The Barbies

These are a few Barbie Pictures----Seriously. Some of the pictures of the people are not great. I hated to ask them to stop so I could get a good picture. It would have been as if I were saying, "No one will believe this, please stop and let me take a picture!"

We were entertained nightly by "the Barbie's". I never gave a possibility of a Barbie conventiona a thought, ever. Evidently the Barbies meet once a year to have a gala, and the attendance has to be LIMITED to 1000. (Most years 800, but this is the 50th anniversary, so they upped the limit.)

I am not making this up---in fact I am pretty sure I do not write well enough to convey the intensity these people have for the shapley doll we call Barbie. They came from all over the world---Australia, France, Japan, England, Italy--just to honor this doll. They had a Barbie van, Barbie Beetle complete with a trunk that opened to become a make-up kit, a Barbie surf board, a Barbie bike, and a life-size Barbie dressed in a pink formal. They sold Barbie accessories, traded dolls, displayed treasures, and were awarded new Barbies every night. They had t-shirts, jackets, dresses, purses, hats, tote bags, shoes, flip-flops, sunglasses, and more with the Barbie logo on them.

They were not all women---there were a lot of men attending also. (Some were husbands--others were collectors?) At night they always had a "gala" and many would dress up. We saw a bride, a witch, a Supreme Court justice, men dressed like preppy Ken, women in Barbie suits, Hawaiian Barbie, Japanese Barbie, and 3 adults dressed in polk-a-dotted garb complete with Mickey Mouse ears. I will say again --- I am not making this up.

We saw women sitting at the bar with their Barbies standing (with aide of a stand) on the bar beside them. We met a young man from France who said he works for a TV station and has a Barbie sitting on his desk, so everyone knows he is a collector. He claimed that "Barbie has taken him to interesting spots for conventions, that he would not have otherwise seen." We agreed, although we did not tell him, that unless Barbie was paying for the trips, he could have gone to all these places without lugging a doll along. He seemed to be having a wonderful time with his six other French friends. So maybe it is a way to travel with companions instead of by himself?

They evidently gave prizes and awards because we saw people showing others what appeared to special stuff. Also, there was this one woman people kept saying "Congratulations" to. She would always reply, " Oh, thank-you, I am so happy." After observing her a few times, we are not quite sure whether she was heavily bo-toxed woman or a former man. Whichever, she was very happy.

All of these people were very nice and definitely enjoying themselves. The Fed-Ex and UPS people were kept busy coming to get loot that the conventioneers were already sending home, and we missed the last big hoop-la, where they were bound to get more. We were sad to miss the Saturday night entertainment. They were to have a musical extravaganza, complete with a few broadway performers. The songs were, of course, to feature Barbie in the 50's. This is all true, I promise!