Great Depression Faire

Too soon? Possible. But I was always tackless in one way or another.

The idea is to have more period piece festivals. This struck me as I was wondering around the Ren Faire in Tahoe recently. People effing love dressing up in silly costumes and acting like a silly carnival troupe. And I thought...man, I dig this, but it really isn't my scene. What would my scene be? I'll tell you what I see. I see a bunch of tents and lean-to's made out of various fabrics and rusted tin roofs. I see fires in big oil drums and box cars filled with party life. What I'm seeing here is the quinetestial shantytown/hooverville of my dreams.

So I'm thinking lets get people together and start building these little fake communities in some faire ground somewhere and get people to act the parts and the "audience" to dress in character too...and lets do it with the aesthetic of my choosing. Okay?

Some may say it is not a era to flaunt. But oh, my friends, how wrong they are. This sort of faire/festival culture is beautiful union of historical education, re-anactment and rewriting. This is a great way to bring back that era--in its ugliness as well--and really remember whatever lessons it had to teach. As well as, a way of co-opting from the poverty and badness something of beauty and resolve. Our culture needs all sorts of correctives ad looking at our harder times can certainly do that for us.

My further extension of this idea would be that obviously you should pick your own aesthetic and era and dream up your own version of this faire. And I'd extend that further even to say, lets have a bring your own costume aesthetic and era sort of event...but then I would just be talking about Burning Man. And that was already ideaed.

Suffice to say, I want there to be more carnival activities. I want there to be more oppurtunities for more people to act/live in a role outside of themselves, to lightly put on the costume of something different that strips the them of them and enters us into a possible world of utopian community. If only briefly. And there I go again...