fbhjr

20 years now.
It's much, much better than it got in the first few years after.
We've got things to look forward to.
We're doing OK.
That radioactive, smoking, crater of what was our life is now well behind us.
The scars are what's important. It's the fact I'm here to have them.
But, I'm still sad...

https://fbhjr.dreamwidth.org/702907.html

Sunday the 10th of July was the 20th anniversary of when I registered the name “Phoenix Swords” and committed to us doing our own sword group. Our first show was a month later, which is a different anniversary.

But, over those 20 years and 2 days we have done:
401 different performances (I count day/sites as shows, not number of acts per day.)

There have been 114 people who have performed with us over that time. I’ve done the most of them at 382, my wife 370, then Tom at 243. No one else has done more than half.
The average number of performers we have at a show is 8.2. The maximum we’ve ever had is 24 and the minimum just 1.

We have, surprisingly, been paid $100,421 for those shows. That sounds like a lot, but divided by 401 shows is only $250.43 each. And, if you look at how far we drive to these shows, the number of folks we bring, and remember that is just gross pay without expenses, it’s good I work as an engineer too…

We’ve performed at 147 different locations, and as you can see, are often asked back to do other shows in the same location.
Getting there we’ve traveled 123,820 miles/199,268km.

We’ve performed in 16 different states in the US, but never crossed the Mississippi river for the western half of the country. (We’ve performed in the state of Mississippi, but not crossed the river…)
We’ve performed in 3 countries: USA, Canada & Germany

The average location of these shows is Hurffville New Jersey. That will move as soon as we do our next show. Right now it is in the parking area of a condo complex.

It has rained at 85 of those 401 shows making it 21% of the time. There was a point it was at 76% of our shows, so we’ve gotten much drier over the years.

On those 401 shows we’ve done:
Swords at 305 of them
Fire at 186 of them
Stage acts at 176
Sword lessons or games at 144
Puppets at 19
Dancing at 9
We often do more than one thing per show. And, I subcontract the dancing…

The shows have been:
230 Renaissance Faires
64 private parties (Halloween parties, birthday parties, etc.)
59 other fairs (town fairs, oyster festivals, autumn festivals, etc)
20 schools or libraries
19 business events
5 church fairs/events
4 on line shows during the pandemic

It’s really hard to say how many folks have seen our shows.
We used to perform at the Eastern States Exposition (The Big E) and there was one day we were there that they let 158,841 folks in the gates. I’m sure a very small percentage of them happened to by walking by us as we performed, but I don’t know how many.
This last Saturday’s show there were 1481 folks in the gate. Probably a bigger percentage of them saw us, but again I don’t know how many.
I know the smallest audience was 3 at a kids birthday party where it was him and his parents.
I don’t always get a count either.
So, of the 319 shows I have a count of the folks through the gate:
8 are 10 or less
96 are 100 or less, but more than 10
140 are 1,000 or less, but more than 100
66 are 10,000 or less, but more than 1,000
5 are 100,000 or less, but more than 10,000
4 are 100,000 or more

So, I guess a lot of folks might have seen our shows…

Today it has been 28 years since my wife and I got married.
So, we went to a Renaissance faire and bought new clothes from the shop we bought the clothes we got married in back in the day.
(I'd like to say it is because the old stuff wore out, but it is very well made and I still use the cloak...)

29 years ago, I asked my wife to marry me.
It was on the 9th anniversary of our meeting.
So, it’s 38 for that first meeting.
Not sure what to do for that tonight.
We’ll probably get pizza…

We were accused of being very dictatorial. But, it was our wedding...
http://www.phoenixswords.com/fbhjr2/plans.pdf