2008 September 14 | So Very Dark

…but not as far as you would think.

Today we went to the Pittsburgh Renaissance Festival. I haven’t been to faire in years and was craving some time back in time. Our friend and co-gamer Ginny had never been, so plans were made and excitement filled the air.

My personal diety, muse and/or guardian angel wanted to make sure I got the full experience, so naturally, plans were nearly aborted due to weather…the past two days have been made of torrential downpours and skys so dark it felt like bed time all day.

Okay, so that’s not a foreign feeling to me, but that’s beside the point.

Anyhow, last night the weather forecast was consulted and it promised a partially cloudy day, and that those clouds would not come bearing rain, so we continued on our original course, arriving at the site about an hour after the 10am opening.

Here is where I mention that, though it was no longer raining…well, percipitation doesn’t necessarily lower the average temperature out here the way it does in CA. And warm air holds a fair amount more moisture than cool air. What I’m getting at is, though the sky was clear and bright, you could almost drown walking through the parking lot and I was sweating in moments. Eww.

But no matter. I mean, at least I wasn’t wearing 10 pounds of garb. My t-shirt and pleated skirt were far lighter and cooler than the bodice, chemise, leggings, two skirts hat and belt hung with random junk that I would normally wear while enduring temperatures in the high 80s to low 100s. I did my best to feel smug as I watched when I watched nobels trudge through the joust arena in yards and yards of velvets and satins and saw garland girls in leather bodices toting heavy poles of flowers.

Unfortunately, smug was in a cage match with jealousy and looking like it was about to tap out. I rarely have gone to a faire where I wasn’t working, and I believe this is the first time I’ve gone to one where I didn’t even know anyone who was. To all the boothies and performers, I was just another mark, out to gawk at the freaks in costumes…not someone who could flirt and cajole my way into free swing rides and get greeted with rib-crushing hugs by members of security. If the snippets of BFA around me proved infectious, I’d just get strange looks from the workers, not knowing chuckles and reminders that ‘the beer is in the pickup truck’. It felt weird. Faire has always been one of the few places that I was actually in the ‘in crowd’…to at least some extent. It was a place where, when I was young and shy and awkward and horribly unpopular in my ‘real’ life, I could be myself, where I had the nerve to talk to boys and the clothing style really worked for my curvy shape. Now, I was just another ‘turkey’…someone to heckle and push goods on, not one of them.

But then smug rallied and tagged in her buddy snarky, when it became clear that this faire obviously never even heard the word ‘costume nazi’. I wasn’t entirely taken unawares–front page of the faire website features an actor dressed as Captian Jack Sparrow, so it was pretty clear that historical accuracy was tabled in favor of fan service…a point that was driven further home when the joust started, accompanied by insturmentals from Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. Over the course of the day, I did see some people in proper garb…the nobles, of course and anyone who seemed like this might be more than a part time gig for them, but it seems that no one had bothered to convince the local help to make their costumes anything more than vaguely fantasyish, maybe with some cool corset-y thing. Most of the time, I couldn’t tell the difference between the workers and the visitors that had ‘dressed up’. Purple and short, puffy sleves abounded. I saw a number of faire boys in kilts, and I believe that, of those, ONE was of proper 16th century style. Yes, I KNOW the more modern kilts are a lot easier to get into. A SPACE SUIT is a lot easier to get into. ENCRYPTED CIA FILES are a lot easier to get into…but if you’re going to work at faire in a kilt, waking up early to pleat it and hip bruises are part and parsel, boys.

<–no yes –> yes–>

However, aside from the weather, and experiences like hearing the girl at one of the game booths say ‘yinz’, and despite missing flirting with the faire boys, hasseling the customers and running around like a goon with my girls, I did have a good time. Oh, and the sound systems that were set up for all the big stages and the joust were crap. But other than that it was nice. The site was lovely…lots of trees and grass (a change from what I’m used to). It was a mid-size site…it actually reminded me a lot of Valhalla faire, only with less plague-carrying squirrels.

The joust wasn’t bad, the booths had nice stuff, and though none of us ended up buying any, there WERE turkey legs available. (I’m morally opposed to them. After spending so many years trading insults with their booth, it would feel nearly blasphemous to partake of their meaty goodness.) We wandered and saw bits and pieces of lots of acts that were all okay, and caught the 3pm Washer Women show, which was funny, but I still felt, catered to the lowest common denominator. Our washer women were funnier. However, the light was just right at the start of their show and I got a few great pictures. Before they started flinging water around and I put my camera away.

I met a nice boy who makes fairy wings and of COURSE lost his card before I got home. I never quite slipped into BFA (though it was close a couple times.) I interacted a bit. I made the bell ring on the thingy where you hit the thing with a hammer to try to make the thing go up the thing and ring the bell.

<–you know…one of these. Only wooden, and with levels like, ‘friar tuck’ ‘maid marian’ and ‘robin hood’. Well, at least the one I tried did. They had a bigger, more manly one with levels like, ‘smithy’ ‘knight’ and ‘His Magesty’. I later tried that one…I did not ring the bell. But I got higher than the emo kid that went after me.