In certain parts of the country, weather and population allowed their festival season to begin months ago. In the Midwest, only recently has the snow melted and the temperatures warmed up to make faires inviting.

2001 SEASON
by John-Paul, ATF Staff Writer

Salisbury Faire in Des Moines marks the beginning of our Midwest renaissance festival season. The cold winter has finally ended and, in spite of it being one of the worst in years, all signs of snow have disappeared. The temperatures in Iowa climb into the 80s and 90s while just a month ago the utility company was getting extra income from all the furnaces and heaters. Our lawn has even been mowed...twice! Trees are once again green and, most significantly, Salisbury Faire billboards and posters are all over the area. Spring is indeed here.

AtTheFaire.com officially launched a bit over a year ago but its first few months were mostly just to serve as a fancier place to display all the renaissance festival pictures I have taken since 1997. To justify having this domain and all the storage we decided to go to a lot of festivals. In 2000 we attended Salisbury Faire (Des Moines, IA), Faire of the Midlands (Council Bluffs, IA), Hamlet of Slater (Slater, MO), two Wybreg Village events (Bonaparte, IA), the Iowa Renaissance Festival and Harvest Faire (Amana Colonies, IA) and the Kansas City Renaissance Festival (Bonner Springs, KS). We also made an appearance at a renaissance themed corporate event for a Midwest convenience store chain. Overall it was a very busy season for us and the groundwork was laid for an even better one in 2001.

A NEW YEAR. A NEW FAIRE SEASON.

Now that 2001 is here, it is time for me to contribute my AtTheFaire.com New Year's Resolutions.

• I will write reviews of all the events I attend. In spite of our grand plans, neither Willa nor myself actually got around to submitting any festival reviews in 2000! In fact, there is only one review in our archive and it was submitted by a site visitor whom we've never met. This year I'll do better...
• I will actually do something with the video I shoot. I have several hours of video from previous years, yet I suspect there are tapes I still have not watched. I did tape quite a few of the Hanlon-Lees jousting performances at the Wybreg events (and made numerous copies for the jousters to review), and we did create a short video for the Renaissance Foundation and the Washer Well Wenches, but that was about it. This year I'll do better...
• I will finally complete the theatre section. Long time site visitors may recall that before the big 2.0 update we had a section with dozens of short MPEG movie clips. Most of these clips were from the Wybreg Village Harvest Festival (Fall) and some were very funny. Sadly, during all the months of off-season we never got around to putting them back up. This year I'll do better...
• I will finish AtTheFaire.com 2.0. Where's the Faire Index? Where's the Shoppe? Where is all the content for those pages that have said "coming soon" since last year? This year I'll do better...

This year Willa and I will try to attend even more events than last year. Our online schedule has us visiting at least three events neither of us have attended before (one of which is a first year event so no one else has been their either). At each festival I plan to take even more pictures to add to my personal photo album which I let friends look at, but this time I'll be using my new camera which means higher resolution and quality. And MPEGS. I love gadgets.

By the way, you don't know how close I was to just pulling the plug on the entire archive after this "remove the picture that you can't see me in or I'm going to call my lawyer" mess happened last month. As of this writing the photos are still not back, but I expect to have an entirely new updated photo archive online sometime after Salisbury. There will be a few sections missing, however. Maybe we'll have a contest to see who can identify what gets removed ;-) But I digress...

SALISBURY PREDICTION

I am writing this part of the article on an America West jet flying back to Iowa from California. I will be landing at around 1am early Friday morning giving me just that day to get things ready for the weekend festival. I will now make some predictions and state some goals concerning the festival and AtTheFaire.com:

1. We will add about 220 new photos.
2. We will meet 20 new merchants and/or performers to add to our free index.
3. Two new groups or merchants will decide to sign up with us for web hosting.
4. The event will be hot, muggy, and muddy but everyone will have a good time (except for a few merchants who are in low areas and will be flooded by some overnight rain).
5. The jousting troupe will use references from the movie A Knight's Tale (which all rennies should go see) such as chanting We Will Rock You.
6. I will buy one new outfit from Pandora's Box, and probably a new leather bag from leatherworker Bob or "Son of Sam" at his Den of Antiquity...assuming these merchants are there.
7. We will actually manage to get a group of rennies together to go see A Knight's Tale (hopefully in garb) on Friday night or late Saturday.
8. There will be about 24 people who join us at DeliDishes for grub on Saturday night and nothing will get damaged.
9. Willa will buy one item that will go missing before the weekend is over.
10. The Washer Well Wenches will survive their first public performances and make alot of people laugh, but only take in about $37 in tips. (This is known as Cheapskate Rob syndrome which I first encountered a few years ago at the Iowa Renaissance Festival but it seems to have spread.)

SALISBURY "WHAT REALLY HAPPENED"

1. I forgot about the extra Friday! 64 pictures were taken that day, 143 on Saturday (including some after hours stuff), and 107 on Sunday.
2. A final count hasn't been made, but it will probably be close to 20. One forme.
3. One of the merchants we see at almost every faire we attend, History of Names, will most likely be moving their web hosting over to us.
4. The weather was quite pleasant. It was hot, but not unbearably so. It was a bit muggy, but not unbearable so as well. There was no mud to be found and only a few light sprinkles on Sunday.
5. We heard the squires using a few references from the movie before the joust started, and the troupe seems to be experimenting with new lance effects similar to those used in the movie.
6. Pandora's Box was not present, but I did pick up a great new shirt from A Scots Dragon. Willa was not using my old leather bag, so I had it available and didn't need to buy a new one.
7. About a dozen of us did actually see A Knight's Tale on Friday. I had spread the word to meet for whatever show started after 8pm. A few showed up early enough to make it into the 7:30, while the rest of us discovered the next presentation was 9:45pm. We sat around at the nearby Village Inn restaurant and then had a great time at the actual movie. Rufus seems to laugh anytime he sees a corpse, and rennies are generally a lot more giggly at the funny bits than the "normal" audience members.
8. I do not know the final count for dinner but I suspect it was between 20-30. We circulated many flyers with directions after 6pm on Saturday, but most had already made plans. Significant attendees included: Shattock, Minstrosity, some of the Orckes and Trolles, and, of course, the Washer Well Wenches. Those I did not list are not necessarily insignificant.
9. As far as I can tell, nothing Willa purchased went missing but I had a nasty run of bad luck including a dead battery.
10. The wenches did considerably better than my predication. Check out the Washer Well Wenches site for her update.

As you can see, I apparently have absolutely no knack at making festival predictions. Maybe next time?

CONCLUSION

It was a great (but very tiring) start of the 2001 faire season. Sadly, I was very much under the weather with a cold and cough so I didn't quite enjoy things as much as I would have liked. I would like to say a big hello to all those who recognized us from this site and I hope our paths cross again at future events.

Until then... -- John-Paul