Dear Art Deco Festival:

Dear Art Deco Festival:

While I applaud your range of street-meat (all of which made me nauseous to smell, because in this phase of the South Beach Diet, basically EVERYTHING makes me nauseous) and the unimaginable amount of tasteless crap being hawked on Ocean Drive, and while I applaud your mission to raise awareness of the Art Deco treasures that line Ocean Drive, and the area adjoining the same, I (unsurprisingly) have a complaint.

The ONE VENDOR I wanted to see was not there; I walked up and down Ocean hunting for it, for naught. I believe it is called Vintage Poster Art.

See, Art Deco Festival, I collect vintage posters. Not the "faux vintage" posters you were hawking at your table - I collect real, actual posters that were in existence before I was born.

I am willing to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on said posters, and then hundreds and hundreds of dollars to custom frame said posters.

And I need some for my Office. I wish I had more wallspace at home... but I don't.

Three years ago, I spent a grand on posters (and about a grand-and-a-half) to frame those posters. I'm ready to buy some more.

You had an abundance of ticky-tacky crap for sale, but only two kiosks that sold anything that was identifiable as an "antique" and those antiques were pages from old magazines. Snooore.

So, Art Deco Festival, we have some beef (on a stick.) I even dragged some out-of-town friends there, so I could have some second opinions about the expensive posters in which I was about to invest. About four stores in, they got bored and left, so I had to navigate the throngs of stiltwalkers and people dressed in Edwardian garb on my own, in search of my postertent...

WHICH WAS NOT THERE.

Art Deco Festival - how about we celebrate things "Art Deco," huh? I realize that you're not responsible for the content of the kiosks... but... this year was kind of a bummer.

Disapoinedly yours,

'Bee.