At the Faire….

Yesterday, The Wife and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Starling Renaissance Festival in Sterling, NY. We left Friday night, actually, and stayed in a hotel in Rochester, driving the rest of the way to the Festival yesterday morning; we drove all the way home after the Festival day was ended, with a stop at a fried chicken place we like a lot in Webster, NY (a suburb of Rochester, northeast of the city).

We’ve been going to the Sterling Festival for years. I want to say our first year of attendance was 2001, but I may be off by a year or two. We’ve missed a few years since, but we’ve mostly made it. So it’s interesting to compare mental notes, and also to note that there are still ways for the Festival to surprise me. Here are some notes on our experience this year:

::  It used to be that buying tickets online was the quick way to get into the Festival, while everyone else queued up at the ticket booths. You can tell from the photo up top that this is no longer the case! That’s the line for entry, and the ticket booths are off to the side, on the right, out of frame, and nobody’s there. The line moved pretty quickly, though; once we got in line, we were checking in and inside the grounds in about ten minutes. This gave me time to make sure I had my base camera settings good to go and to look around at our fellow fair-goers.

::  They say you’re allowed to bring in an empty water bottle, but there are no actual filling stations; for filling you’re supposed to use the faucets in the privies. The Festival might want to consider actual filling stations. (Plus, nobody checked our bags as we entered. I had on a small over-the-shoulder back bag, and The Wife had her small purse. Nobody looked. We could have absolutely filled our water bottles with ice. I’m noting that for next year.)

::  Food at the Festival has always been cash only, until this year; now it’s card only. This is not a problem, and we knew about it going in. The Festival seems to have spent quite a bit of money improving its online infrastructure, so transactions were generally much easier. Cell service is very spotty at the Sterling Festival, so vendors who used to rely on things like a Squarespace thing for transactions often had to awkwardly wave their phones or tablets around to get the best signal. One year a vendor accidentally tapped my amount in with an extra zero, so I had to go back and get that reversed. This year, there were no such problems and most transactions were painless.

::  But, I did notice some apparently staffing issues along the way. There were some food booths that were no open at all, which had been open in the past. The turkey leg booth, which is very popular, only had one customer-facing worker, so there was a long line there. Also, we noticed a distinct lack of roaming food vendors. The pretzel guy, the pickle lady, the popcorn girl–we saw none of these. The only one I saw all day was the jerky dude. Again, I wonder if there were simply not enough applicants this year.

::  My fit yesterday? As you might expect:

:: “But Kelly!” you might ask. “Isn’t that outfit a bit warm for a July day at a Renaissance Festival that’s built on the side of a hill and therefore involves almost literal hiking to get around?”

Why yes, yes, it is. Now, I’ve found that my relationship with hot weather has changed over the years: I can function in heat now that used to reduce me to a sweat-puddle. And I find that overalls, believe it or not, actual feel cooler to wear than shorts or something similar, because of the lack of a waistband that allows air flow. There’s a reason why civilizations in very hot climes often wear long, flowing clothing that protects from the sun and allows air to flow to deal with the heat.

And in recent years, we’ve been lucky in that while yes, July in Upstate New York is generally warm and humid, our visits to the Sterling Festival haven’t been too bad in that regard. Yesterday, however, saw that lucky streak end. The last weather forecast I saw predicted low-80s and partly-to-cloudy skies. Instead we had upper 80s and full sun most of the day. It was straight-up hot and humid, and in a lot of ways the day was a physical struggle with the heat. Add to this that the Festival owners apparently had a lot of dead trees removed from the grounds, and there were places that were once shaded which now are not, and…yeah. This is just the way the ball bounces, unfortunately. All we can do is hope for a better weather day next year.

I saw someone on social media last week or before opine that no Renaissance Festival should happen outside of fall, and I’d be inclined to agree, except that we already have late summer and early fall pretty well packed with stuff we like to do. It just works out for our calendar that our Renaissance Festival happens in July (and it does go into August, so there’s that).

::  I always love seeing people in their costumes. Some were as amazing as always, and I’ll be sharing some photos of great costume work once I get the day’s photos edited, so look for another post. I note that while the Festival purports to be an Elizabethan-era village called Warwickshire, no one expects costumed revelers to be completely period-authentic. (And the Festival does have a theme weekend where they encourage anachronism and other costume approaches, like steampunk.) But, come on, folks: at least try to stay at least kind of on theme. One guy was wearing a hot-dog costume. Like, the thing someone wears to provide human advertising for the hot dog sale at church or the local minimart. That bugged me, I must admit!

::  When we first started going to the Festival, I noticed that a common thing–and an annoying one, at that–is visitors walking around offering up a constant run of quotes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Then, a few years alter, quoting The Lord of the Rings was all the rage. Sure, maybe it’s funny the first time, but hearing “You shall not pass!” is a lot less funny the twelfth time. Luckily, I heard no such thing this year. Huzzah!

::  Every year the grounds are populated by a “cast” of regulars who are portraying the actual people of Warwickshire, and they engage in all manner of improvisatory frivolity. It gives the day a particular fun twist, to know that you might happen on an impromptu performance someplace. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention, but I didn’t see as much of that this time, either. I wonder if there were staffing issues there, too.

::  The Joust used to be emceed by a guy I always referred to as The Impressive Scotsman, and he hasn’t been there the last few years. He’s an older gent so I chalked it up to retirement; the replacement was fine, but he wasn’t the Impressive Scotsman, though. Imagine by joyous surprise when the Joust began and out rode the Impressive Scotsman! Now featuring an Impressive Beard.

:: During the Joust I noticed a few moments when The Queen was speaking and when the Impressive Scotsman talked over her. I wonder if they were having a bit of struggle in the script department. No problem, though.

::  We watched one performer who noted improvements made to the stage he usually uses: “A couple of years ago I fell through a hole in the stage, and they didn’t fix it. Then two weeks later an audience member came up to greet me after the show and they fell through the hole, and then they fixed it!” As I walked through the Festival grounds I noticed quite a few places where the age of the rustic wooden infrastructure was starting to show the results of accumulated years and elements. Now that the Festival has invested a lot in its electronic infrastructure, I think it may be time to invest in its physical infrastructure. The places really needs carpenters and painters.

::  Finally, it may or may not be known that every year at the Festival we buy new mugs from a certain pottery vendor. Do we need more mugs? Of course not! Do we buy new ones anyway? Of course we do! Here is my mug from this year. I don’t have a photo yet of The Wife’s new mug, but I’ll get on that.

We’ll see you in 2026, Sterling Renaissance Festival! Until then, God save the Queen!