This guy should serve as an inspiration to us all. I'll let you decide how much of his frustration was all an act and if he really meant to bring that flaming whip so close to his own head. Whatever your opinion might be, keep in mind that he did all of this in the pouring rain.

Labels: festivals, hippies

I spent the afternoon of Independence Day swimming out on the Wilson River. I mentioned to a friend of a friend that I was heading to the Oregon Country Fair the following weekend. He shook his head. "Don't you know what goes on down there," he said with a sneer. "It's a bunch of hippies running around naked."

Well, yeah, there is a bit of that.

He'd never been and admitted that he'd never get caught dead in the place. This is usually the sort of reaction I get when I tell acquaintances and coworkers where I've been spending the second weekend in July in recent years. There seems to be this impression that the fair is a Dionysian frenzy of "blissed-out" stoners dancing in drum circles. To clear up any misconceptions, during daylight hours at least, all of that is kept to one corner of the fair grounds called the Drum Tower.

More or less, the Oregon Country Fair is a mix-up of an arts festival, a rock concert, a food cart melee, a family reunion and the organizers' attempt to build an idyllic society out in the woods over the course of a three-day weekend. Or at least that's my take. Ask someone else and you'll probably get a different response.

I spent most of Saturday wandering the grounds and loafing around at the Main Stage watching acts like the March Fourth marching band. At one point, a guy in a Gumby costume was led out with his head hung low. I'm not sure what he did to get 86-ed. After the band's set, a few stilt-walkers kept the show going in the middle of the crowd while a guy in a unicorn costume danced alongside them.

Sunday was a different story. A thunderstorm hit right around noon, stuck around for a few hours and turned the fair's dusty dirt paths into a series of treacherous mud bogs. Some fair-goers left while others decided to stick it out and cheer every time the thunder rolled over head. I hung around long enough to catch the Nowhere Band cover The White Album with a group of performers from the Wanderlust Circus. The guy with the flaming, firecracker whip and the unicycle? Very entertaining.

If you click over onto KATU's brief rundown of the fair you'll find a slew of complaints in the comments section about the fair "selling out" and being overrun by suburbanite gawkers. I just started going a few years ago but I'm sure naysayers were muttering the same thing two decades ago. Rather than cover myself in mud and roam the fair alongside a traveling band of would-be Neanderthals, I stuck to the sidelines.

Maybe next year I'll get my freak-on proper. Regardless of these complaints, I'm happy to report that, even after two days at the fair, I still felt like a stranger in a strange land. And that feeling is why I'll probably be back again in 2010. During my time in Veneta, I watched a woman with a pumpkin on her head brave a storm, two musicians massage three people with the waves coming out of a pair of didgeridoos, a guy feed his pet parrot Thai noodles, a paint-covered woman allow a tourist from the south to take a photo of her provided "they won't put it on Facebook," and a band perform a cover of "Blitzkrieg Bop" on a giant stage in front of an empty field.

It's nice to know that, in the 21st century, there's still a place I can go and spend an uncomfortably long period of time explaining to a mud-covered man dancing in a puddle that the folks at the burrito stand have been trying to tell him his order is ready for ten minutes.

Many more photos of this year's fair can be found over here in a Flickr gallery.

Labels: festivals, hippies

A reader sent me a link to this great post on the Powells Books Blog about the Oregon Country Fair yesterday and asked if I was going this year. She currently lives abroad, has never been to the fair and wanted to know if it's really as crazy as all of the stories she's heard over the years.

Here's what I wrote back:

Hi,

Thanks for passing along that post from the Powells blog. It nicely captures the tightrope the fair has to walk between staying true to its roots and handling the thousands of people who pass through every year.

I'm by no means an authority or anything. I went to college down there but, for some reason, didn't wind up going until 2007. But one of my friends grew up in Eugene and went for years before recently relocating to Japan. When I first went she told me that the "spirit" of the festival hadn't changed much since she was a kid but that it had gotten steadily bigger, more elaborate and pricey.

Daily admission prices have shot up from $14 to $24+ in just the few years since I've been heading down there. Also, supposedly, all the rampant, open drug-use was cracked down upon heavily in the late-90s. Still, anyone who works at the festival will tell you that the "real festivities" don't begin until after the gates close. I'm sure you've heard many of the same stories I have.

If you ever get the chance, I can't recommend the festival enough, provided you don't mind things like parades of semi-nude people dancing around in body paint and mud.

-Brandon

I'll be down there for two days this year, provided Sunday isn't rained out. It's the fair's 40th anniversary and the final day will be capped off with a performance of the Beatles White Album, in its entirety, on a stage borrowed from the Burning Man Project.

Also: If I can get cell coverage out there I'll probably be posting photos and updates on Another Portland Blog's Twitter account. Sure, why not? It's the 21st century.

Hemp burgers, ahoy!

Labels: festivals

It seems like you can't drive outside of the city during the month of October without coming across a harvest festival, a corn maze or a pumpkin patch every 100 feet. Last week, a few colleagues and I hit up a festival outside of Wilsonville. In addition to the usual stuff, the organizers built a Noah Ark-themed petting zoo, a huge hay slide and my two favorites: a corn cannon shooting gallery and an Ewok Village-esque compound for a family of goats. Sadly, we were about a week late for the annual "pumpkin drop," which crushed the car in the photo above.

In the goat village a series of ramps led from the ground over a small house and up to a crows nest attached to a tree. For a buck, attendees could use a rope and pulley to raise a cup of Goat Chow up to one resident who absolutely refused to let any of his fellow goats up there.

I gave the corn cannon a shot but was completely upstaged by a six-year old who managed to lob an ear within a foot of a pumpkin-shaped target. I aimed for a cow cut-out but my two corn shells missed by a country mile.

Here's a tip: if you ever find yourself in a situation where you have to fire a corn cannon in order to take down, say, a malevolent zombie scarecrow or "Jigsaw" from the Saw movies, I strongly suggest that you aim high.

Labels: festivals

Some lessons learned from last weekend's Polish Festival:

1. I can't pronounce the names of several popular Polish dishes.

2. The "Chicken Dance" is a tradition in more than just one European culture but the Polish-version is apparently more sadistic. In addition to dancers flapping their arms like wings, they're expected to crouch on the ground and stand in place for several seconds while the musicians wipe their brows. The rendition I watched on Saturday night went on for at least ten minutes.

3. %75 of Portland's 20-something hipster population now apparently resides within four blocks of the Alibi. They're all over the place over there.

4. My aging RAZR's camera gets worse by the minute.

Labels: festivals

From this morning's post on WWire:

For the Rose Festival Centennial, the Grand Marshal(s) will be selected by a community-wide nomination process. Using a short story format, community members can nominate a family member, a neighbor, a co-worker or themselves by submitting a 100-word (or less) essay on why that individual should be Grand Marshal. Rose Festival parade committee representatives will judge essays on individual's personal and historical connection to the festival.

Essays should be submitted via email to Jessica Metteer at jessicam@rosefestival.org or fax to 503.227.6603. Deadline for entries is Tuesday May 1. Winners will be announced by the last week of May. All submitted nominees must be available to ride in the Grand Floral Parade Saturday, June 9.

I'd obviously be perfect for the gig. Here's my first draft:

Hi, there!

I think I would make a fantastic Grand Marshal for this year's Rose Festival parade. I'm sorry to say I have no direct ties or interest in the festival. I've only seen the parade on television, I've only been to the Fun Center a few times and I routinely mock the entire thing every year. Regardless, I feel that I would best represent the challenges and changes that this fair city of ours faces in 21st century. I don't make much money, I can't afford a condo in the South Waterfront but I do so love microbrews, Powell's Books and all the same stuff everyone else living here does (although I could take or leave Sam Adams, Charter Reform, Pioneer Courthouse Square and New Seasons).

I'm the quintessential "young creative" you may have heard about, although that term is getting long in the tooth. I'm left-leaning, self-serving, navel-gazing and semi-underemployed with a proclivity for complaining about everything and artistic endeavors but no outlet or means to make any $ off of them. I wear Converse All-Stars and a hoodie even though that look is way old, I sigh a lot and my iPod is chock full of obscure local bands and indie artists I listen to only because everyone would mock me if I didn't. The Blow? The Shins? Menomena? Just between you and me? They suck. And I thought that last Decemberists album was lacking. Twelve-minute long songs about cranes and the men who love them? Whatever, Meloy, whatever.

I even recycle and ride a bicycle! Sometimes!

If you let me serve as this year's Grand Marshall, I'll even buy some vintage clothes, give up animal products and promise to shop only at local business so I can act all snooty. I won't even complain when I get priced out of town in the near future and I'm forced to relocate to outer-Gresham by gentrification! I'm perfectly willing to become a walking, talking hipster cliche and to adjust my lifestyle to become the embodiment of the most stereotypical Portland resident my age imaginable.

I can also wave and smile like a mofo AND I promise to show up sober. No kava, I swear. Give me a ring.

Toodles!

-Brandon

Ok, that's at least 200 words too long. If I want to have any shot at this I should probably make up a story about waiting all day in the rain when I was a kid to see a float shaped like a Smurf and submit that instead.

I bet they'll give the job to someone who actually deserves it. Oh, well.

Labels: festivals, Portland