Things You Don't Miss Until You Don't Have Them Anymore

If you've never visited Tucson, you don't know that the busiest month in Tucson is February. The reason is the annual Gem & Mineral Show. For over 50 years, gem and mineral dealers, collectors, buyers, and aficionados have been flocking to Tucson for three weeks every February to deal in gems, jewelry, minerals, fossils, and beads. It's a big, big deal.

The hotels all triple their room rates. If you want to eat at your favorite restaurant, you have to make reservations several days in advance. Rental car prices are hiked up and the agencies have to bring cars in from Phoenix to handle the demand. Traffic is insane. My normal half hour commute would take an hour during the entire month of February.

But there was also great fun to be had. Many of the show venues were wholesale only. Everyone you knew was asking each other, "Do you have a business license?" Anything to get in and see all the goodies to be had for a few dollars. To give you an idea of the sorts of items we could pick up:

• The Doubletree Inn had lots of vendors of African items. Just tonight I was working a bead crochet necklace with black seed beads and small African beads that I bought there two years ago. I got a two strings of these African beads for $2. I saw this same string of beads at the bead store near my office in Akron for $15.
  
• When I left my job at the Tucson Symphony, my boss gave me a lead crystal perfume bottle she had gotten at another venue. I had seen those perfume bottles sold at the show for $5 and later seen them at gift shops for $30.

Anyone in Tucson can tell you similar stories of deals gotten. And anyone who is as into beads as I am will just grin telling you about the various bead shows that are in town at the same time as the gem and mineral show. Best Bead Show, Whole Bead Show, … . There are about five large beads shows, each with no fewer than 150 vendors selling lampwork beads; silver, gold and Thai silver findings; charms; seed beads; wire; torches, glass, and all the equipment to make your own lampwork beads; — you get the idea. All the best-known lampwork artists in the world of beads come to town for the shows, and it's great fun to renew friendships.

And because of this February event, Tucson has become the place for beads. There are, as I recall, six or seven bead stores in Tucson, several of these having more than one location. If I can't find what I want at one place, I can find it elsewhere. I don't have to order online and guess at what I'm getting. I can buy local — go see the colors of all the seed beads, match up my thread and beads and findings and know what I'm getting. And it's all high quality merchandise. It's not Jo-Ann's or Hobby Lobby.

Boy, how I miss that!

There's a small store about four miles from my office in Copley. There are two more stores in Tallmadge, one small, one minuscule and rather boutique-y. There's nothing around Y'town or Warren or Boardman, that I've found. I've given in and bought some things from Jo-Ann's and Hobby Lobby and Pat Catan's, just to have something to do with my hands, but I hate spending the time on a project that's less than the high quality beads I'm used to buying in Beaucoup Congé or the other shops in Tucson.

So I buy online, and occasionally duck out of the office a half hour early on Friday so I can make it to Tallmadge before that store closes. And I just may have to plan a trip to Milwaukee in June for the Bead & Button Show. (Actually, Boston has asked me to take him to that show. He heard "button" and perked up!)

You don't even want to hear what I have to say about fabric stores!
(Okay, I'm a sick person. I spent the last half hour Googling fabric stores. Haberman's. Detroit. A half-hour closer to Youngstown than G Street Fabrics in Rockville, MD. If I leave from the office on a Friday afternoon, it would be an hour-and-a-half closer! It's a sickness.)