mallorys_camera | Please Unload Gun & Remove Ski Mask Before Entering

Jump: Park Rapids, MN → Walker, MN – City Park: 30 miles
RIGHT out of the lot to HWY 34 EAST
HWY 34 EAST to Walker
Arrows to a very tight lot…
Shows at 5pm/7:30 pm

It’s hard not to love a little town (Park Rapids) that puts a pawn shop in one of its historic old bank buildings whose door bears the following sign: Please unload gun and remove ski mask before entering…

Instructive in this context to compare Park Rapids with Wadena, the town the circus played the day before. Both are towns of about 3500 in Minnesota’s northern lake country; both seemed reasonably prosperous. In Park Rapids the circus played to packed houses both shows, must have grossed 10 K easily. In Wadena circus didn’t even break even; only 40 people showed up for the (canceled) first show.

The difference?

The sponsor.

Wadena’s sponsor was the local Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce collects dues from its members, it doesn’t actually need to do fund-raising events to cover operational costs. When they sponsor events, they’re doing it out of “good will” (always a nebulous concept.) They don’t exert themselves doing PR – which is what the circus needs from them, why the symbiotic relationship between circus and sponsor exists in the first place.

In Park Rapids, on the other hand, the local sponsor was the Lions Club and if there’s one thing Lions Clubs are good at doing it’s browbeating members to get on that phone and coax, cajole, bargain, bribe, blackmail, whatever it takes to push sales.

Moral of the story: it’s much better to have a networked sponsor than a business sponsor.

Today’s show is on the site of the biggest casino in Minnesota giving Chance the opportunity to gamble away all yesterday’s profits. Don’t know what he would have done if the show hadn’t made money yesterday. Pimped Chantal probably.

I continue to be very, very blue.