Show time!

January and February are two of our best months for shows. We are pretty well filled up this whole period, with either two overlapping shows (like this week) or a big one filling up all halls and most of the ballrooms and meeting spaces in the Big Hotel Casino Resort Next Door (BHCRND). That amounts to over 1,800,000 square feet, which is quite a lot. I like it quiet here when no one is in the building, like it has been the past few weeks, but it is interesting when the halls fill up and we have 100,000 people wandering around. It does mean changes and busy times, but that is what results in a paycheck.

We like it because it means free food. Whenever there is a show where we serve food the employees get vouchers to use at any of our food outlets. For setup days like today that just means salads and sandwiches, but when the shows open tomorrow it usually expands to things like a full soup and salad bar, taco bar, pasta bar, or our fav the carvery with hot roast beef and turkey meals. Employees at the BHCRND have their own Team Member dining room where they get to eat free every day, but over here in the convention center we don’t have all of those fancy things. It’s good food, employees that worked here when the BHCRND first opened got to eat there for the first year or so, and all said they gained much weight.

I’m listening to my New Zealand radio station Zed FM and they were running an ad about themselves, trying to get companies to buy ad time. They said that they reach over 150,000 people a week, and in a radio ad you can say just about anything to get people’s attentions. Then in the background a voice yells ‘George Bush sucks!’, and the announcer responds, ‘yes, I guess that works’. Don’t know if you would hear ads like that over here. And I love the accents. (oh, sorry for the diversion)

Back to our shows, looking through a list of photos I have uploaded and not linked to I came across a set from a show last January, so it looks like it is almost time for it to roll around again. This one was for the construction industry, and dealt with things that go on flat areas like floors and walls and countertops. (not putting up the name so it will not be Google linked, figure it out yourself). There was a million square feet of all kinds of coverings, from wood to carpets to granite and tile. This is the one that they usually build a few houses inside of the upstairs hall in order to show off things in actual use. Yes, a full 1,500 square foot two story house goes up in four days and comes down in one. Well, there is no electrical or heating or plumbing, but it still looks like a house. With very nice floors and curtains and kitchens. Most of the items are packed back up for the next show, but anything cut to shape like carpets or wood floors are just thrown away. I tried to get some of the discards last year, as we want to put hardwood down in our family room, but the do it yourself click together hardwood that they lay down is also glued, so that it will not come loose during the five day shows, so it can’t be taken apart and used again. I hit up the guys in this booth, which had about 20,000 square feet of very expensive and pretty wood put down:


But they are the ones that said it was glued, and a fork lift just comes along at the end, tears it up and puts it into a dumpster. But I was free to come saw it into panels and take whatever I wanted. Yes, I was tempted as it was just so pretty.

Here is what show setup looked like


This is what that fancy booth looked like as it was being put together. They put up those stylized trees overhead.


There was a lot of carpet around, most on the panels they display in flooring stores



But mostly last year was wood




But there was some tile


And also equipment to keep it all clean


And floors like this. I thought this style went out back in the 60’s, but I guess psychedelic drugs might be back in style making this look good.