I went to the Bamboo Bakery Bridal Expo on the 12th. All the vendors were great. A Sophisticated View Photography's Johanna gave me free tickets ahead of time and she was SO sweet in person. The flower vendors were good. There was one that looked more like it did the flowers that hotels leave as an after thought, but Wolz's Florist had AMAZING stargazer lilly displays.
I only had a problem with ONE vendor. And it was so bad that the female minister who was close by listening and helping someone later sought me out to personally apologise to me and let me know that not all Americans or Christians thought and acted this way (I'm Muslim, but light so people thinking I'm Iranian isn't uncommon if they haven't heard me speak).
This "Chris Magic" character was trying to tell me that he can do magic with all kinds of currency and that he'd travelled all over the world and especially around the Middle East (I'm not Middle Eastern and said so, so why he tried to use that as a selling point is beyond me.) and had used their currencies. Instead of showing me his passport, he showed me cash from the Middle East that he had as proof he'd been there. First off, the bills were too crisp to have really been used that much. Second, I've bought a Middle Eastern currency travel pack at the airport exchange that looked JUST LIKE THAT, so obviously he's trying to bank on the fact people are naive or stupid and he's lying about travelling. And third, he was trying to impress me with "Arabic words" he'd been picking up. Like "I've head one that sounds like..." and he just strung together a few words that are common to the Muslim religion and used on CNN for news articles all the time and no common Arabic colloquialisms. I had already decided he wasn't a great entertainer by that point, but I wasn't insulted until his next statement. He said he'd hear the same words around him all the time around the areas with mosques and he was "hoping they weren't plotting something." So because the area was Islamic and the people were Muslim that means they can't just be having a conversation? They have to be PLOTTING something? Even if it was a made up story (as I don't believe he's really travelled... with that attitude, IDC what country he visited, the locals would whoop a racist or a bigot in 3 seconds flat. And he was having a go at Jewish Hebrew speakers too) it's STILL incredibly insulting for him to say something like that with my mother and I standing there OBVIOUSLY being Muslim as we're both in hijab! I was so stunned I was silent. And when I collected myself I had to bite my tongue literally to not give the man an ear full.
So with that I recommend AGAINST him. I mean, if he's that bigoted and trying to be fake-nice to my face about me, what other groups does he have a problem with? East Asians? South Asians? Africans? Latinos? He seemed more interested in making cultural slur jokes than in proving he actually had any skills as an illusionist because he didn't show me one trick. He showed me cash that had obviously never been used and you can buy easily as a travel pack at the airport as 'proof' he travels, but other than that, showed nothing. All around horrible person. And I'm ashamed FOR him that this poor minister woman and her husband thought it was necessary to tell me not all Christians were like that (since he had a cross on him somewhere apparently, I didn't notice it). It's a shame.