![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Looptopi-tired
May. 12th, 2007 12:59 amI packed it in earlier than I had planned but later than I thought - around 11:30, after Redmoon's big spectacle-firework-thing. (Yes, the mouse did get in that big wheel, which shot flames as it spun)
I met up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
seamstrix under the north lion at the Art Institute, and we commenced to wandering. Over at the Fight class demo by the Columbia students we ran into Val from the Costumer's Guild and we stuck together for a couple of hours. We later ran into Terrence by one of the Redmoon installations on State Street and I bumped into fiddler-Andrea (BTW she worked on the white bubble-lady outfits) and her very hot BF at the Cultural Center.
There was a LOT of cool stuff going on, but this was not an event for the faint of heart - or the short of stature for that matter. Crowds were light early in the evening but I think everyone got back from dinner and a nap around 9 and then it was insane. I think they probably came close to their wishful 100,000 estimate. We couldn't get in to see the Turkish musicians (though we listened from down the staircase for a while), the line for Club Looptopia at Macys ran the length of the store, and I was turned back from the Punch and Judy show when the hall proved to be full 15 minutes before showtime. I managed to see some of Mucha Pazza (the punk marching band) by virtue of standing on a bench at the far end of Daley Plaza, and had a similar view of the 11:00 Redmoon show.
But I did get to see some fun things:
There were some performance art pieces in the windows of Macys. The octopus/starfish lady was kind of dull, but I liked the two smiling bearded men in tunics who spent the entire evening blowing up pink ballons and filling their space with them. I kept going back to see how far they had gotten!
Redmoon had about half a dozen installations along State and Dearborn. They were each red, green, or blue, and each had a single performer and a musician. A green mad scientist and a guy with a theramin. A red rose painter with an opera singer. A diver in a blue boat with a trumpeter, etc. Each installation also had a fruit or vegetable(lettuce, strawberries, and eggplant from the examples above), and all the musicians' top-hat-things were trimmed with some kind of sewing notion - I saw rigilene boning, snap tape, and zippers. No I don't know why - this is Redmoon after all. It would be kind of nice if the next day in the paper they had some kind of "this is what we were trying to say" thing.
There were also more "normal" things - an industrial dance party on the loading dock of Carsons, wandering painters with easels, a wine-tasting, a shadow-puppet theatre set up on the sidewalk, projected images and video on various buildings, a corporate sponsor's bar where they were demoing and explaining the history of various cocktails, and probably oodles of stuff I just plain didn't get to.
I did stop by the Knitters Guild room - they were teaching people to knit, helping people with their projects, and several people were adding to a large skirt-train that hung from a mannequin and spread over the table - all different colors and techniques of fiber art were on there and it was very cool. I had gone with an eye to finding someone to teach me to crochet that elusive second row, but no one seemed to have a crochet hook. But I found some people who were doing finger-knitting and they showed me how. It's fast and easy and I made a headband in about 10 minutes. I imagine it would be kind of boring in a plain yarn but you get some really neat stuff with the more textured or specialty yarns. I'll have to experiment, as it woudl certainly be an easy thing to do at some of the smaller faires when I'm bored. It's probably not period but at the smaller faires people aren't as picky about stuff like that.
seamstrix had left around 10 and by the time the fires went out at Redmoon I was cold and tired and just not up for craning my head over any more crowds.
VERDICT - for a first-year event it seemed to be an astounding success. They could make some changes for next year - set some of the performance installations a little further apart to improve traffic flow, get the signange and maps out earlier in the evening, and probably close a couple more streets. And maybe some stilts for the vertically-challenged among the crowd. But I had about as much fun as I was capable and probably could have had more if I wasn't coughing so badly. That pulmonologist appointment can't come too soon for my taste.
I met up with
seamstrix under the north lion at the Art Institute, and we commenced to wandering. Over at the Fight class demo by the Columbia students we ran into Val from the Costumer's Guild and we stuck together for a couple of hours. We later ran into Terrence by one of the Redmoon installations on State Street and I bumped into fiddler-Andrea (BTW she worked on the white bubble-lady outfits) and her very hot BF at the Cultural Center.There was a LOT of cool stuff going on, but this was not an event for the faint of heart - or the short of stature for that matter. Crowds were light early in the evening but I think everyone got back from dinner and a nap around 9 and then it was insane. I think they probably came close to their wishful 100,000 estimate. We couldn't get in to see the Turkish musicians (though we listened from down the staircase for a while), the line for Club Looptopia at Macys ran the length of the store, and I was turned back from the Punch and Judy show when the hall proved to be full 15 minutes before showtime. I managed to see some of Mucha Pazza (the punk marching band) by virtue of standing on a bench at the far end of Daley Plaza, and had a similar view of the 11:00 Redmoon show.
But I did get to see some fun things:
There were some performance art pieces in the windows of Macys. The octopus/starfish lady was kind of dull, but I liked the two smiling bearded men in tunics who spent the entire evening blowing up pink ballons and filling their space with them. I kept going back to see how far they had gotten!
Redmoon had about half a dozen installations along State and Dearborn. They were each red, green, or blue, and each had a single performer and a musician. A green mad scientist and a guy with a theramin. A red rose painter with an opera singer. A diver in a blue boat with a trumpeter, etc. Each installation also had a fruit or vegetable(lettuce, strawberries, and eggplant from the examples above), and all the musicians' top-hat-things were trimmed with some kind of sewing notion - I saw rigilene boning, snap tape, and zippers. No I don't know why - this is Redmoon after all. It would be kind of nice if the next day in the paper they had some kind of "this is what we were trying to say" thing.
There were also more "normal" things - an industrial dance party on the loading dock of Carsons, wandering painters with easels, a wine-tasting, a shadow-puppet theatre set up on the sidewalk, projected images and video on various buildings, a corporate sponsor's bar where they were demoing and explaining the history of various cocktails, and probably oodles of stuff I just plain didn't get to.
I did stop by the Knitters Guild room - they were teaching people to knit, helping people with their projects, and several people were adding to a large skirt-train that hung from a mannequin and spread over the table - all different colors and techniques of fiber art were on there and it was very cool. I had gone with an eye to finding someone to teach me to crochet that elusive second row, but no one seemed to have a crochet hook. But I found some people who were doing finger-knitting and they showed me how. It's fast and easy and I made a headband in about 10 minutes. I imagine it would be kind of boring in a plain yarn but you get some really neat stuff with the more textured or specialty yarns. I'll have to experiment, as it woudl certainly be an easy thing to do at some of the smaller faires when I'm bored. It's probably not period but at the smaller faires people aren't as picky about stuff like that.
seamstrix had left around 10 and by the time the fires went out at Redmoon I was cold and tired and just not up for craning my head over any more crowds. VERDICT - for a first-year event it seemed to be an astounding success. They could make some changes for next year - set some of the performance installations a little further apart to improve traffic flow, get the signange and maps out earlier in the evening, and probably close a couple more streets. And maybe some stilts for the vertically-challenged among the crowd. But I had about as much fun as I was capable and probably could have had more if I wasn't coughing so badly. That pulmonologist appointment can't come too soon for my taste.
