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valis2So I went on a week-long trip to FL with my sister and my parents. I forgot my camera, but fortunately my sister and my father let me borrow theirs.
Highlights? The Ringling Museum in Sarasota rocked. Though what interested me was that they were more into being a Real Museum than a circus museum. So the Real Museum was awesome, and better than the circus museum. But, considering the industry, it's surprising that anything survived, honestly.
We also went to a couple parks, one in Hommosassa (something like that). And we ate. It was a nice trip.
One of the most fun things I did was sneak off by myself and join![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
gillieweed and her precocious teenaged daughter for a day at the Tampa Renaissance Festival. We had long wondered what it would be like to bring together two weirdness magnets, and lo and behold, within ten minutes of entering said festival, we spotted Peter Pan. Yes, that Peter Pan. I first saw him on VH1 on a program about Obsessed Fans, and I've seen his website before. Gillie & I have had lots of conversations about him, and then...there he was! We nearly died. Seriously.
So I went up to ask him if we could take a picture of him (thank heavens Gillie had her camera!), and he said, in a much put-upon voice and with a melodramatic half-roll of his eyes, "All-right." Gillie's daughter had no clue who he was, so Gillie sent her up as the sacrificial lamb. "But who is he?" asked the daughter. Gillie told her that he was Peter Pan, and was promptly corrected by the man himself, who insisted he was more of a "fairy, elfin thing," gesturing to his wings.
Afterward we giggled like loons.
Peter Pan:
And the other side:
The daughter was quite horrified later, when shown his website. More money in the therapy jar. She also was rather taken with Ye Olde Rock Wall Climbing, but as she was wearing sandals and a skirt, this was rather impossible. That didn't mean that the desire disappeared, however. Every question we asked her about what activity she'd like to do was answered first with "Climb the rock wall."
So then eventually the daughter decided she wanted to watch a juggling show, so we took her to the only juggling show listed on the program. It turned out to be Jamieson, the Really Young and Rather Inept Juggler. His stage patter was a bit off, and Gillie and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes about five minutes into the show. He was a pretty good juggler, honestly, but it was obvious that he'd tried to add in more physical tricks, and he must have done it fairly recently, because he took forever to set up each trick, whereas the juggling seemed to be much more of a natural thing for him.
He didn't have an idea of how to hold the audience's attention, nor was he good at pauses for dramatic effect. Anyway, he did one trick with a festival bench, where he put a wide PVC pipe on top of it and then a long board on top of that and balanced on it. He juggled for a few seconds while he balanced on it. Then he tried to jump up, turn 180 degrees, and jump back down on the board. He took waaay too long to set up the "dismount," as he called it, but it backfired, and then he landed improperly, and the board slipped right off the PVC tube and he fell down on the stage.
Fell. On the stage.
I've never seen a performer fall before at any festival, and that's when Gillie and I exchanged looks of horror. What other terrible things could our combined mojo cause? We decided to make for the sponge docks before the next calamnity occurred.
The sponge docks were very intriguing. Apparently several Greek families came to the area and began sponge harvesting just after the turn of the century. Then, during the forties or fifties, a red algae tide came in and killed everything. The town pretty much died. Eventually, however, another bed was discovered about forty miles off the coast, and they started up again.
Their original technique was to wear the giant diving suits. Sponges grow at different depths, and sponge boats would take different crews out, depending on how deep they planned to look. The deeper they went, the more divers they would have to take, because they couldn't spend as much time in the suit. Reading about the diving was absolutely fascinating. I might have put this together in my head wrong, but it sounds like the diver would get into the water with his heavy suit, and then hold his head against the valve that let air into his helmet, and freefall through the water to the bottom, then take his head off the valve again. Just the mental image of this was overwhelming.
Unlike Greektown in Detroit, this really is a thriving Greek community, as well as a thriving tourist town. At one point I noticed a couple sitting at a sidewalk café; she was singing along to a Greek song, and he had worry beads in his hand. Made me sad to think of what we've lost in Detroit.
We ate at Mama's, and the daughter told us that "Emo boys are hot." She also explained to us old folk the difference between "emo" and "goth," which was hilarious. Apparently goths have blue and green hair, while emos have black hair. There you go! Mystery solved.
Gillie and I had a great time. We talked all day long (okay, fine, we gossiped all day long) and my only regret was that we didn't have enough time.
Here are some sponge dock pics.
A boat.
A sponge boat.
I have a bit of an obsession with coils of rope.
This sign interested me, but unfortunately it didn't turn out well.
Here is a pic of some sponges. They're natural sponges, and they're a bit harder than artificial sponges, but then once they're wet they soften considerably. I think this is the detritus left behind after the sponges have been cut off. The variety is quite amazing, actually.
Dexter's boat.
A very long boat. Some of these aren't very active; the city sponge boat above, for example, is just coated with barnacles underneath.
This is a local legend. Apparently the guy who owned this boat wrote a book claiming that Florida was the original Garden of Eden. He was a bit on the crazy side, and I think he lived on the boat. Then a hurricane came through. His boat was swamped and ruined. So now he claims that he sold it to the government, and he has a "bill of sale" to prove it, and that he doesn't have to take care of removing it now. The guide we were with claims that all of this information is available on the internet, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
The Ringling Museum had two buildings set aside for their circus museum. One building housed a giant minature replica of a circus. It was amazing. Some of you may know that I have a bit of an obsession with circuses/carnivals; this was so wonderful to see. Unfortunately, the rest of the collection wasn't as impressive. They had some posters, some costumes (mostly from Cirque du Soleil), and newspaper clippings, as well as replicas of photos. I've actually seen a lot of the photos before. Still, it was worth it because they had a few wagons.
This wagon probably housed the props for a family act. It might be a replica; many of the wagons housed at the museum were replicas.
Cool door at the Ringling art museum.
Just to give you a little idea of what the art museum looked like.
A statue in the garden of the art museum's courtyard.
Highlights? The Ringling Museum in Sarasota rocked. Though what interested me was that they were more into being a Real Museum than a circus museum. So the Real Museum was awesome, and better than the circus museum. But, considering the industry, it's surprising that anything survived, honestly.
We also went to a couple parks, one in Hommosassa (something like that). And we ate. It was a nice trip.
One of the most fun things I did was sneak off by myself and join
gillieweed and her precocious teenaged daughter for a day at the Tampa Renaissance Festival. We had long wondered what it would be like to bring together two weirdness magnets, and lo and behold, within ten minutes of entering said festival, we spotted Peter Pan. Yes, that Peter Pan. I first saw him on VH1 on a program about Obsessed Fans, and I've seen his website before. Gillie & I have had lots of conversations about him, and then...there he was! We nearly died. Seriously.So I went up to ask him if we could take a picture of him (thank heavens Gillie had her camera!), and he said, in a much put-upon voice and with a melodramatic half-roll of his eyes, "All-right." Gillie's daughter had no clue who he was, so Gillie sent her up as the sacrificial lamb. "But who is he?" asked the daughter. Gillie told her that he was Peter Pan, and was promptly corrected by the man himself, who insisted he was more of a "fairy, elfin thing," gesturing to his wings.
Afterward we giggled like loons.
Peter Pan:
And the other side:
The daughter was quite horrified later, when shown his website. More money in the therapy jar. She also was rather taken with Ye Olde Rock Wall Climbing, but as she was wearing sandals and a skirt, this was rather impossible. That didn't mean that the desire disappeared, however. Every question we asked her about what activity she'd like to do was answered first with "Climb the rock wall."
So then eventually the daughter decided she wanted to watch a juggling show, so we took her to the only juggling show listed on the program. It turned out to be Jamieson, the Really Young and Rather Inept Juggler. His stage patter was a bit off, and Gillie and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes about five minutes into the show. He was a pretty good juggler, honestly, but it was obvious that he'd tried to add in more physical tricks, and he must have done it fairly recently, because he took forever to set up each trick, whereas the juggling seemed to be much more of a natural thing for him.
He didn't have an idea of how to hold the audience's attention, nor was he good at pauses for dramatic effect. Anyway, he did one trick with a festival bench, where he put a wide PVC pipe on top of it and then a long board on top of that and balanced on it. He juggled for a few seconds while he balanced on it. Then he tried to jump up, turn 180 degrees, and jump back down on the board. He took waaay too long to set up the "dismount," as he called it, but it backfired, and then he landed improperly, and the board slipped right off the PVC tube and he fell down on the stage.
Fell. On the stage.
I've never seen a performer fall before at any festival, and that's when Gillie and I exchanged looks of horror. What other terrible things could our combined mojo cause? We decided to make for the sponge docks before the next calamnity occurred.
The sponge docks were very intriguing. Apparently several Greek families came to the area and began sponge harvesting just after the turn of the century. Then, during the forties or fifties, a red algae tide came in and killed everything. The town pretty much died. Eventually, however, another bed was discovered about forty miles off the coast, and they started up again.
Their original technique was to wear the giant diving suits. Sponges grow at different depths, and sponge boats would take different crews out, depending on how deep they planned to look. The deeper they went, the more divers they would have to take, because they couldn't spend as much time in the suit. Reading about the diving was absolutely fascinating. I might have put this together in my head wrong, but it sounds like the diver would get into the water with his heavy suit, and then hold his head against the valve that let air into his helmet, and freefall through the water to the bottom, then take his head off the valve again. Just the mental image of this was overwhelming.
Unlike Greektown in Detroit, this really is a thriving Greek community, as well as a thriving tourist town. At one point I noticed a couple sitting at a sidewalk café; she was singing along to a Greek song, and he had worry beads in his hand. Made me sad to think of what we've lost in Detroit.
We ate at Mama's, and the daughter told us that "Emo boys are hot." She also explained to us old folk the difference between "emo" and "goth," which was hilarious. Apparently goths have blue and green hair, while emos have black hair. There you go! Mystery solved.
Gillie and I had a great time. We talked all day long (okay, fine, we gossiped all day long) and my only regret was that we didn't have enough time.
Here are some sponge dock pics.
A boat.
A sponge boat.
I have a bit of an obsession with coils of rope.
This sign interested me, but unfortunately it didn't turn out well.
Here is a pic of some sponges. They're natural sponges, and they're a bit harder than artificial sponges, but then once they're wet they soften considerably. I think this is the detritus left behind after the sponges have been cut off. The variety is quite amazing, actually.
Dexter's boat.
A very long boat. Some of these aren't very active; the city sponge boat above, for example, is just coated with barnacles underneath.
This is a local legend. Apparently the guy who owned this boat wrote a book claiming that Florida was the original Garden of Eden. He was a bit on the crazy side, and I think he lived on the boat. Then a hurricane came through. His boat was swamped and ruined. So now he claims that he sold it to the government, and he has a "bill of sale" to prove it, and that he doesn't have to take care of removing it now. The guide we were with claims that all of this information is available on the internet, but I'm too lazy to look it up.
The Ringling Museum had two buildings set aside for their circus museum. One building housed a giant minature replica of a circus. It was amazing. Some of you may know that I have a bit of an obsession with circuses/carnivals; this was so wonderful to see. Unfortunately, the rest of the collection wasn't as impressive. They had some posters, some costumes (mostly from Cirque du Soleil), and newspaper clippings, as well as replicas of photos. I've actually seen a lot of the photos before. Still, it was worth it because they had a few wagons.
This wagon probably housed the props for a family act. It might be a replica; many of the wagons housed at the museum were replicas.
Cool door at the Ringling art museum.
Just to give you a little idea of what the art museum looked like.
A statue in the garden of the art museum's courtyard.
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Date: 2007-03-12 07:53 pm (UTC)Ooh, is that a new icon? Awesome. I keep meaning to put up new crow icons from pics I've taken, but I just never get around to it.