This research examines the history of the Northern Renaissance Pleasure Faire, a "hippie" or counterculture festival that generated millions of dollars through the sales of handcrafted objects, dramatic presentations, and the creation of a social space that promoted and allowed hedonistic indulgence. This research centers upon the exchange of aesthetically marked goods, especially the pre-exchange narratives and interlocutor performances between partners. The exchange context allowed micro-political acts in the recognition of status for the traded object as art, craft, or junk, and the people who made them as artists or not. Since there was an element of price flexibility for the objects traded, pre-exchange "negotiations," served to establish an object's qualities, utility, and, ideological components. This affected the perception of the object and the maker, and, consequently, the exchange value of the object. Patron/artisan interaction concurrently enacted representations of class and social organization and precipitated conflict within the exchange sequence where rituals of exchange could fail. The patron's "power," derived from the artisan's need for capital, could drive production and interaction, from the artisan's point of view, in an undesirable direction, specifically undermining shared ideological and moral values within the counterculture community that operated the event, and, in this case, their ability to maintain community coherence. The author maintains the data represents an example of how power on the most local level draws authority from ideologies of the American "mainstream," particularly in relation to capital and individuality, which works to homogenize cultural differentiation and control social organization.