Review: Golden Gate Renaissance Faire 2008

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA - This was our first excursion to this “small” faire. The first thing that struck me was twofold when we arrived around noon on Saturday: the first was that it was actually good English weather (ok, so one of our compatriots is from the East Bay and was commenting within about 30 minutes that they were quite certain that their ability to have children in the future was in danger due to the temperature being below 80 degrees), the second was that the terms of “big” and “small” faires have rather fallen by the wayside somewhere along the lines and they really should be just referred to the differences which really identifies them and that is “long run” and “short run” events.

San Franciscan’s have their own ideas of parking (or lack thereof), so by the time that we arrived we had to park outside the park itself a block or two to the north and walk the rest of the way in. Now granted it’s a shorter distance than perhaps it was back in the day from the outer parking area at Black Point to the front gate, but at least there you could see your target. Unless you were one of the bright ones that printed a map, or had a local equivalent to a Sherpa guide, it can be one part of the experience just finding the right part of the park. If you’ve never been to Golden Gate Park, it’s bigger than you think. Whatever size you think it is. No, it’s bigger. And there’s buffalo. How and why buffalo are in San Francisco, I have no idea, but I’ll leave that for another time.

This time they had some signage to help lead us wayward types to the venue. Now granted they’re still too small, not enough, and you have to know what you’re looking for, but it’s getting there. Hopefully they’ll get larger ones and plot out all the in-routes for next year and continue to help get more of their audience to their front gate.

Once we’d arrived we’d seen a sight unlike anything we’ve run across in a while - lines. Not kinda sorta 20+ person lines, we’re talking U2 style/american idol tryout kind of lines. They were setting up a second ticket booth which was it’s own amusing sight when we were in line, which helped pick up the pace as it went from 2 ticket windows to 5 plus aproned exact change buyers.

So eventually we did get inside (whatever happened to the big photos of the main gate that we’d seen from the first few years, that should be brought back), and it was quite the fun experience. It was an interesting mix of interactivity and apathy though on the part of many of the guilds present. There were some that if you got anywhere within range they would start to interact with you, but others that they seemed completely unaware of what was going on around them.

The vendors were a nice mix, and there seems to be fewer pop-ups than I recall being at many of the short-run faires, and the boothies seem to be getting into the act more (I did ponder the effect on a faire if the boothies were more interactive than the performers, what might happen).

As I went around I noticed that the faire had many of the staple RenProd acts - now this isn’t a bad thing, unless you go to a number of them. Then if you’re a playtron regular, then you’ll notice that it’s beginning to get a bit repetitive. It’s about time that they bite the bullet and start shuffling the lineup from time to time to keep it fresh for their regular audience.

Total Price for the outing* (3 adults):  $104.

• Vendors:
• Pricing:
• Stage Acts:
• Lane Performers: N/A
• Guilds:

 

Highlights: Bella Donna Courtesans, Fowl Tales, Knights of Avalon, The Tea Booth, Obsidion Moon, Out of Kontrol

* The Price reflects the cost for 3 adult admissions, each to get a primary meal from a food booth, two rounds on non-alcoholic drinks, two rounds of beer. It does not include parking, gas, etc. unless otherwise noted.