Psychic Fair Proves Unpredictable for sixth year in a row

January 9, 2007 | by Sam G | No Comments

by Sam Goldsmith for Crooked Street Press

Storm clouds are brewing over this year’s Bay Area Psychic Fair scheduled for the last week in January. The annual outdoor event has faced severe weather conditions every year for the past six years, shutting down within hours of opening. With such bad luck for so many years in a row, many vendors question the expense of making the trip again this year.

“It’s not like we’re cursed,” said Lorenzo “Bunny” Baldetti. “I just don’t know what the big deal is about moving to an inside pavilion.” Baldetti and his wife are one of several hundred spiritual and phenomena-oriented vendors. They are weighing in on whether to bring their world-famous chakra and bran flapjack van to this year’s fair.

“Sure it’s weird that we keep getting rained out, but do you think the fair leadership has such bad karma that we’re looking at another storm this year? I don’t think so.”

The Bay Area Psychic Fair is the brain child of North Bay astrologist, herbalists,

palmists and radical aura cleaner, Flo Pinkney. It was the new millennium and a time to cash in on the general public’s appetite for feng shiu, crystals and the need to take our spiritual animal for a walk now and then. Fairs for tattooing, guns and jousting were outgrowing their venues and so the Psychic Fair was born. In it’s first year, despite intermittent thunderstorms, the attendance over three days was impressive. A message was sent out into the aura and vendors lined up for booth space.

“Who could predict our success? Certainly not me!” laughed Tarot Reader and Bay Area Psychic Fair trustee, Shabazzzz. “It’s nice to have a local fair with such international interest.”

Shabazzz is alluding to the many Asian, Latin and European vendors who prove that there are crazy people in just about any culture. Each year the unexpected storms have washed away what many saw as prime marketing territory. Stockton numerologist and Beauty Salon owner, Darcy Poe, sees big dollars for the fair if the weather would only give them a break.

“Vendor fees have gone up considerably despite the fact we haven’t had a complete fair in the past five years.”

She says that too many people have their palms out and it’s not so they can be read.

It’s that the Fair hasn’t tried to influence the weather. In 2002, a rain maker was flown out from Paris, Texas to for-stall any precipitation that might challenge the opening night festivities. Concessions were made along the lines of sacrificial poultry (a defrosted Albertson’s fryer) and modesty robes provided by Massages by Rob. The Rain Maker engaged in very brief, but dramatic and high pitched incantations only to be driven back to his van by hail the size of Mini-Wheats.

“We looked at indoor arenas this year”, confides long time attendee and hair and foot analyst Milton Greenblat. “There are some Asian comic conventions that have sucked up everything in our price range. We considered the Cow Palace but many Far Eastern Spiritualists have a problem with the facility’s name. We’re working on a back up location and are holding our fingers that this year the rain will stay away.”