Cornucopia of Domestic Wares Awaits Visitors to Home and Garden Show
An usher hands you a map of the 35th annual Southern California Home and Garden Show as soon as you walk through the door.
Good thing.
Without it, you can quickly become lost in the labyrinth of more than 900 exhibits touting everything even remotely connected to home or garden, from stucco mix to perfume.
The six-acre extravaganza--which runs through Sunday and occupies four cavernous halls at the Anaheim Convention Center--is equal parts home show, swap meet and county fair, offering products and services to tempt any taste and income bracket. (Hours are 2 to 10 p.m. today, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $6.50 for adults; parking costs $5.)
If you want it, someone at the home show has it or can find it for you: candy, liquid fertilizer, food dehydrators, trash cans, encyclopedias, T-shirts, cowboy boots, coat hangers, 3-D cameras, insurance, jewelry, washing machines, Persian rugs, sunglasses, sod, citrus oil bug spray, toys, stir-fry spices and Swiss sewing machines.
If you are building a home or remodeling, you can consult with architects, kitchen cabinetmakers, power-tool vendors, roofers, masons, tile-setters, pool contractors, gutter-makers, garage organizers and mortgage lenders.
You can dip your finger in a bucket of wall texture coating.
You can sit inside the Spectra-Cell, a phone-booth-size portable infrared sauna, equipped with stereo at extra cost.
You can order a phone booth, tastefully done in oak, for your living room--a real conversation piece.
Susan (who did not want her last name used) says she has been doing a brisk business selling Ginsu knives, blades that have achieved cult fame on late night TV with their “Wait! There’s more!” sales pitch.
“I try to tone that down a little and just show people what they can do. People are most impressed when I cut the head of a steel hammer with the knife and then use the same blade to cut a tomato.”
By the third night of the show, which opened Saturday, Jeff Reiner had waxed the same patch of a car hood more than 100 times with his $15-a-bottle Liquid Lustre.
He is aggressive, stepping forward to call people over to his booth so that he can put his product through its paces.
“The idea is to get a crowd of people going. They’ll attract more people. You get 25 people to watch you, sell five or six and then they move on. Five minutes later, you do a new pitch to a new group. When you get good crowd days at a show like this, you can’t do bad.”
Rose-Ann Henry of Las Vegas has spent three years “doing the block,” as she calls pitching the virtues of the Absorb ‘n’ Dry, a sponge-like block of polyvinyl alcohol that is supposed to soak up anything, whether it’s “milk, Kool-Aid or the neighbor’s dog.”
“Orange County is a good show. Quality people. They pay six bucks to get in, five to park--they come to buy.”
Wandering the endless aisles and enduring endless sales pitches will probably make you hungry.
The smells wafting through the halls offer a menu of what’s available at the show. How about egg rolls for an appetizer, burgers and fries for the main course, a blender frappe of cabbage, beet, carrot, celery, banana, lemon and egg (shell and all) to wash it down, topped off with baklava or Italian gelato for dessert?
And before you plunge back in for one last run past the brass giraffes, self-watering flower pots and home organs playing the theme from “Fiddler on the Roof,” consider taking a break by strolling through the wind chime booths (electric fans provide the breeze).
Or perhaps stop in for a massage from young women at the various chiropractic booths or from vibrating chairs, cushions and assorted devices at various other booths.
And you might want to make you home safe from intruders.
Sandra Christiansen of Los Angeles says demand is heavy for the O-Mega Stun Gun, a little hand-held number that puts a 90,000-volt jolt into the bad guys.
A little too direct for you? All right then, about a dozen home-protection services are ready to sign you up and arrange to wire your home with the latest high-tech burglar alarms.
But if that seems too complicated, wander over to the Ark of Palm Springs booth and see if a life-size Doberman pinscher lawn statue might not do the trick.
