that Tampa was formerly the cigar-making capital of the U.S., but sadly informed him that there were no cigars at this food show.
One person demanded his money back. "Why?" asked Mary Jane. "Because this isn’t a fly fishing show," he said. "I suppose you could confuse fiery foods with fly fishing," she laughed, handing him six bucks.
Ah, the joys of producing shows. I’ve been a show producer for 25 years now and I’ve got to say that the second annual Florida Fiery Foods Show was as interesting--and frustrating--as they get!