Thousands of eccentrics from across the globe donned silken fairy wings and sprinkled their magic wands with pixie dust last weekend for Faerieworlds 2010.
The West Coast’s premiere mythic music and art festival took place Friday through Sunday at the 2,363-acre Howards Buford Recreation Area in one of Mt. Pisgah Arboretum’s sunny fields, and attracted more than just fairy aficionados. The festival was a crossroads of many different types of alternative culture, boasting iconoclasts from the realms of Dungeons & Dragons fans, leather-clad punk rockers, Renaissance fair enthusiasts and the usual spattering of hippies and eco-lovers.
Walking the perimeter of the “vending village” revealed atypical booths selling wares different from the usual colorful fairy costumes, headdresses, jewelry and potions. An entire row of vendors looked like they just walked out of a 12th century English marketplace, wielding real shortswords tucked into leather sashes, beckoning passers-by to try their luck at archaic carnival games. A man dressed in white tights and a green tunic managed a game called “Storm the Castle,” taking tokens and doling out prizes as giggling children loaded marbles into a small wooden catapult and aimed it at cardboard cut-outs of knights perched on top of a two-dimensional castle.
“A fine shot!” the operator would shout in an obviously fake English accent as the little
French figurines with fleur-de-lis painted across their breasts were knocked down by the catapult’s volley, like some vague reminiscence of the Hundred Years’ War.
Across the matted grassy field, a sign hanging from one of the SeQuential Market’s tent poles advertised “Kombucha on Tap,” as if a dozen crates of the brown, stubby-bottled elixir simply would not meet customer demand. SeQuenial operates a biofuel station in Eugene, and donated biodiesel and ethanol-containing gasoline to power the festival.
“We supplied all of the fuel for the event,” SeQuential’s station manager Alan Twigg said from behind the food counter. “It’s been a great experience, and everyone who comes through here is grateful that we are helping Faerieworlds to be more sustainable.”
Catering to the hippies and eco-lovers in the crowd disguised as fairies, SeQuential sold local organic snacks and sandwiches, as well as teas, tinctures and wellness drinks. In the adjacent booth, the biofuel company distributed alternative fuels to event-goers looking to fill up.
“I am a cosmic energy fairy,” Twigg said with a smile when asked what type of fairy he was channeling. The devil horns strapped to his head with an elastic band was the only clue to his mythical alter ego, juxtaposed with the businessman demeanor imparted by his slacks and tucked-in dress shirt.
A pot-bellied man stood behind the counter of another booth selling fantasy T-shirts depicting everything from Star Wars innuendos to Monty Python references to Dungeons & Dragons jokes that only committed gamer-nerds would find humorous.
“I mostly come to science fiction and game conventions; this is my first time at this show” the T-shirt merchant said. “Even with all of these fairies, it’s amazing how many Star Wars nerds I meet.”
Integrated into a crowd near the “Children’s Area,” a clique of late-teen punk rockers stood huddled around the back of a miniature puppet show theatre, nonchalantly watching a troupe of ghastly green gremlin puppets sing and dance with one another as children in the front row erupted into giggles. Among the blotch of studded leather jackets, tattoos and neon liberty spikes, one of the teens wore a skull dew rag and a torn denim jacket with a full-size Dead Kennedys patch across the back. These rebels’ acidic dress and somber posture was a far cry from the soft, round pink-purple tie dye of fairy wings and painted faces fluidly floating around them, but no one viewed them as out of place.
The festival’s most basic philosophy seemed to be a notion of “come as you are,” as if an assemblage of fairies and wood nymphs will naturally attract a myriad of other fantasy enthusiasts living their surreal lives at the fringe of
society and reality.
[email protected]