A thing I've always aspired to is taking advantage of all the cultural stuff I have nearby, wherever I live. Admittedly it's a little easier to do when I live in a big city like London than when I live in a suburb like Palo Alto. But suburban places mean cars, and cars means getting out to places that aren't well-served by public transportation. And today that meant visiting the Northern California Renaissance Faire, in Hollister, which is one of those towns to which you're probably never going to get a train connection or bus depot.
(BTW, I have a number of thoughts about urbanization and suburbs vs urban places, but I'll address that in another blog post sometime)
I knew about the RenFaire because I saw the edge of it once when driving back from Southern California. It's always hosted right next to Casa de Fruta, which has become one of my perennial stops whenever I drive down, and this year I'd seen billboards for it, so I decided to check it out. I got a few friends out, driving down with one and meeting the others there.
I also had a bit of an idea about Renaissance Faires, because of a sort of jokey tone about them in popular culture. You're led to expect a lot of nerds with neckbeards and cod-English accents, playing dress-up and waving swords around. And there was some of that! But also, everyone seemed super nice and happy to be enjoying a day out. There was food and drink - not much of it too medieval, unless they had poke and root beer floats back then - but also stalls selling trinkets, from D&D dice sets to carved wooden mugs and drinking vessels. You could even pay to shoot arrows, fire crossbows and throw knives, shuriken or axes at wooden targets.
I took advantage of the archery booth (because I always play a ranger in D&D, of course), and despite never having picked up a bow before, a nice lady working the booth coached me on how to nock the arrow, draw the string and release. I may have hit the target only once, but thanks to her most of the rest of my shots still flew straight. Though the less said about my attempts at flinging throwing stars, the better.
We caught a little bit of the joust, but the sun and crowd got to me and we went exploring again. There was also commedia dell'arte, sword-fighting, and all kinds of foolishness. I was sorely tempted by a massage, but opted against.
But if I seemed dismissive about the nerds and the cod-medieval accents, I don't intend for that. Sure, I heard some guy holding forth to his friend about publishing in BiOS, but what do you expect a) in the Silicon Valley and b) at a RenFaire in general? Sometimes it's nice to be surrounded by nerds just openly enjoying themselves.
The other nice thing about it, I have to admit, is the large number of attractive women all over, most of them wearing costumes. There were faeries, as well as fairies, elves and pirates and assassins. As I left the grounds I even saw a woman dressed up as a knight, which was quite cool. I've probably still internalized a lot of the messaging I got when I was young, that women wouldn't be interested in nerd-stuff, so I was glad to see, once again, that this isn't true. And maybe one time I would like to go and chat some of these ladies up...
The main thing is that my friends all seemed quite pleased to have done this thing, and that I'd pushed for us to do it, even if it's a bit of a drive and a hassle to get into the grounds. It's easy to fall into the routine of going to bars or coffee shops or movies, or even of just not doing those things as a group, so at least we had a nice day out together. And now I want to go learn archery for real.
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