(There's an incentive: a $10,000 prize to the booth judged, by a Frieze art-star jury, to be the most innovative).
There is a prize for the best booth, awarded this year to the Sadie Coles HQ gallery, whose booth included work by Rudolf Stingel, Elizabeth Peyton, Sarah Lucas, Urs Fischer and Sam Durant.
"Some look only about rarity and some are systematic and collect only one kind of mineral," he added, pointing to the prize display in his booth, a grotesque group of naturally occurring "threads" of Saxon silver, found in an old German collection and dauntingly priced at about $58,000 each.
The contributions of Lower East Side galleries are especially strong, from Canada gallery's facsimile of the Brooklyn apartment of the artist Marc Hundley, cozily outfitted with works by other artists, to Simone Subal, who won a prize for the best booth by a young gallery, for her solo presentation of the Pop artist Kiki Kogelnik, who died in 1997.
As it happens, the blushy tone does wonders for tallowy New York winter complexions, and, more important, it sets off to advantage the booth's prize display: a 1901 portrait miniature of the future Kings George VI and Edward VIII, at ages 6 and 7 respectively.
There is carnival fare on sale such as funnel cakes and hot dogs; Texan specialities such as chicken-fried steaks and tamales; dishes I don't recognise including calf fries and foot-long shrimp corn dogs; and the who-knew prize goes to a booth selling "fried Coke .The rodeo announcer warns everyone that shots of the audience might be flashed on the big screen.
Gateway 2000 took the prize for congeniality since its booth was designed to look like a South Dakota ranch, the staffers tried to act like they were from the heartland.
Wendel parked himself at the Creative booth, offering prizes to any challenger who could beat him at his primary game, Quake 4. One contestant actually trounced him and won a Creative media player.
The Jianguo Week-End Flower Market features professional growers and amateur enthusiasts putting on a gorgeous display of their prize specimens in two hundred booths that line the market.
BELMAR, N.J. — Of course the boardwalk had changed over the last 100 years: Carousels switched to electric from gas power, sunblock replaced baby oil, stuffed animals supplanted cigarettes as prizes at the booths where the barkers found new ways to wrangle dollar bills from the tourists who flocked to the Jersey Shore.
