New York Ren-Faire

Here's an old post from the summer...one of the better ones from the MySpace page, Enjoy!

Given the scorching heat over the weekend, going to the New York Renaissance Faire might not have been a good idea.

So, here’s how it went. I get up early on Sunday morning, and spend the next two hours headed down the New York Thruway to the quaint little town of Tuxedo (yes, it has something to do with the suit, don’t ask me what…) For those not familiar with the geography of the Tri-State area, the Thruway is basically a drag-racing strip masquerading as a toll road, populated mainly by morons in SUV’s and ‘vettes who have the opinion that anyone driving under 70 miles an hour is fair game for tailgating…but that’s a whole other gripe. I pull into the abandoned airfield serving as a parking lot, hike up a steep hill to the main entrance, and just like that leave the mundane workaday world for a magical realm full of whimsy and wonder…

Okay, not really. But close enough for now…more or less. I’ve aways enjoyed a good ren faire, but to be honest I’m also a bit divided about them. On one hand it’s a place where imagination can run wild, where a computer programmer who spends his days chained to a desk can dress up in leather armor and reproduction sword, and for a few blessed hours indulge the fantasy that’s actually a mighty-thewed knight who slays dragons for breakfast…and rub shoulders with pretty young women dressed to kill (no pun intended) as princesses, sorceresses, and Red Sonja warrior women…and showing a lot of bare midriff in the process (not that I’m complaining….)

On the other hand, it’s overrun with screaming kids, the food is both terrible and overpriced (what do gyros have to do with the Renaissance?) and all those bad English accents start to grate after five minutes. It’s even more awkward when there are actual British people visiting the faire, and you start to wonder what our trans-Atlantic cousins much think – although the ones I saw looked like they were having a blast, despite the near-tropical heat. And when it comes to the costume…well, being in character isn’t always a good thing for some people. For every wannabe Aragorn or Xena wandering about, drawing admiring glances for their trim physique and fine reproduction leaher bracers and chain mail halter, there’s some biker dude walking around wearing what looks like S&M bondage gear (in some cases accompanied by his son in matching costume), or a women dressed like a genie without the …erm, figure to pull it off (the cigarette ash was also a bit off-putting.)

Do I give the impression that I wasn’t enjoying myself? In fact, nothing could be father from the truth…I love ren faire, despite the flaws. In fact, they make benefits all the more treasured. Once a year, for a few hours, I actually live in a world that in other times only exists between the pages of a novel or in my head. Or at the very least, in a for-profit simulacrum that is the closest approximation to the not-posssibly-real thing…of course, there’s also LARP’ing…but I’ve never been able to do that with a straight face. The boffer weapons are fun though… Anway, despite the drawbacks, for a hardcore geek like myself, the ren faire is a blessed refuge from the cold harshness of modern reality, where I immerse myself in something tha is pure fantasy without earing the mockery of less intelligent minds that can’t appreciate the wonders of the imagination….

And if that doesn’t work, watching hot women (barely) dressed as nymphs and fairies is also pretty cool. Definitely worth putting up with the overpriced mead and drunk idiots hitting on the flower girls.

Here's the link if you want to know more. Thoughts, anyone?