Pennsic aka Burning man East
Whoops! What time is it when an elephant sits on your chair?
Not a new subject but one that needs to be considered. Pennsic has become Burning Man East Coast. For about a third of the people at Pennsic the event is just a party. Granted this trend has been growing for years, it’s just that this year I had my nose rubbed in it. As my wife works troll often I did a few shifts. Based on those I would say that 1/3 of all the pre-reg attendees were not SCA members. Considering that a SCA associate membership costs $20 and that the non-membership gate fee for Pennsic is $25... Membership pays for itself if you go to Pennsic only! Granted some memberships would have expired but as I said before, it appears to me that 1/3 of those who attended this Pennsic were not members. For many of these people Pennsic not the SCA is the draw. (I had one person ask, "what's the SCA was anyway?")
The result of this trend can be seen and heard all through the war. RRR yee maytees! Funny once upon a time but now annoying. Silver tarp tinsel towns. Some people do not have the money to have a medieval camp but recently I have seen a trend toward silver tarp and carport palaces. Huge silver tarps and carports making for a large camp of what would appear to be refugees from Logan's Run. A couple of years back Mieszko and I made the mistake of attending a bardic at one of these camps. We were there for about 5 minutes. The bardic was a circle of people half listening to a woman reading from a fantasy book...in a halting monotone....it had been going on for a while....and had no sign of stopping. We left about the time Tom Bombadil released some hobbits from a willow tree.
I used to camp across from that group. It was hard to see the point of making a nice camp when the neighbors have a large inflatable pool dragon floating in front of the giant silver tarp decorated with a drunken Goblin. I've moved since then. The area I am camped in now is nice. (Though the last two days did see a camp of mild mettle maniacs with a silver carport and loin cloths move in to singles camping. I can only assume they had gotten lost on the way to a Kiss concert.) My solution has been the same as the SCA's as a whole. Look the other way and try to ignore the problem. Its not working.
The point of this is I think Pennsic is in need of a shrinking. I know "pay to play" is not SCA policy but the SCA already considers Pennsic an isolated event. Next year everyone will have to sign two waivers, one for the SCA and one for the Pennsic event itself. (Somehow that’s supposed to make the SCA less liable.) Lets streamline the process. If we are going to charge non-members more to attend Pennsic and we are going to make those people sign waivers...why don't we make them SCA members at the same time. Maybe they will look into the SCA during the remainder of the year. Maybe they might even join the SCA culture. We talk about needing to recruit more members well here is our chance. Or we can just get ready for Burning Man East.
There is a giant pink elephant in the room. Lets at least look at it.