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Changes Behind The Scenes At Conch Color

Editorial by: Tom Oosterhoudt

As Conch Color continues through its fifth amazing year, breaking every record imaginable, I’d like to introduce our readers and advertisers to some of the new talented faces we have behind the scenes here. Leading up our sales team is Ronda Rinald, who has a lifetime of experience. Conch Color will be branching out with a lot of new projects this coming year, that we will soon be announcing, and it was obvious we needed to expand our sales team. Ronda also specializes in corporate ad sales, an area we are looking forward to conquering. I welcome her positive outlook and experience.

We have also changed direction again on our website with our new webmaster, Teresa Willis. Teresa is taking our website to yet another level, with her ability to ride the waves of advanced technology. As we enter our fifth year and fifth “season”, Teresa has used her high tech prowess to chart our website demographics, and recently demonstrated to us on a web map that Conch Color’s website is now getting thousands of hits a week, from literally all over the world. We have quite a following all over Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom. The biggest surprise was our following in Central America and even Cuba.

Of course our heaviest fan base is South Florida, but we also have a large base in both New York and throughout New England. On the West Coast we get hits from both Los Angeles and the San Francisco area.

Teresa has discovered that Conch Color actually gets hits each week from 246 cities worldwide, including Canada at this point. With this in mind she will be demonstrating how advertisers can use that incredible popularity and the Conch Color website phenomena to market their businesses and products. As we sail into our fifth year, the bottom line is that Conch Color has quite a following. If you are looking for surefire ways to improve sales, you owe it to yourself to check out Conch Color to get the most bang for your precious advertising bucks. Call our offices today at (305)294-7566 and one of our friendly sales reps will be more than glad to assist you.

This week was one of those weeks that we were fortunate enough to run into some amazing stories. I have known our young cover guy this week for over seven years, having met him in Bayview Park when he sold me some delicious banana bread he had made from his home grown bananas. At the ripe old age of 19, Paul is a young man of many talents. He is also a good writer and I have invited him to write for us as soon as things settle down for him. But he already has put a lot on his plate to have been home from college for a barely a week now. Welcome home, Paul!

The other intriguing story this week was meeting the guy behind Woodstock, Elliot Tiber. I was attending FSU in 1969, the year that Woodstock took place. With the success of Woodstock, several other American cities followed suit and staged their own three day rock festival/concerts. A few months after Woodstock, there was one held at the Atlanta International Raceway, just south of Hotlanta on I-75. I jumped into a car with several of my college buddies. With this friend, Mary Smith, at the wheel, we were off for a long unforgettable weekend. I got to witness many rock legends performing at close range, like Janis Joplin with her bottle of Southern Comfort that she managed to polish off during her performance. I also remember this new group (at the time), taking the stage at 3 am, called The Credence Clearwater Revival who played until dawn. Joe Cocker and Jimmy Hendrix were also there, along with every major rock group of the time. We slept, when we could, in the field surrounding the track. The weather was perfect, so things went a lot better than Woodstock in that regard. It was only about 300,000 people, but that was more than enough. We showered in the dorm showers at Emory University, not far up the road. I can still remember hopping around on the ground to Canned Heat’s “Going up In the Country”. Life was good....

So now a mega festival called “Gaystock” is in the planning stages for Key West. Sounds like a blast to me. Imagine a gay organized version of Woodstock right here, perhaps at Fort Zach. How cool would that be! We will keep you posted.

It looks like we will be warming up a little this weekend and get back to the tropical climate we all love. And remember, you can keep reading about all the great things that go on here in the Keys right here in Conch Color, the home of the good news.

Tom Oosterhoudt
Editor & Publisher

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