Woodland Arts Fair Peoplewatching

The Woodland Arts Fair has been running this weekend, about a block from my house, and I’ve been wandering down to peoplewatch (I really want to know the etymology for that term) whenever I get bored. The art itself was…the same honestly pretty awful crap as every year. Lots of trinket-y crap, some classic caught-in-the-moment scams (”Buy a little square of this painting” seems cool until you get home with an expensive 1×1” paint-splattered canvas square to …throw in a drawer or something). There were of course some genuine artisan pieces out, which were naturally out of the price range of any normal human being. That said I did spot Lee Todd and some other people who really might buy that kind of thing wandering around, so I suppose it isn’t a waste.
Art festivals are excellent places for peoplewatching, they have everything from sugar-wired little kids (best: alpha-child caused every kid in one of the playgrounds to start screaming) to crazy old people trundling around with walkers (best: I missed it, but I am told there was an old woman best described as “Shoe leather in a bikini top” browsing around), and every sort of weirdo in between. Another fun phenomena is that my Hawaiian shirt habit is in no way out of place there, although I’m about 20 years to young to fit in with the expected demographic for it. One worrying detail is that I’m totally losing my ability to guess ages; I’m not sure if it’s that I’m getting older, or that I’m out of practice or what, but I was reliably taking first impressions that were grossly incorrect: the “16-year-old” that set off a mental jailbait alarm…who on second inspection holding a beer. The “Probably about a college freshman”… who’s mate is pushing a stroller with a relatively old child in it. I’m sort of curious if there is some way to recalibrate that.