Posted onSeptember 29, 2020|Comments Off on The Aftermath: NARBC Arlington September 2020 – 3
Another shameless plug: in the decade since I first moved to Garland, Texas, every Sunday morning of a Triffid Ranch show involves a trip to Donut Palace, without fail. Not only is it one of the best donut shops in the Dallas area, with exemplary kolaches for those who need something with more protein than sugar, but the crew there makes sure to take care of everybody, no matter how large or small the order. (For those familiar with Texas Frightmare Weekend, I’ve made a point of bringing donuts for the Frightmare staff on Sunday mornings since the first show at DFW Airport in 2012, and Donut Palace is where I get enough donuts to feed that mob.) It may be superstitious, but I’ve never had a bad show after making a stop there on Sunday morning, and any excuse to grab four or five jalapeno bacon kolaches on a September morning is always a good one.
One final image to sum up the weekend: while getting set up on Sunday morning, one of the ball python breeders at the show asked me if I happened to see a loose snake in my booth. (Escapees are very rare, but sometimes it happens.) I answered completely truthfully that I hadn’t seen so much as a cricket, and continued on with my prep. You can imagine my surprise when I finished my breakdown on Sunday afternoon by flipping a table over to fold it up and get it into the truck, and this little character was curled around one of the table leg supports. Well, we were both surprised. A little coaxing to get him off the support, a little reassurance to let him know he was safe, a little help from a fellow vendor in finding his home, and he was safe and secure. Thankfully, that breeder hadn’t left the convention center yet: as much as I love snakes, I don’t have time to care for one now, and in no way would I have taken someone else’s without paying for it. However, holding this beauty was a great way to end the show, and I hope whomever gets him appreciates him as much as I did.
Fin.
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Posted onSeptember 29, 2020|Comments Off on The Aftermath: NARBC Arlington September 2020 – 2
As an interlude, in the nearly 15 years that I have been attending the NARBC Arlington reptile and amphibian shows, one of the simple pleasures is walking off the convention center parking lot to gaze over the lake separating the convention center from the now-defunct Ballpark. The real draw, of course, are the cormorants that flock here for most of the year, gorging on bluegill and other small fish and then basking on any available human-free area. Half of the fun involves a flood drain at one end, which is a little too small for all of the cormorants who want to bask and dry off. You think penguins are bad about knocking each other into the water for an advantage? Penguins are champions of Marquis of Queensbury sparring rules compared to cormorants.
The problem with being a vendor instead of an attendee at an NARBC show: cormorants don’t bask first thing in the morning. No cormorants this trip: just one particularly determined heron.
To be continued…
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Posted onSeptember 29, 2020|Comments Off on The Aftermath: NARBC Arlington September 2020 – 1
Today’s shameless plug, thanks to NARBC Arlington attendees asking about where I got it: this carnivorous plant rancher is modeling a Dunkleosteus mask from the Alaska paleoartist Scott Elyard, thereby demonstrating that wearing a reconstruction of a Devonian armored predator is still less scary than having passersby see his unmasked smile. This one should be on driver’s licenses, too.
To be continued…
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Posted onSeptember 29, 2020|Comments Off on The Aftermath: NARBC Arlington September 2020 – Introduction
As with everyone else, 2020 has been an interesting year for the Triffid Ranch, in the old sense. The original business plan for 2020 was to expand the previous range and scope of touring shows, even down to the first shows outside of Texas since the first show in 2008. Well, we all know how well that went: after last March’s Nosferatu Festival in Austin, every event, expo, fair, and gathering planned for this year has been rescheduled for 2021, tentatively rescheduled for 2022, or point-blank cancelled. Worse, thanks to COVID-19 resurgences, cities that planned to reopen for large gatherings reconsidered those strategies, and even more shut down in the last couple of months. Last week, the Aquashella Dallas aquarium show announced that it was rescheduling for 2021, leaving one show still on the register: the North American Reptile Breeders Conference Arlington show, running on September 26 and 27.
To give credit to the NARBC staff and the crew at the recently renamed eSports Expo Center (formerly the Arlington Convention Center), the NARBC staff mandated masks and cleanings, hand sanitizer stations were spread throughout the area, and everyone at least tried to encourage social distancing and basic hygiene. Even so, there were just enough attendees who promptly ripped their masks off as soon as they entered, as well as arguing that “masks don’t work,” that things remained more than a little uncomfortable through the weekend. Barring more stringent ordinances in Arlington requiring mask use, this is probably the best that it’s going to get: subsequent NARBC shows, either as a vendor or as an attendee, are going to be contingent upon an effective COVID-19 vaccine.
Even with all of that, the overwhelming majority of NARBC attendees were as usual: unfailingly polite, curious, and friendly, with a lot of really thoughtful questions and suggestions, and I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t miss that interaction. It was obvious that they missed it, too, especially based on the response to news about the Sunday morning porch sales at the gallery through October. And this, friends, is why I do this.
There was one other bright side to all of this: it was a matter of discovering that even with six months between shows, the porch sales kept the organizing juices flowing, so setup and breakdown was much easier than it was with the NARBC spring show last February. Of course, being in the middle of a simply glorious Sarracenia season didn’t hurt, so those who wondered about the lack of pitcher plants and Venus flytraps at the last show were dutifully impressed. Best of all, even with a sudden return of hot and sunny weather that OF COURSE came over the weekend, the weather was cool and clement enough that everything was exploding with new growth. A lot of new people went home with new plants, and this is hopefully a harbinger for the October Porch Sales as well.
And finally, a shoutout to Adeline Robinson, the artist responsible for the new Triffid Ranch poster on display at 2020 events, whom I finally met in real life this weekend. Among other things, I ransacked her selection of herp-themed stickers, so now I could tell my wife Caroline that I was coming home with a crocodile monitor and she couldn’t do anything about it. Adeline was also responsible for the design for the NARBC Tinsley Park shirt, which you should snag at the first available opportunity.
To be continued…
Comments Off on The Aftermath: NARBC Arlington September 2020 – Introduction
One more time: no Sunday morning Porch Sale this weekend, because the Triffid Ranch will be out at the NARBC Arlington reptile and amphibian show, so look for the new banners. Bring your masks and hand sanitizer, because it promises to be a hoot.
Posted onSeptember 24, 2020|Comments Off on State of the Gallery: September 2020
Well, it’s been interesting. Six months into a pandemic, and we’re not all dead yet. Pining for the fijords, maybe, but at least we aren’t at the “have a drink and walk around, I’ve got a lot to think about” stage yet. At least we haven’t hit the “Aside from THAT, Mrs. Kennedy, what do you think of Dallas?” stage of denial, for which we should all be exceedingly thankful. It’s all about the little things.
To start, it’s been really rough for carnivorous plant growers and sellers over the last two years, so please offer solidarity and respect to Sarracenia Northwest, which had to evacuate the wildfires tearing up Oregon east of Portland. Both Jacob and Jeff are fine, and they’re trying to get caught up on back orders, so please feel free to show them more love. (Both of them were very patient and considerate with me when I was first getting into carnivores, so I owe them a debt I simply cannot repay. Seriously: they’re good folks.
On the gallery side, the renovation continues, if only as a demonstration that Tetris games are much more fun on the other side of the screen. For those who missed the previous update, the current final liquidation sale of the Pier 1 chain gave an opportunity to revamp and update the shelving in the gallery, as the Lundia modular shelving used by Pier 1 was both easier to modify and adjust and more tolerant of the, erm, impressive weight of some of the larger enclosures. This, of course, meant clearing off the existing shelf units, finding places for everything in the interim, sealing and finishing the new shelves, putting the shelves together (much more difficult than originally thought), and moving plant enclosures back onto the new arrangements. Even small changes led to massive cascades as far as improvements in storage and rearrangement of assets, so what was intended to be a quick one-week switchout turned into something that should be complete and ready to be viewed by the middle of October. I now have nothing but respect for museums needing to reorganize their stored collections, because it just grows.
On the subject of shows and outside events, after the weekend of September 26, we’ve got nothing. We just got word today that the aquarium trade show Aquashella cancelled all of its events for 2020 due to COVID-19 safety concerns, including the planned Halloween Weekend show in Dallas, and pretty much everything scheduled for November and December has been delayed until 2021. To date, the only remaining show for 2020 is the NARBC Arlington reptile and amphibian show on September 26 and 27, and that one is only continuing because of a recent upgrade of the Arlington Convention Center’s air filtration system, limits on the number of people in the convention center at any given time, and mandatory mask compliance. If there’s any good out of this, it’s that a lot of 2021 events are already prepaid, with the presumption that this won’t be ongoing through then, too. (And boy howdy, am I glad that the Triffid Ranch was considered too small-potatoes for the Dallas Art Fair, because to be caught in that mess…)
(As an aside, the official schedule for the Oddities & Curiosities Expos, including Dallas’s and Austin’s shows, comes out on Halloween. 2021 probably won’t be the year the Triffid Ranch appears at shows outside of Texas, but the intent is there.)
With the implosion of the local and out-of-town show community, the focus for the rest of the year will be on gallery events, both inside and outside. What makes October particularly bittersweet is that our neighbor, Visions of Venice, is moving out on Halloween weekend for a larger, more accessible locale in Dallas’s Design District, and it wouldn’t be right not to have one final sendoff before Stefano sets up in his new location. Details will follow, not just for a limited-engagement indoor event in mid-October, but for a freshly available outdoor event on Halloween Day thanks to the Aquashella cancellation. As always, the Sunday Morning Porch Sales run through the whole of October: we currently have tentative plans for similar events in November, but that also is up in the air.
Other than that, things go well, and with impending weather weather, expect a lot of new enclosures and enclosure concepts. See you around.
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Posted onSeptember 23, 2020|Comments Off on Sunday Morning Porch Sale: September 20, 2020. Life’s No Fun Without A Good Scare.
For those who didn’t get up on Sunday morning until the clock officially read “afternoon,” September 20 was a sterling example of why so many Dallasites tolerate our brutal summers. After months and months of running from the rising sun like the characters in the classic Ray Bradbury story “Frost and Fire,” there’s nothing that compares to the feeling of standing outside on a cool September morning in direct sun without burning the first four layers of skin clean off. Best of all, this morning also meant a cavalcade of plants.
The only downside to the end of September is the excess of riches. Dallas was already famous for its explosion of outdoor events in September and October, even before outdoor events became a near-necessity for safety and sanity, and we’re currently looking at an outdoor exposition explosion that’s simply unprecedented in the city’s history. This isn’t a complaint about how people have so many options and limited weekend time: this is a complaint that I can’t be in 18 places at once on a Sunday morning. We should all have it this rough.
Just as a reminder, September 27 won’t have a Sunday Porch Sale: the whole schmeal is moving to the NARBC Arlington reptile and amphibian show on September 26 and 27, complete with masks and lots of hand sanitizer. However, they’re coming back in October, with a vengeance, so make plans now.
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A little resurfacing between gallery renovations and preparations for this coming weekend’s show at NARBC Arlington: no Porch Sale on September 27, but the details for the October Porch Sales are now live. After that, both impending winter dormancy for about half of the carnivores and rapidly declining weather conditions in the Dallas area mean that outdoor events will have to wait until 2021. Spread the word.
Well, this weekend is going to be considerably more quiet than last: no interviews, no movie commentary, and just the last of the Sunday morning Porch Sales for September (on September 26 and 27, the Triffid Ranch will be at the NARBC Arlington reptile and amphibian show). The Porch Sales will continue through October; no word about subsequent interviews, but if they happen, I might tell the story of how I got my record with the FBI.
Posted onSeptember 14, 2020|Comments Off on Sunday Morning Porch Sales, September 13, 2020. Go Big or Go Extinct.
New week, new challenges for the Sunday Porch Sales. New tent, new neighbors (in particular, the owner/proprietor of Caroline Crawford Originals), and a spectacularly beautiful day in which to throw a gathering. Combine that with returning customers, new ideas for a brand new enclosure commission, and a pair of dear friends who haven’t been out since the lockdown started, and it couldn’t have been a better day.
Not only did doubling the tent space work out, but this is going to be the ongoing trend for the rest of the season. I won’t be out for the Porch Sale on September 27 (that weekend is reserved for the NARBC Arlington reptile and amphibian show, barring a last-minute cancellation and rescheduling), but the Porch Sales will continue through October, and we’re definitely repeating the fun on September 20.
For those contemplating coming out in the near future, the next Porch Sale runs on September 20: you don’t have to sign up for tickets to attend (the Eventbrite listing is to make sure that the Porch Sales get picked up by various news venues through the greater Dallas area), and it’ll run its usual 7:00 am to noon schedule. See you then.
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Posted onSeptember 13, 2020|Comments Off on Video Hyped the Carnivorous Plant Gallery
In the middle of a pandemic, and right in the middle of a much-needed gallery renovation, there’s still more than enough time to hang out with Loyd and Charles of Texas Frightmare Weekend and talk up carnivorous plants. Sadly, the planned Twitch Prime showing of Annihilation didn’t happen because Amazon removed it from Prime streaming just that day, but we still had a lot of fun with Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things. (Right now, we’re talking about doing this again in the future, and I’m going to recommend the best documentary on maintaining and cultivating heirloom roses ever made.)
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And it’s a busy safe weekend: Friday belongs to gallery renovation and new shelf installation, Saturday belongs to Frightmare HQ video (an interview at 2:00 pm Central and a guest host for a Twitch Prime Watch Party screening of Annihilation at 7:00 pm Central), and Sunday to this week’s Porch Sale. To paraphrase one of of great philosophers of the Twentieth Century, Paul says check it out.
Posted onSeptember 8, 2020|Comments Off on Sunday Morning Porch Sale: September 6, 2020. Look For The Union Label.
The Triffid Ranch Porch Sales have now run for long enough that new folks arriving ask about some of the Triffid Ranch standards, and one of those is asking about the Shirt Price specials. Since outside temperatures are dropping enough that bringing out more enclosures is a reasonable option, and because people take a look at the Larry Carey original on the banners in front and back and ask “Where can I get one of these?”, it’s time for reminder.
The Shirt Price option is really quite easy. All you have to do is wear a Triffid Ranch garment to any event (Porch Sale, outdoor event, indoor event, or open house), and you automatically qualify for a discount. Enclosures display both the standard price and Porch Sale price, and everything else gets at least $5 off the standard price. The garment doesn’t matter (T-shirt, sweat shirt, tote bag, hoodie, tank top: they all qualify), but buying it and then letting it sit at home doesn’t cut it: the Shirt Price discount only applies if you’re wearing it to an event. (Sadly, it’s also not cumulative: wearing a shirt, hoodie, and hat won’t increase the discount, although you WILL get accolades for your fashion sense and your enthusiasm.) Even better, for those who really like the pattern, the store also offers posters, stickers, stationery, and laptop sleeves: feel free to put a little Larry Carey all over the place.
As to what I get out of it: not a thing, other than satisfaction. Larry is a dear friend and former boss, and our morning work break discussion sessions were instrumental in inspiring a lot of the enclosures seen at the gallery today. He’s no longer in Dallas (he moved to Eugene, Oregon for a new job about two years ago), but since he refused to take payment for the original poster design, the Shirt Price program both guarantees that he gets payment off every purchase (any shirts I sell at shows and events are ones bought directly from his Redbubble store) and exposes others to his work. While it won’t give you a discount with the Triffid Ranch, take a look at the rest of his Redbubble shop: the odds are pretty good that you’ll find something suitable for family and school reunions, baby showers, tailgate parties, job interviews, and any other situation where, to steal from Bill Griffith, “if you can’t say something nice, say something surrealistic.”
Since the weather and the lineup keep surprising, the Triffid Ranch Porch Sales continue through September 20: the only reason one isn’t running on September 27 is because the whole kit and kaboodle will be out at the NARBC Arlington reptile and amphibian sale at the Arlington Convention Center that weekend. (If the NARBC show is cancelled between now and then, the Porch Sale is on for the 27th.) As for October, the plan now is to keep them going through the whole of the month: after that, we’ll figure out options, as it’ll just be too cold in the morning for tropical plants and too late in the season for the plants requiring a winter dormancy. It’ll all work out.
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Sunday morning, it’s the Triffid Ranch Porch Sale. Friday night, though, take the time to hook up the Panoptikon DJ streams, in fond reminiscence of when Labor Day weekend always marked the beginning of Happy Goth Season in Dallas.
Posted onSeptember 3, 2020|Comments Off on New Developments and Upcoming Events
The COVID-19 shutdown of Dallas art events continues, and with it, a lot of events throughout the rest of Texas. The complete dissolution of shows for 2020 has been rough, but it could be worse (I really feel for the art galleries stiffed by the Dallas Art Fair, even considering that the combination of “Dallas real estate developer” and “wannabe world-class art fair” always promises a world of madcap fun), and the only thing we can do is be proactive about it. Hence, while things are quiet outside, it’s time to tear things up indoors.
Firstly, while the cliche “one door closes while another opens” is especially overused in Dallas (where it’s usually applied in reference to “the real estate developer who just ripped you off has friends who’d like to take advantage of your naive faith in human nature”), sometimes it applies. The collapse of the Pier 1 retail empire hit home hard, as a very dear friend was at ground zero at its Fort Worth headquarters when the announcement went out, but it also gave an opportunity for a serious gallery renovation. Combine heavy-duty Lundia shelving (with additional support in the center of each shelf) with a massive fixture sale at a nearby Pier 1 location, and this means that a long-planned Triffid Ranch renovation happens right when traffic is slow. Everybody wins. Keep an eye open for further updates, because by the time the upgrade is done, you won’t recognize the place.
In other news, everybody who already had plans to attend the rescheduled Texas Frightmare Weekend horror convention at DFW Airport already knows: the planned September 11-13 show was bumped to next May. The news was depressing on multiple levels, mostly because of the number of us who actively look forward to Frightmare every year, as attendees and as vendors. The only good news out of that justified and justifiable cancellation is that the Frightmare crew continue to keep their virtual schedule extremely busy with the regular Frightmare HQ video streams. I bring this up because on Saturday, September 12, the Triffid Ranch goes live with what everyone would have seen had we been able to come out for the weekend. To quote a mutual inspiration and Dallas icon, you’ll boogie ’til you puke. Just pick your favorite streaming video flavor, and we and the plants will see you on September 12.
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Posted onSeptember 3, 2020|Comments Off on Sunday Morning Porch Sale: August 30, 2020. The Benthic Edition.
One of the first Texasisms I was taught upon first moving to the Dallas area in 1979 was “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.” Especially in North Texas, this understates the situation. While the summer so far has been remarkably mild, on a par with 1987, the last two weeks were as if someone decided “Wait a minute. This is TEXAS. We’ve got to get in a whole summer before Labor Day!” That’s pretty much what we got: hot and sunny every day, with a south wind that dropped relative humidity through the floor and sucked the moisture out of everything it caressed. The finale was on August 29, where the Dallas area broke a heat record last set when my in-laws were newlyweds and the famed Dallas “drought of record” was still raging. That Saturday night wasn’t much better: grass crunched under feet, opening the greenhouse door caused half the plants to wilt because of the oppressively low humidity, and the air was full of the smell of burning flint.
That was Saturday. Sunday started off with roiling thunderclouds and lots of flashing, but we get a lot of false alarms about rain in the summer. About an hour before opening the Porch Sale, though, I looked off to the west and thought “Hmmm, we have a wall of water coming right for us.” That wall of water hit, and kept coming, and kept coming, for the next three hours. The parking lot in front of the gallery became a kayak course, and it kept coming. The shrubbery and grassy medians in the industrial park started turning green again, and it kept coming. Honestly, it got so bad that I expected my sister to arrive and yell “For he IS the Kwizach Haderach!” For three solid hours, the rain kept coming, and then we got what we always get when a gullywasher storm hits. That is, full sun, light breezes, and that strange hum that we get at the end of every summer, where the earth slurps up every last drop of moisture and realizes that there’s still plenty of room for more.
The better news on all of this is that we’re going to have a stranger September than previously expected. For those outside of the Dallas area, the end of summer is a matter of perspective out here, because it ends when it ends. Normally, what most people call “summer” ends in the last week of September to the first two weeks of October, when we finally get rain, and the first day that might actually justify pulling out jackets and sweaters hits in the second to third week of October. (This doesn’t always hold true: November 2017 was best remembered for temperatures more suited for June, as I discovered the hard way upon having a gallery in a dying shopping mall where the owner didn’t want to fix the air conditioning system.) This Sunday, though, even though much cooler than the last several weekends, promises to be the last day for the foreseeable future with anything approximating average temperatures, and that first jacket day is supposed to hit this coming Wednesday. Both the plants and I can’t wait.
Anyway, the Porch Sales continue through September, and because the weather promises to be so much better than the usual Labor Day weekend conditions, this means a lot of new surprises. First and foremost is that this coming weekend, the Triffid Ranch tent is joined by Caroline Crawford Originals: it’s not quite the reopening of show season that we hoped to get in September, but it’s close enough. As always, masks are mandatory for everybody’s safety, and we’ll see you on Sunday morning at 7:00.
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