Those of you who have paid attention will
recall that the San Francisco Pen show has a fairly long, but
discontinuous history. Begun about fifteen years ago by three local
collectors, Greg Clark, Mike Jennings and Saul Kitchener, the show
has gone through the hands of several different proprietors before
coming into the hands of the current organizers, Ricky Chau, Todd
Eberspacher and Syd Saperstein, the Wahlnut and proprietor of the
modern Wahl-Eversharp company. At each juncture, the show has
stopped, sometimes for a few years, seemingly dead, but in reality
just resting. And over the years, the show has also gone through a
series of locations from downtown Oakland, to suburban Alameda
County, to the San Francisco Peninsula.
All of this as prelude to the fact that
wherever it has been held, whenever it has been held, whoever the
organizer and whatever the problems that have prevented it from
becoming a regular fixture on the show circuit, the San Francisco
Show, like The Dude, abides.
So why does this show persist? Quite simply
because San Francisco is a great venue for a pen show. Not only is
this a fine travel destination, but there is a good, strong pen
community that has been built up over the decades.
And that brings us to this year’s show, held at
the Sofitel Hotel in Redwood City, a fine, central location with
easy access to various sites throughout the region. Because I travel
a lot, one of the main attractions of this show is to sleep in my
own bed, but from what I saw and heard the hotel was just fine. They
appear to have liked hosting us and the organizers seemed happy to
be dealing with them.
But at the end of the day, the measure of
success for any show is the opportunity to see friends and to buy
and sell and trade pens. And here this show shone. Despite the fact
that this is, essentially, a first year, regional show and it came
just two weeks after the DC Show, there were a wide range of sellers
set up who spanned the continent, including Paul Erano and Mario
Campa from New York, Susan Wirth from the midwest, Lee Chait’s from
the southeast and even Andy Lambrou from England. They were
complemented by a range of regional collectors and dealers,
including Bittner from Carmel, Arizona Pens, Stuart Hawkinson from
Portland and nibmeisters Mike Masuyama, Greg Minuskin and John
Mottishaw from LA. These visitors were complemented by a wide range
of local collector/dealers including Roger Cromwell’s Penopoly,
Terri Morris’ Peyton Street Pens and too many others to list here.
Finally, weekend traders came from across the continent, drawn not
only by the show, but by ties to the area. In short, there was
everything and everyone present to make up a “real” show.
Andy Lambrou
But, I have seen shows where everyone was
dressed up and no one went to the ball. Not so here. Despite
problems with publicity the customers came. But then clientele has
never been a problem for this show. In the past I have both bought
and seld well and this year was no exception. As in the past, my
sales for the show were surprisingly comparable to the earlier and
much larger Washington DC show and I was not the only one. The vast
majority of dealers with whom I spoke were more than pleased with
the commercial results and the organizers did their best to provide
amentiies, from a Friday night social, to food for dealers and
clients alike and onsite security so that we had to set up only
once.
In sum, this was a fine and a successful show
and certainly one that warrants consideration from those who may not
have come this year. The only question is “will there be a next
year?” Even before the show ended, the organizers seem to have
reached agreement with the hotel for next year.
So one can only hope to see more people at the
same site for more fun next year, and even if this show were not
local, I would be putting it on my calendar.
