1988 Democratic National Convention : The Vendors’ Lament: You Can’t Get Here From There

You want a good fight in Atlanta?

You want screaming, and carrying on, and people walking out angry?

Go to the floor.

Not the convention floor. The ground floor, the vendors’ basement--if you can find it.

“It is Siberia down here,” wails a lonely cookie-seller.

More than 200 vendors with a whole bazaar’s worth of souvenirs paid $1,500 each for booths here, which they learned too late are situated deep in the bowels of a building that is not even the convention hall. They are so far from the action, in fact, that you almost have to get lost to find them.

On Tuesday, concessionaires met with party officials, rode the escalators chanting “Exhibit Hall F! Exhibit Hall F!” and handed out their open letter (cc to Ronald Reagan).

With 15,000 media people here, they figured somebody had to be listening.

Said the cookie vendor, Bostonian Jack Crittenden, presiding dolorously over 30,000 unsold “Ducookies for Dukakis”: “I finally understand what George Bush means by deep doo-doo. This is deep doo-doo.”

“Please,” put in Clare McCully, the cookie recipe originator, only half-kidding, “tell our families to send money.”

Some Have Already Left

A day into the convention, some vendors had already packed up and gone home. Better to lose a little money, they reasoned, than a lot.

They came from Hawaii, from Africa, from down the street “to be included,” and to make a few bucks, says Nashville T-shirt vendor Eric Steinberg, who says he’s achieved neither.

Steinberg, with a stock of 500 T-shirts, is losing money. Edna Horace, from Liberia, is losing money--and had $2,000 worth of African clothes stolen to boot. Even the National Assn. of Chiefs of Police button booth is losing money. “We sold $160,” says student (and Republican) vendor Andrew Eisenberg. “If you don’t do $1,000 a day, you’re not even breaking even.”

It galls sellers to have to walk by a few official Democratic National Committee souvenir stands in the crowded upper floors of the World Congress Center--but vendors who have taken their wares up there say they have been booted back downstairs by police.

Vidalia Onions, Georgia Hams

It’s not like there isn’t something for every taste on sale. If you don’t want Vidalia onions, there are Georgia hams. Your choice, fur coats or T-shirts. Children’s books, or Illinois Sen. Paul Simon’s tomes--to help retire his campaign debt, “plus they’re good books,” urged the vendeuse.

Business may not be hot, but concessionaires are. Many of them are minority business people who staked a lot on this, and hoped for better things at a Jackson-smitten convention.

“We’re not selling nothing,” griped soul T-shirt seller Lee Jordan. “We’ve been ripped off.”

Lynda Sanford left a fledgling Chicago investment partnership to sell Jackson souvenirs in Atlanta; her friends “are up there making money and I’m down here making none.”

And Darryl A. Martin did not drive all the way from Houston to sell just three pictures and two Jackson T-shirts.

He pointed to an unsold bumper sticker reading “Democrat and proud. Equal opportunity for all.” “See that? That’s bull, “ he declared. “Don’t get us wrong--we’re entrepreneurs. We know there’s risk involved. But not rip-off risk.”

It’s like the advice about buying a house: The three most important selling points are location, location and location.

“We were told we’d be right next to the convention,” said Nashville’s Sharon Fitzgerald. “Ho ho ho.”

Crittenden pointed to a wall of off-limits doors. “We were misled into thinking those doors were the doors . . . through which 35,000 people would pass daily.”

Circuitous Route

Instead, delegates seeking souvenirs must thread their way out of the Omni, across the street, up a ramp, and down several escalators to the practically unmarked sales hall.

“Our feet are sore from getting here,” groused Minnesota delegate Patricia Miller.

On Tuesday, Democratic National Convention Committee official Arleigh Greenblat offered vendors two options: a 100% rent refund, on the condition that vendors release the organizers from any obligation; or a 50% refund and use of another, higher-visibility area “closer to traffic patterns,” extended hours, better advertising and directions--also with a release from further liability.

Staff writer Betty Cuniberti contributed to this story.