vip in the city

Autumn crafts at Lincoln Center

After much discussion, our annual sojourn to the Cape was postponed by a few months and moved to more tropical climes to accommodate the family’s increasingly tangled web of vacation schedules. This left us with the city almost entirely to ourselves this weekend, as most of the locals were out of town to celebrate summer’s last hurrah.

Each September for the past 30 years, the outdoor plaza at Lincoln Center is converted into a high-end craft market. Applicants are screened by a jury of crafts experts for the approximately 175 slots open for each of two weekends the Autumn Crafts Festival runs.

I spent some time exchanging beach tips for restaurant recommendations with a couple of ivory vendors (whale and mammoth, mostly) who traveled all the way from Hawaii to sell here. I was a bit surprised that a trip from so far away would be worthwhile, until I scanned the application (.pdf) vendors submit to sell at Lincoln Center, which claims that average sales per booth usually exceed $6,000 per weekend.

Six thousand dollars? That’s a load of crafts!