It is late March and more tourists are starting to visit the "Ancient City" once again. We've been through St. Patrick's Day which seems to be non existent in St. Augustine. We had Bike Week with lots of spillover from Daytona Beach. Tongue rings and dentures is NOT an attractive combination! Support hose and "Daisy Dukes" are worse.

The Public Market at Plaza de la Constitucion in St. Augustine continues into it's 5 th century of mercantile trade.

The vendors and artists are quiet now and getting along. The City functionaries seem to have relaxed their monitoring for awhile and all is well at the market. Even Mayor Gardiner and his wife could take a lovely stroll through the Plaza and was stopped only briefly by artist Scott Raimondo insisting that visual artists have separate ,reserved parking spaces along the Plaza.
Scott, the world does not recognize the visual artists contribution to humanity as we artists do. Give it up. It ain't gonna happen.

A new vendor, Mary tried selling her drawings and then tried offering kids a chance to color on paper for 5 dollars ( no takers). She has finally hit on "face painting" and for three dollars will paint your kids face with a butterfly or baseball or whatever. She has a habit of yelling out "FACE PAINTING !" to kids walking with their parents. Bad idea . It's like yelling ICE CREAM! The thing is , she's also yelling it out to 80 year old ladies on the way to Church. "You never know", says Mary. "Yes I do", says I. A cook from Harry's just met her and seems truly smitten. Perhaps a union blossoming here?

We will keep you posted on the happenings at the PLAZA DE LA CONSTITUCION in St. Augustine Florida.