Moorpark crafts fair makes debut

Once-a-month High Street Market Day under way

By Enrique Rivero
Daily News Staff Writer

Article published Sunday, August 8, 1993

David Crane/Daily News

High Street Market Day draws crowds: "Mr. Blue," Randall Harold, paints a face on Andrew Chacon, 5, of New Mexico. Saturday marked the first High Street Market Day.

     MOORPARK - Sitting on a stool in his clown makeup on the corner of Bard and High streets, Randall Harold skillfully painted unicorns, exploding bombs and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on his customers' faces and arms.

     Wearing a bulbous red nose, a straggly black wig under a crushed brown hat and shining purple jacket, Harold lent a carnival atmosphere to Saturday's High Street Market Day, the first of what organizers hope will be monthly street fairs for local craftsmen to sell their wares.

     "This is my business, clowning around," said Harold, who is known in clowning circles as Mr. Blue. "It's been great; people are coming out of the blue, so to say. They're coming out for Blue."

     Harold was one of about 25 craftsmen who set up shop for the day at the street fair in the Old Town section of the city.

     The event came out of discussions among the 21 members of the Old Town Merchants Association, chairwoman Joy Cummings said.

     "It's mainly just to draw attention to our Old Town - that's the bottom line," Cummings said. "It's a really neat place and a lot of people don't know about it."

     Association members first discussed the possibility of holding the street fair about two years ago. But the process of obtaining the necessary permits from the city and toning up the street with park benches, flower pots and trash containers turned out to take longer than anticipated, she said.

     Cummings would have liked even more time to prepare.

     "This is really pushing it," she said. "I don't like to throw things together in such a short time, but it seems to have worked."

     "If the city gives us a permit," she said, the next fair is scheduled for Sept. 4, which is during Labor Day weekend.

     Crafts on sale ran the gamut from stuffed animals to dry flower displays, clothing to petroglyphs.

     Customers began arriving while Marie Duran was setting up her tiedye clothing stand.

     "This has been really nice," said Duran, who operates her business, called Merdan's, out of her Simi Valley home. "It's been a nice turnout and you couldn't ask for nicer weather."

     By about I p.m. she had sold about $400 in merchandise.

     Street fairs are full of unique items, said Thousand Oaks resident Joann O'Beirne, who bought a dry flower arrangement as a birthday
gift for a friend.

     "That is why I love to come; you find things that you can't find at the stores," O'Beirne said. "I love street fairs - I'm the ultimate street fair person."

     One merchant who had some trouble finding buyers was West Hills resident Jim Federico, who practices the art of etching pictographs on stone when he isn't on duty as a firefighter stationed at Point Mugu.

     But he wasn't discouraged by the low turnout. "You can't get discouraged by slow sales," he said. "If you do, you're not in the right business."