By SCOTT D. JOHNSTON

The Ocean Shores Convention Center Wednesday evening hosts an “Event Showcase” that offers area businesses the chance to learn about events coming to the North Coast this year. Three days later, the first major event of 2018 opens with the “Urban Unglued Dark and Gothic Market,” running 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday with free admission.

The Event Showcase has folks that are producing and promoting events offering details and fielding questions from local business operators and employees. In her email inviting businesses to the showcase, Convention Center Manager Cheryl Turner wrote, “It can be difficult to plan for staffing and product/merchandise spending without knowing what to expect from event attendance. Events and festivals often have their own dynamics that may or may not apply to your business. Therefore, this gathering and sharing of information has the potential to prepare you and your staff for making the best possible financial gains from each special occasion.” The showcase will include a dessert and hot chocolate bar prepared by Convention Center catering.

One of the early presenters at the Showcase will be new Ocean Shores residents Chuck and Gail Anderson, who will talk about the Urban Unglued event that they will participate in as vendors. Chuck writes “dark comic urban fantasies” as C.S Anderson. Through his Alucard Press, he has published 16 titles plus several anthologies over the past four years. Gail makes a variety of hand-crafted functional and decorative items that utilize fabrics printed with a dizzying array of pop culture themes and properties, such as her “Walking Teds,” teddy bear-style hanging ornaments with “Walking Dead” imagery.

Urban Unglued expects 40-50 vendors, all offering hand-made items with some sort of dark theme. That means gothic and dark art in many different genres and media, sculptures, taxidermy, tattoos, monster-theme items, costumes, horror and more. Many vendors and more than a few attendees show up in costume.

The Andersons count several Urban Unglued events among the 19 shows in 5 states they did last year. This will be their first show in their new home. In addition to live events, they sell his work through Amazon.com and her creations on the “Snowmanscorner” page at Etsy.com.

The couple has been doing advance promotional work for the event, which is organized by Puyallup resident Sherrie Vineyard and her Glitterpants Productions company. She has been producing bazaar-type retailing events that feature unique, handcrafted merchandise, for a year in the Seattle-Tacoma area.

Vineyard is also involved in “A Pirate’s Life For Us,” which takes place annually in Ocean Shores, this year from Friday, Jan. 12, through Monday, Jan. 15. She jumped at the chance to bring an event to coincide with Pirate’s Life, because she believes a few hundred modern-day pirates in town this weekend could generate a lot of additional customers, with much of the dark art merchandise offered appealing to that group. They are expecting a core of 500 or more who will come from the Seattle/I-5 corridor and likely stay overnight, because their marketing in those areas has been pitching this as a “destination event.”

Chuck said they see Ocean Shores as “an untapped market for alternative events,” and there “seems to be a lot of excitement” for the show here this weekend.

More information on the Urban Unglued event can be found on the Glitterpants Productions Facebook page.