Baron Rotza of Venice holds a turkey’s foot and bud light on a drinking horn at Irwindel’s Renaissance Pleasure Fair.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
The fiery is deep in the rich, smoked chocolate-and-bacon-covered strawberries, the smiths, the privates and the side of the stage where the bridesmaids and the aristocratic gentlemen join arms in the spring festivities and dance the English celids.
This is Natasha de Beauvoir’s first time surrounded by these glories, and she came dressed for the occasion: ears, flower crowns and ample glitter. Her friend Sierra Barbour, a veteran of fine affairs, saw this.
“I forced her to come with me,” says Barbour. “I was like, ‘We’re getting dressed, and we’re leaving.’
Hujja, the Renaissance Ananda Mela Returning for the first time since 2019, Lusty is opening its gates for revolvers, artisans, selfish pirates and angelinos looking to taste some of the finest meads and festive fare in all countries. Vendors cook flower crowns, drinking horns, a mixture of herbal teas and crafted wild flower honey, while pop-up taverns meet dry passengers announcing “COLD DRYNKS”.
Sean “Raven” Pierce wears his hand-made Brigadier Armor, which takes about 300 hours to complete. Flags are for more fun.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Launched in 1963 by the then couple Phyllis and Ron Patterson, Laurel Canyon is a humble backyard gathering with over 5 million participants. This year it is back after a two-year absence due to the coronavirus epidemic. An estimated 20,000 people gather each weekend, according to event organizers. And the Spring Festival will continue until May 22 at Irvindale.
Preity, go through the entrance of the fake pirate ship and be greeted by a crush of dressed characters. It is difficult to say whether 16th and 17th century Elizabeth were participants or hired actors to portray England’s royalty or peasantry, but one thing is certain: Fair is back.
Natasha de Beauvoir of Moreno Valley is obsessed with chocolate and bacon-covered strawberries.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
A group of fine food vendors lives in the heart of Fair; Cross the dirt road until you reach a wide open field filled with 20 acres of blacksmith demos, warehouses, knife and archery stalls, and a string of families, warriors, jockeys, warriors, knights, and privileges. Squared pork chops, whole artichokes and everything else are perfect to eat with your hands. On the far side of the field, Queen Elizabeth I herself makes an appearance for a ticketed afternoon tea service hosted by His Majesty the King.
Alison Fits has a stack of sausages, cheese and bread.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
“The whole idea is to get people to play a living history game,” Phyllis said Patterson told The Times in 1987. “Our motto is to laugh and tickle learning.”
Patterson’s love of staging and performing led the festival to expand into full-fledged theatrics in Agoura Hills, and after stunts elsewhere, it landed in Irvindale, embracing the Santa Fe Dam reservoir, where it has been since 2005.
At the most popular food stalls, there is a display of the festival’s best-selling item: turkey legs. Bobby Ronaldo and his wife Leela have been selling food at the Renaissance Pleasure Fair for four decades.
“Unfortunately a friend got me involved several years ago and it all went downhill from there,” Bobby joked from behind the counter.
They didn’t always sell Fair-Goor’s eye apples: they started with a bakery selling cakes, then added scones and cinnamon bunches. When Cinnabon grew in every mall in the United States, it saturated the market outside the fair, and the interest of the guests in the program waned.
Like everything else in life, people’s tastes change, he says. But turkey legs have always been a mainstay.
Turkey gives legs to Renaissance Pleasure Fair.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
When the former Turkey-Leg vendor walked out of the celebration, Ronaldo stepped inside. Now they are the only ones serving the iconic treat.
“We have a monopoly!” Says Bobby. “It’s not good in the oil industry, but in the turkey-leg industry, that’s a different story.”
The couple smokes heartbreakingly for three hours and doesn’t even know how much they sell on the weekend, seven of them this season. Newcomers, young girls, scary robbers or scoundrels, some hiding under feather caps and others hiding under umbrellas, are all ready to gnash their teeth at the gentle, smoky birds, the smell of siren song. A patron, wrestler Baron Rotza, sheds tears at the feet of the Vikings’ brutality depicted in battle (which he certainly wears in matching clothes).
Ronaldo is happy to see them all. In the early days of the event, participants jokingly referred to each year as the “Last Annual Renaissance Fair” because they weren’t sure there would be another. When the epidemic spread, that name became a reality. Now, Bobby says, they’re just happy to be back.
In the corner of the food court sits a booth with a common title: fish and chips [and] Musk Nick Napala, a second-generation fair seller, makes fresh seafood, as his father started in 1974. The fish and chips plate is the top seller, albeit thick, buttery Washington oysters – fried and served in garlic, butter and white wine. In baguettes, or just beaten and roasted – not much later.
Nearby, a thin blue dragon named Sapphire enters the food court grounds, opening and closing its claws.
Fair participant Sean Basel and his dragon, Sapphire.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Sean Basel sits on top of it, or as part of it. Over the years, video-game innovators and distributors have created five or six dragon costumes, all with their human legs looking like creatures. He has been participating in the Renaissance Joy Fair since the 1980s, when it was still held in Agoura Hills.
Oyster sliders from fish and chips (and) oysters.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
The handle attached to the sapphire head covers the dragon’s mouth, as if she were ready to fight her boss for a paper tray of fish and chips from Napala. “I usually get turkey legs – it’s a little hard to fight with turkey legs,” he says with a laugh. “A little mess.”
In about 60 years, the fair has become a haven not only for those interested in elaborate costumes, but also for the community.
“We found a guy who didn’t have a group and he was like, ‘I feel at home among my people,'” says Colin McAllister, a Culver City resident in his fourth year at the fair. “We were like, ‘You can hang out with us as much as you need,’ and I think there are a lot of people out there who come to find their people, find friends, and they do! You find your people. We’re all weird.”
“You will find your people. We’re all weird, “says Colin McAllister of Culver City.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
McAllister spent the morning pre-gaming with her friends and her fianc एड, Ed Mathews, who drank cold brew coffee nearby in a burlap bag. Most festival goers love velvet, bodices, feather hats and other finishes, Matthews and his friends coordinated farmer-inspired costumes in an effort to represent everyone.
“I mean, 90% of the population. [of Renaissance-era Europe] It was, “he says, pointing to his burlap. He shakes his head and adds,” elitist f—. “
After a morning drink, McAllister traveled to the fair to find a baked-potato stand, hoping to soak up all the wine – which is plentiful.
Pop-up bars dot the festive trail as a standalone tavern, each made of wood and bearing names such as crowns and anchors or the end of the world.
Inside the year and out of the year, the gem of them all is La Obliet: the biggest and the sexiest Walk-up bars, where busty benches call customers Innuendo (there are no tip jars, save dollars hurriedly and shamelessly inserted bustier bosoms).
In La Oubliette, Fullerton’s Aura Serena gives Miguel Angel a little help with his Golden Road mango cart beer.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)
Typically, La Oubliette will brew beers – that old honey wine of the gods – to create unique and playful pouring concoctions. But due to epidemic restrictions, only canned beverages are allowed this year. No worries It doesn’t stop the crowd of thirsty, arrogant passengers from sitting in line, nor the loud banner from the servers: “How do you like it, my lady? Sooner or later?”
Bianca Alvarez and Juston Trickett of Norwalk, they make sure to protect as many bars as possible by repeatedly filling the drinking horns they carry on their chests. They bring horns each year and they also call it pirate bottles: small glass drinking vessels tied with crocheted holsters (they have a mermaid, her, skull).
By the time the sun rose in the final fun game of the day, Alvarez had made his way through the pineapple grass, the hard seltzer, and the mango wheat alley, while the tricket-joster was worn, the bells at his point. The gentry hat was playing softly with each bribe – sampling IPA and New Holland Brewing Co.’s Dragon’s Milk barrel-aged stout. The black stout is 11% ABV while the white is 6%, he notes, prompting his girlfriend to declare, in short, that he is a beer nerd.
“I’m stupid in so many ways,” he fires over time, well, with a joke. Everyone understands this at the Renaissance Joy Fair.
Sword swallowing with the Klan Tinker family circus on the Maybower stage at the Renaissance Pleasure Fair.
(Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)