The way Cathleen Stevenson sees it, every August she and her husband, David, are smack dab in the middle of a four-day party called Indian Market.

The duo are celebrating 20 years in the same room in the same hotel — La Fonda on the Plaza — this weekend. The Dallas couple (he was born in Hobbs, N.M., and she is from Topeka, Kan.) always get the same room on the second floor with a view of Old Santa Fe Trail that enables them to watch the comings and goings below.

The Stevensons are among a horde of regulars who pour into Santa Fe each August to attend the world's largest exhibit and sale of American Indian arts and crafts, a gathering that is part commerce, part cultural event, part annual reunion and — for people like them — an opportunity for major-league people watching.

Sitting by the window with glasses of wine or beer in their hands, the couple, who have been married 33 years, seem less like serious art collectors and more like casual observers of the human race.

"We can get tired of being at the market, come up here, pull up a chair, and just look out the window," David said. "And in the 20 years we've been here, we've seen some amazing things. And maybe, over that period of time, three people have looked up at us.

"It's a window of entertainment."

They first came to Indian Market 21 years ago, in 1989, on a one-day journey from Taos, where they were attending a gallery opening for the late Indian artist R.C. Gorman. They tried to land a room at La Fonda, but without notice or reservations on Santa Fe's busiest weekend of the year, they didn't get far. So they did put their names on a waiting list for 1990.

In 1990, they received the room they currently have. They immediately liked it for the view, which was not impeded in those days by security devices that now allow guests to open the window by only 6 inches.

"I guess they don't want you hurling yourself down onto Old Santa Fe Trail," Cathleen quipped.

One Sunday afternoon, as a previous Indian Market was winding down, a man and woman in one vehicle had a run-in of some sort with several men in another vehicle. The woman urged her boyfriend into a fight he couldn't possibly win, which led him to get beat up before the cops arrived on the scene.

The Stevensons watched quietly from above as this all played out. "We didn't take sides in that one," he noted.

Once they saw a flatbed truck bearing an Amish buggy with a "For Sale" sign on it pull into the Plaza area. "That's just not something you see all the time in Santa Fe," Cathleen said.

Yet another time, on a Sunday evening, as Indian Market vendors were closing up shop, Cathleen spied two women dressed in traditional Japanese geisha garb standing down below on the street, silently smoking cigarettes.

"They just appeared, and then disappeared, and never appeared again," she recalled. "And we couldn't find any reason for them to have been there; it's not like there was a Kabuki performance happening around here."

From their window, the couple keep up a running commentary about the fashion styles they see on the street below. Categories include Best Dressed and Most Jewelry Ever Seen On a Single Human Being.

"There's a bright line between dressing tastefully and crossing into costume," Cathleen explained.

They do shop though, usually for her Christmas gifts. She'll find something she wants as a present, let him know where it is, and then pretend to forget about it while he goes to buy it for her.

Otherwise, they prefer to observe the buy-and-sell that happens in Santa Fe this time of year. "We would never pay $12,000 for a belt buckle, but we love watching other people do it," David said.

Saturday, for instance, they watched as visitors considered purchasing a $44,000 choral concho belt at one Indian Market booth. David figures that's the most expensive piece of fashion art they've ever encountered in all their years here.

They also visit Santa Fe three or four other times during the year, including holiday visits around Christmastime. They don't necessarily stay in the same room for those trips, but they do stay at La Fonda.

They love the place. "You can't beat the location, the legend, the art, the hand-painted furniture and the staff," Cathleen said. "You either 'get' La Fonda, or you don't. It's very individualistic."

"It has a real funky feel to it," David chimed in, noting that they like to dance to the country music of local legend Bill Hearne in La Fiesta Lounge downstairs at night.

The Stevensons have discovered there are other couples who come back to the hotel every year for Indian Market who have their 20-year record beat — though they're not sure those folks stay in the same room year after year.

"We're not the longest-running act in the hotel," Cathleen said. "Some people have been doing this for 35 or 40 years."

They'll be sad when it's time to leave Monday morning, but there's some comfort in knowing they have a reservation already lined up for next year.

And hopefully their children will start coming, and who knows — maybe the kids will eventually inherit their room reservation.

Contact Robert Nott at 986-3021 or rnott@sfnewmexican.com.