Why Maker Faire (Bay Area) sucks.
May. 20th, 2012 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdymonkeyDon't get me wrong, I am a person who Makes Stuff. I applaud, support and encourage people who Make Stuff, but I have come to the conclusion that I no longer enjoy Maker Faire
An advance "discount" ticket for one day cost $24 and change. At the gate it's $30. ($20 for students, $15 for kids.) Admission to the county fair at the SAME venue costs $6 and what is Maker Fair but 4-H for stuff-makers and geeks? Parking in a paid lot that you probably still have to walk a fair distance from costs $20 and the free lots are minimum of a mile walk from the venue (not bad for me, but Sylvia was definitely hurting on the return trek). At least one of them is in some corporation's lot in another TOWN, necessitating shuttles that can't get to the event site because of all the car traffic. So what does your ticket get you? In the door. That's it. I can go to the antiques flea market in town and look at cool stuff for hours with a million dollar view of San Francisco Bay and better food trucks for $5!. Someone is making a packet on this, because you know they're collecting fees from any "maker" who's selling what they make ($325 for the weekend) and food concessions. (I don't know about non-selling makers simply because the website's closed that part for this year, but I suspect not as the SCA demos there). But really, the majority of exhibitors are selling (or trying to sell) what they make. Oh, and let us not forget tee shirt sales.
It's outgrown its venue. The Fair now spills out of the San Mateo County fairgrounds into one of the fairgrounds parking lots due to lack of space. (Yet another reason for the ludicrous parking situation.) The exhibition halls make me want to throw elbow strikes because they're so hideously crowded and outdoors you have to weave through the lines for food concessions, cringe your way past giant flame-throwing sculptures and cover your ears as you pass the highly amplified performance stage powered by bicycles. Walk around for an hour and it all starts to blur together into an incoherent jumble of Too Much Input. (Funny, does anyone even remember Johnny Five from "Short Circuit?" Nah, he doesn't have the cachet of R2 or Wall-E.)
What was my favorite part? Getting to spend time with James and Sylvia - who were so wiped out by the time we got back to their place we did Chinese take-out and Sylvia went to bed at 8 PM. The rest of it? I've seen the muffin cars, I've seen the giant dinosaur festooned with LEDs. I've seen the coke-and-mentos trick. I've seen R2D2 and Wall-E and the Yamato recreated in Legos. I've even done the SCA demo.
Oh and the part while we were stuck in traffic next to a bus stop and I had a conversation with a young man with a bicycle while we were sitting there not moving. That was fun.
Photos from my visit in 2009. http://www.flickr.com/photos/70104978@N00/sets/72157619035546687/
So I put some cookies in the oven and I'm going to go to the Clan Makita practice in the park with a bed sheet, a stencil, paint and paint brushes and working on a comforter cover for my camp bedding.
An advance "discount" ticket for one day cost $24 and change. At the gate it's $30. ($20 for students, $15 for kids.) Admission to the county fair at the SAME venue costs $6 and what is Maker Fair but 4-H for stuff-makers and geeks? Parking in a paid lot that you probably still have to walk a fair distance from costs $20 and the free lots are minimum of a mile walk from the venue (not bad for me, but Sylvia was definitely hurting on the return trek). At least one of them is in some corporation's lot in another TOWN, necessitating shuttles that can't get to the event site because of all the car traffic. So what does your ticket get you? In the door. That's it. I can go to the antiques flea market in town and look at cool stuff for hours with a million dollar view of San Francisco Bay and better food trucks for $5!. Someone is making a packet on this, because you know they're collecting fees from any "maker" who's selling what they make ($325 for the weekend) and food concessions. (I don't know about non-selling makers simply because the website's closed that part for this year, but I suspect not as the SCA demos there). But really, the majority of exhibitors are selling (or trying to sell) what they make. Oh, and let us not forget tee shirt sales.
It's outgrown its venue. The Fair now spills out of the San Mateo County fairgrounds into one of the fairgrounds parking lots due to lack of space. (Yet another reason for the ludicrous parking situation.) The exhibition halls make me want to throw elbow strikes because they're so hideously crowded and outdoors you have to weave through the lines for food concessions, cringe your way past giant flame-throwing sculptures and cover your ears as you pass the highly amplified performance stage powered by bicycles. Walk around for an hour and it all starts to blur together into an incoherent jumble of Too Much Input. (Funny, does anyone even remember Johnny Five from "Short Circuit?" Nah, he doesn't have the cachet of R2 or Wall-E.)
What was my favorite part? Getting to spend time with James and Sylvia - who were so wiped out by the time we got back to their place we did Chinese take-out and Sylvia went to bed at 8 PM. The rest of it? I've seen the muffin cars, I've seen the giant dinosaur festooned with LEDs. I've seen the coke-and-mentos trick. I've seen R2D2 and Wall-E and the Yamato recreated in Legos. I've even done the SCA demo.
Oh and the part while we were stuck in traffic next to a bus stop and I had a conversation with a young man with a bicycle while we were sitting there not moving. That was fun.
Photos from my visit in 2009. http://www.flickr.com/photos/70104978@N00/sets/72157619035546687/
So I put some cookies in the oven and I'm going to go to the Clan Makita practice in the park with a bed sheet, a stencil, paint and paint brushes and working on a comforter cover for my camp bedding.
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