Rock disappointment
So we went to a show by “these people”:http://www.intergem.net/ in Baltimore today, and what a disappointment that was. “The Elf”:http://www.elfnoodles.com/ and I like to look in rock shops and collect tumbled stones and nice crystal samples, but there really isn’t much of that around here. We were hoping this “Gem and Jewelry” show would have a few tables where we could look at some nice rock specimens, raw or tumbled.
What it was, was booth after booth of jewelry and uniform stone beads. It’s amazing how they could get so many “independent” dealers in the same spot with exactly the same stock. The web site said $6.00 admission, but it cost us $7 each instead. And then when we got in, booth after booth of nothing but beads, jewelry cleaner, and cheap junk. There were only two booths that really stood out. One had some rough stone and quartz points mixed in with cheesy mass-produced stone carvings and prices about twenty times what we’re used to seeing. And the other was full of antique Tibetian metalwork, but since a fair amount of the antique Tibetian stuff on the market is actually stolen goods, we moved on.
People in Baltimore don’t know anything about crosswalks either. We nearly got wiped out twice on the same green walk signal. And let me tell you about the parking garage: six dollars for an hour’s parking. No parking attendant — you have to pay at a vending machine on the floor before you leave and hope it doesn’t take you fifteen minutes to find your car and get out of the place. And — I love this bit — they only run one of the elevators from 7 AM to 7 PM Monday-Friday. The one closest to the conference center they shut down on weekends. Beauty.
So not only was it a disappointing show, between the near crosswalk-killings and the expensive no-service parking garage I pretty much left hating Baltimore.
We *really* need a vacation.
