Ever worked a Renaissance Festival? Get giggles out of the webcom All’s Faire. You can see all episodes for free at the official website.
And you can watch a handy free sample episode right here.
All the best people dress like it’s 1642.
Can’t recall when this pic was taken. A faire from 2000, I think.
PS: Much love to Peter David, who is recovering from back surgery.
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You look very pretty as well as serene in that photo.
I seem to recall that you wrote about a miserable experience you had a Renaissance Festival in the back of an ADS comic, so I am trying to reconcile that photo with that account.
Possibly a different Festival, no?
Yes, I have done a number of different Renfaires. This was a one weekend event, and was like a little vacation.
The first renfaire I did was wonderful. My mom helped me set it up, and one weekend Kacey Camp came in to help out. She had been Queen Elizabeth at another faire, and she showed up in full regalia! It was awesome. I broke even my very first year, and all my leftover art sold at my next event.
A friend heard my happy tales of faire wonderment and decided I’d be much better off with a partner. Though he had no experience at all, he completely took over.
He botched everything, and lost a fortune with overspending and bad planning. Such as not getting a booth with a floor. The first week, there was a heavy rain, and the place flooded. A booth full of paper products: yeah, like that.
He rented an expensive luxury condo to share with me for the duration of the faire. This was not only a huge expense for which he expected me to help pay, but it was completely inappropriate. I was not going to live with this man for weeks at a time. I had known him a while, but he set off my alarm bells.
I called my mom. She drove hours to get to the faire. We (mom and me, you-know-who was not part of that equation) constructed a floor for the tent, allowed him to continue use my props, wished him good luck with his enterprise, and left. I wrote him a nice letter about how I had too many assignments to spend weeks sitting at a Faire, and assured him he didn’t need me there to sell pics.
After I walked out, he trashed me to many people saying I had left him in the lurch. But my instincts were right on the money. He was trying to get under my bodice. Worse yet, he had told people he already had. I still have the letters he wrote to others, the dirty bugger. His poor wife…
My leaving had nothing to do with his failure: he still had my merchandise, as well as the merchandise of a dozen other artists. He simply lost the pet artist he had on display and hoped to use for nookie. He was also able to get out of the condo lease, which he ditched after his romantic interest walked off.
He ended up owing me a load of money for my faire sales. I ended up getting an old car instead of cash. I still have the car. Runs like a top. I was very lucky: other artists did not get paid, though one artist tells me he was paid five years later.
However, he completely trashed my faire props: furniture, curtains, rugs, decorative ribbons, banners, large tudor-style chests, etc. A total mess. Filthy and covered with mold.
I used to think he was just an inconsiderate, incompetent, but well-meaning slob.
Stupid me loaned him money and gave him merchandise to sell later. Before I found out he was a love hound.
Never got my money, so the car ended up being pretty expensive, now that I think about it.
Sorry, I brought back those memories.
At least it didn’t sour you on other faires.
Honestly, it doesn’t upset me anymore, but there are a lot of people who read this board who were left wondering what the heck you meant in your post. So, I explained it to ‘em.
I’m pretty sanguine about it these days.
If I had the time, I’d do another faire. I love ‘em.
And I did not know what I was talking about either.
I knew the second part about the art sales but I did not have any recollection or knowledge of the first part.
I think I grumbled about it some years ago on my old blog.
I just remember calling my mom and saying “Get me out of here”.
I’m not sure what upset me more, the Teh Sexy bachelor pad two story condo with all the extras, or seeing my possessions awash in mud flow.
Mom constructed a floor almost single-handedly. All I did was lifting. She did the planning and purchased all the materials in one day. The floor was finished in two hours.
I recall his complaining bitterly what a mess it was removing the floor after the faire. I supposed he would have been happier knee deep in mud.
Double punch line: the set up for the booth was next to the elephant pen and port-a-potties.
It’s OK to laugh.
Bachelor pad or possessions and art in mud flow … yeah, toss up there. On the one hand, the assumptions of the pad would make me want to punch him, just for assuming. On the other hand, mud flow? Especially if damage to possessions and art was happening, I might get homicidal.
Seriously, the idea of artwork in danger of mangling and other damage appalls me.
Once upon a time, I did a piece of Tolkien art – pen and ink, of Galadriel sitting under the Two Trees. At the time, I had not yet moved to using India ink, so it was done in standard felt-tip pen ink then, which is water soluable. It was to be a page in a journal. I was living in Texas at the time and the editor was in Los Angeles. I mailed him the art. Apparently it sat out in the open for quite a while before he started laying out the issue it was to go in (back in the days before computer scans and digital lay-out).
It showed up in my mail one day, with one corner water-damaged. The place he’d left it sitting was right by his aquarium, and water had been splashed on it, messing an upper corner of the piece, smearing the ink. Fortunately, it was not a large amount of space, and I used a lot of white-out to cover the smear. Redoing the detail took a bit.
But… I was kind of furious about it (though I never told him that), that he was so careless about it.
No wonder you thought something smelled about the whole set up
LOL! Too funny-it’s a good thing you didn’t stay.
Unfortunately, I did not read your old blog.
I was misremembering something else.
@ scribbler: you know, I actually felt bad about walking out at first; “Gee, maybe he didn’t mean anything by it…”
Trust your instincts.
Like I said, I’d known him for years, we’d I’d hang out for coffee and have laughs. But sometimes he made my skin crawl. I couldn’t put my finger on why.
Now I know why they call them CREEPS.
Anyway, he had bought art from other artists for resale, and many prints. Some of the faire debt resulted from damaged prints.
I remember one artist to whom he owed a lot of money kept begging for the unsold merchandise back. But there was no way he could return the damaged work, and I think he was too embarrassed to confess what happened. Dunno for sure.
It was a monsoon-like season and faire traffic was low. I made money at faires because I only sold my own work, took commissions, and kept expenses down. He had nothing of his own because he’s not an artist. He was hoping to turn himself into a rep or something. At least half of every dollar was paid back out for merchandise alone. There was no way to make a profit like that.
As far as I can tell, he never tried another show, but I don’t keep up with his doings, so whatever. He’s not my problem anymore.
@ Miki: the whole smelly mess will live in my memory as a big pile of elephant poo.
I swear, the location was so bad the only traffic we got back there was people coming to use the bathroom.
I can’t believe he did not insist on another location.
I am not kidding. Elephants and poo. In the heat.
Like, the worst karma ever.
Aaarggh! The memories. That nervous twitch of mine is coming back…
LOL!
Well, something tells me we will never hear from this dude again.
Just think, “Tootsie Roooooooooll…”