Maker Faire

The Maker Faire was just held in San Mateo, which is in Northern California (i.e., it is at least 100 miles north of LA), and therefore somewhere near San Francisco. It's a fair of people who make things, bizarre things that no one else has made, like cupcake cars or fire sculptures or moving Victorian mansions. The New York Times had a great article about it, describing it as

a gathering place of pyromaniacs and noise junkies, the multiply pierced and the extensively tattooed. But wander awhile, and the showy surface gives way to a wondrous thing: the gathering of folks from all walks of life who blend science, technology, craft and art to make things both goofy and grand.

Damn does that sound fun. But I have to say that I am somewhat disappointed that I read about this in the NY Times, and NOT the LA Times. Come on, LA Times, this is just up the coast! The Northern California/Southern California divide isn't that bad. This description of the Bay Area could also apply here. The Bay Area, one participant notes,

"has a community of people whose left brains and right brains are on speaking terms, and who like to make things"

We like to make things here in Southern California, too, but those things tend to a little more ephemeral, like movies and TV shows. And airplanes. We're good with those, too. Little known fact: the largest private employer in Los Angeles County is Boeing.

The NY Times also has a good multimedia presentation of the Faire, although it's still somewhat basic. I am looking forward to the day when a newspaper like the NY Times can be really innovative with the graphic presentation of information like this. I think the NYT has done groundbreaking work in this respect, but there is so much farther that they can go. Great job so far, guys, keep pushing that envelope.

The article mentions "steampunk," an emergent fashion/technical sensibility/trend/happening that I also first learned about in a paper version of the NYT. It sounds like a cross between Jules Verne and The Matrix, but maybe without a lot of black leather. Lots of 19th century stuff either being worn or somehow adapted to modern life. Alexander McQueen is, of course, a fan.

The Maker Faire article references the great American tradition of tinkering going back to Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. What it doesn't mention is that Americans are great tinkerers because we have the freedom to tinker. We all know that, of course, but I am starting a campaign to reclaim "freedom" as a liberal value, because conservatives have thot for a long time that they were somehow uniquely qualified to celebrate "freedom" and "liberty." This is nonsense, of course, and since Democrats are about to triumph over Republicans electorally, it's about time we started reclaiming some of the language that Republicans have absurdly claimed as theirs.

Because we do, after all, have the freedom to do so.