US culture: The Renaissance Fair
The Renaissance Fairs of the US are odd manifestations to any European who's used to Renaissance, Medieval and other period festivals back in the old world. But once you realize that it in fact is nothing other than a huge fantasy festival with all kinds of historic/cultural influences you care to be smitten by, you're gonna be fine, and maybe even grow to love it, as I did.
So basically, you mix it up for a day and walk among pirates, knights, musketeers, fairies, harem ladies and Elizabethian gentlefolk. You listen to all kinds of music from odd instruments, look at odd crafts and art, see a bunch of weird entertainment and indulge in eating such delicacies as turkey legs, fried pickles and basically anything on a stick.
Me and the Geek and some other friends/family went for our annual ren-fest day the Sunday before 4th of July, our party being much more in costume than earlier years.
Our friends J and M, all in sombre black costumes and sun-deflecting umbrella, on a very hot day..
E and K and baby Ian were there too, raising the cuteness level of our group several notches!
The Entrance to the Ren-Fest is provided with a balcony, where the King and the Queen and some other royals, along with Jack Sparrow (a highly popular look-alike, on the left tower) can greet the guests.
So basically, the Ren-fest can provide you with any attires you may crave as a citizen with eclectic leanings.
Such basics as fancy garb (Elizabethan, pirate, gypsy, barbarian and many many other styles were represented), weapons, drinking horns, mugs, walking sticks, leather work, jewelry, parasols, musical instruments and much much more were represented.
We all had our favorite things to browse for, a store with fantastic masques took a lot of our time, but didn't allow photography, apparently they had a vendetta going on with the other masque shoppe on the Fair, and were paranoid about artistic copycatting.
I favored the store where these 2 guys:
presented a huge variety of awesome puppets with hand controlled movement capacity. I have bought a couple of 'em for kids I like over the years, but am as fascinated every year by these creatures seem directly taken from Labyrinth. I only wish Bowie would come in as the Goblin King, and sing his song.
Know what I mean?
You could also pet dressed up geese, handled by a bloke looking like Gandalf with a cut beard and his lady:
...and you could observe their grumpy duck, who had a rumor of biting, which granted him a throne, but didn't make him escape the dressing-up fate.
Another favorite store was the wand-store, were wands of all fashions and kinds were sold by Colorado's own Olivander:
He had made copies of all famous Harry Potter wands, and produced a reference guide:
E, posing with Voldemort's wand, which we all agreed was the most stylish one..
I also went into a store full of wooden dragons!
And the one thing I bought for myself at the ren-fest was this cutie:
The Chrystal store..
The signs were as fun as anything else to look at:
So we all had our favorite things to look at and maybe purchase. Baby Ian was thoroughly smitten by the Psaltery - a musical instrument that the store lady fully mastered and played him many tunes on.
J bought a Kalimba, to add to his instrument collection
M bought a flute that pretty and smelled like smoked bacon!
And E decided to get herself a decorative henna tattoo
Half of the fun on these types of events is of course the people-watching. First, two celebrity look-alikes:
Micky Rourke as a barbarian
And Jack Nicholson's twin brother, sitting and smoking a cigar near the food stands.
A cute pirate/harem lady couple
One of many pirate groups
The knights of the Ren-Fair have a reputation of being real country-casanova man-sluts. For some reason this knight gave me such a Fabio-vibe, prancing around on his pretty horse..
Men in kilts were in popular demand around the fair
..as were elves and fairies of all kinds
An awesome couple having full blown gorgeous steam-punk outfits:
And some more cool barbarians!
Various musical ensembles were playing and singing all over the place
I shall conclude this post with a picture taken by maehymn, of E, where she is trying out one of several products that I'm sure was developed for and through the culture of the Ren-fest phenomena exclusively. It is a metal "flask" of sorts, containing ice, and with some form of aesthetically pleasing figurine on top, which you are supposed to place between the ladies in your decolletage, to keep them cool on hot days!
So basically, you mix it up for a day and walk among pirates, knights, musketeers, fairies, harem ladies and Elizabethian gentlefolk. You listen to all kinds of music from odd instruments, look at odd crafts and art, see a bunch of weird entertainment and indulge in eating such delicacies as turkey legs, fried pickles and basically anything on a stick.
Me and the Geek and some other friends/family went for our annual ren-fest day the Sunday before 4th of July, our party being much more in costume than earlier years.
Our friends J and M, all in sombre black costumes and sun-deflecting umbrella, on a very hot day..
E and K and baby Ian were there too, raising the cuteness level of our group several notches!
The Entrance to the Ren-Fest is provided with a balcony, where the King and the Queen and some other royals, along with Jack Sparrow (a highly popular look-alike, on the left tower) can greet the guests.
So basically, the Ren-fest can provide you with any attires you may crave as a citizen with eclectic leanings.
Such basics as fancy garb (Elizabethan, pirate, gypsy, barbarian and many many other styles were represented), weapons, drinking horns, mugs, walking sticks, leather work, jewelry, parasols, musical instruments and much much more were represented.
We all had our favorite things to browse for, a store with fantastic masques took a lot of our time, but didn't allow photography, apparently they had a vendetta going on with the other masque shoppe on the Fair, and were paranoid about artistic copycatting.
I favored the store where these 2 guys:
presented a huge variety of awesome puppets with hand controlled movement capacity. I have bought a couple of 'em for kids I like over the years, but am as fascinated every year by these creatures seem directly taken from Labyrinth. I only wish Bowie would come in as the Goblin King, and sing his song.
Know what I mean?
You could also pet dressed up geese, handled by a bloke looking like Gandalf with a cut beard and his lady:
...and you could observe their grumpy duck, who had a rumor of biting, which granted him a throne, but didn't make him escape the dressing-up fate.
Another favorite store was the wand-store, were wands of all fashions and kinds were sold by Colorado's own Olivander:
He had made copies of all famous Harry Potter wands, and produced a reference guide:
E, posing with Voldemort's wand, which we all agreed was the most stylish one..
I also went into a store full of wooden dragons!
And the one thing I bought for myself at the ren-fest was this cutie:
The Chrystal store..
The signs were as fun as anything else to look at:
So we all had our favorite things to look at and maybe purchase. Baby Ian was thoroughly smitten by the Psaltery - a musical instrument that the store lady fully mastered and played him many tunes on.
J bought a Kalimba, to add to his instrument collection
M bought a flute that pretty and smelled like smoked bacon!
And E decided to get herself a decorative henna tattoo
Half of the fun on these types of events is of course the people-watching. First, two celebrity look-alikes:
Micky Rourke as a barbarian
And Jack Nicholson's twin brother, sitting and smoking a cigar near the food stands.
A cute pirate/harem lady couple
One of many pirate groups
The knights of the Ren-Fair have a reputation of being real country-casanova man-sluts. For some reason this knight gave me such a Fabio-vibe, prancing around on his pretty horse..
Men in kilts were in popular demand around the fair
..as were elves and fairies of all kinds
An awesome couple having full blown gorgeous steam-punk outfits:
And some more cool barbarians!
Various musical ensembles were playing and singing all over the place
I shall conclude this post with a picture taken by maehymn, of E, where she is trying out one of several products that I'm sure was developed for and through the culture of the Ren-fest phenomena exclusively. It is a metal "flask" of sorts, containing ice, and with some form of aesthetically pleasing figurine on top, which you are supposed to place between the ladies in your decolletage, to keep them cool on hot days!
