I love the Renaissance Faire. Every time I go, I think "I should have worn my costume" But I never do. I decided that next year, I will. If we go.
The Ren Faire is part street fair, part bad Shakespeare, part theater. I love looking at the booths and the items for sale, but frankly things are WAY overpriced. I admired a lovely shawl, but they wanted 65 bucks for it. Uh, just no. I paid too much to have my palm read. The woman WAS spot on however, so I need to take stock of her advice. This year, the faire seemed a bit more free-wheeling than t had in the past; there was no parade and I'm not quite sure I saw the Queen. There WAS a woman at the "Sonnet Slam" who looked like she could have been the Queen, but I didn't ask. As for the Sonnet slam? Meh. It seemed like a bunch of people who knew each other and were in on each other's jokes who read too quickly. The Faire crowd noise was so loud I could barely hear them anyway. That coupled with the attempts at fake Shakespeare, including BAD British accents made me long for a GOOD dose of the real thing ( Lisa Wolpe, when are you coming back to Los Angeles???)
I did have fun interacting with some of the roving street performers and people watching. The costumes, some of them anyway, were amazing, if not QUITE period. Some were really period and I wondered how many people from the Society for Creative Anachronism were there. There was a larger group of Steam-punk devotees next to us at the joust. Wrong Era, but the Faire hosted a Steam-punk weekend about two weeks ago, so maybe they had season passes. I was REALLY glad we had purchased our tickets online before we went. The box office line stretched WAY into the parking lot.
I love the joust. We stayed rather late to see it and our Champion won. I am not sure how choreographed the event is, at least the running-with-lances part. They did a very hokey sword fight in which almost everyone dies. Well, it was called the "Joust to the Death" so I suppose I should have expected it. It was just bad. It could have been campy but it failed at that. It was sort of reminiscent of watching elementary school kids have a mock sword fight ( oh wait they can't DO that anymore , schools have a zero tolerance for acting out historical fights) A let-down to a really nice horse-and -rider show.
I had a very nice cider when we arrived and after walking a while, although he said he wasn't hungry, I insisted Chris and I share something. The line for the fish and chips wasn't long so I went there. They were PERFECT. Piping hot and not greasy. Chris doesn't really eat fish but he enjoyed this, not in the least bit "fishy" tasting and just enough to keep us going. It was beautiful weather-wise and even with our pains, it was a fun day.
The trip HOME was a bit of a nightmare. We were pretty tired and decided to go home rather than try to find someplace for dinner. Traffic going through Pasadena was a nightmare. Beyonce. There were three people ON THE FREEWAY walking in traffic SELLING T-SHIRTS!!!!! ON THE FREEWAY. IN TRAFFIC. Making it worse as you tried to get in the lane that was not going to the Rose Bowl, they were blocking traffic hawking their probably counterfeit concert shirts. UGH. I came home and fell fast asleep on the couch,
As a Pasadena resident, I can sympathize AND emphathize with the concert traffic. I was coming home Saturday evening from the West, and traffic was tres horrible! At six in the evening - but luckily, I do know alternate routes. I will offer the suggestion, that had you plowed into at least one (if not more) of the shirt hawkers, you would have gotten off, since they were pedestrians on the freeway and therefore illegal. An idea for next time.
ReplyDeleteGee, I remember the few times I went to the Faire, back in the mid 70's - in costume (a monk, costume courtesy of my mother's sewing machine) not so overpriced back then, not such a big commerical thing back then - but very hot and dirty and dusty. Ah, well, I was young and stupid, what did I know?
Tom