Protect the Tent!

This past weekend, me and m’ladies visited NYC for a little weekend getaway to visit museums and libraries. Between our educational excursions, we also visited some water stops (bars) and made some snack stops (restaurants that have a liquor license.) 

One of the Mommies suggested we visit the Washington Square Outdoor Art Exhibit in Greenwich Village. It was a multi-block display of a wide variety of artisans showing their creations in 10×10 tents. While I was perusing their goods and chatting with the artists, I noticed that many of them did not have weights to stabilize their tent poles. Shocking!  These artisans spend their lives creating masterpieces and they do not secure the structure that showcases their treasures.  A friend of the WalkathonMaven pointed out that this was a blog post in the making!

A few of the Mommies dropped some coin at a metal-smith’s tent.  He had to hold the tent down with every gust of wind and told us that one of his displays kept falling over.  Oy!

 As a logistic luva, I took a bunch of photos with hopes that my walkathon pals will learn from their mistakes.  Most of you will rent your tents and the vendor will take care of the sandbags or lawn spikes to secure the tents so they do not blow away.   For those of you that bring along your 10×10 pop ups to events, here are some photos I took that show some interesting ways to weigh-down the poles:

Not sure an 8-lb water jug will do much good

A PVC pipe was filled with sand and topped with another piece of plumbing PVC

For safety’s sale, please secure EACH pole with a lawn spike when on grass and 30 lbs of weight when on concrete.

A cinder block