Photo: Patterson Family archives
"I smell cinnamon and spices, I hear music everywhere. All around, kaleidoscope of color. I think that maybe I'm dreaming."
— David Crosby
Photo: Patterson Family archives
It's been fifty years since the legendary Summer of Love in San Francisco and throughout our region and I'm thoroughly enjoying the celebratory exhibits and articles that bring this incredible past era back to life. As a newcomer (of a quarter of a century or so), I was toddling around my parent's English country garden in 1967 so I missed out entirely on the spoils of the Summer of Love. And yet, in my life here in the Bay Area, I've grown increasingly enthralled by the history of the Summer of Love and what it all stood for. This particular era shaped our collective culture in Sonoma County as much as it did the city's. It's high time for another one!
There is another 50th anniversary celebration taking place within this all-things Summer of Love commemoration and that is the half century birthday of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Marin County.
Image: Patterson Family archives
Renaissance Pleasure Faire creator Phyllis Patterson (pictured in the two top photos) touched the lives of millions of time travelers at her extraordinary events. She was mentor and symbolic mother to generations of participants and crew. I was fortunate to work directly with Phyllis, in her home production office and, in time handling media relations each spring at the Los Angeles faire and through to the final season of the fall Renaissance Pleasure Faire at bucolic Black Point Forest, Marin County, in 1998.
And so I was transported back in time myself when I made a special visit to this year's Marin County Fair for friends, Kevin and Leslie Patterson and family's brand new retrospective exhibit of the Renaissance Pleasure Faire history. Though these first Elizabethan market faires are no longer in production (many other spin-off versions exist around the country), the Patterson family remains the stalwart producer of the hugely popular Great Dickens Christmas Fair in San Francisco, each year.
Phyllis is pictured in action in her early days as teacher extraordinaire in Laurel Canyon, Southern California. It was 1963 and the era that became known as the Sixties had barely begun. Fashion, music and freedom of expression of the Flower Power movement had yet to emerge.
A drama major and English teacher from Memphis, Tennessee, Phyllis and her husband, Ron Patterson, a UCLA educated art director, felt the need for a less conservative, more creative arts education in schools. The timing was perfect. Together, they created their own Theater of the Outdoors, "Into the Woods" a drama and art environment filled with children of McCarthy-era blacklisted writers and artists.
This first open air theater was built by many of these talented parents so that their kids would experience a performance environment in which everyone was encouraged to participate and express their creative selves.
The Renaissance Pleasure Faire was born and it soon became the place to be.
When the Patterson family decided to move to San Francisco in 1967, the northern faire was born — production crews moved south each spring and north each fall. The first location for the Renaissance Pleasure Faire in Marin County was China Camp, now a state park.
China Camp's location was highlighted by psychedelic ethnic music groups and bohemian artists. The faire soon outgrew that setting and moved to the old Satori Ranch at Black Point in Novato in 1971. The Pattersons also established the Living History Centre, where workshops and performances flourished in the landmark Red Barn and thousands of school-age kids came to the Faire Village mid-week for “Workshops in the Woods.”
The “Blackpoint Forest” and “Paramount Ranch” (Southern Cal) Renaissance Pleasure Faires supported a way of life for counterculture trail blazers. Hundreds of thousands of guests, many in costume, engaged in the rediscovered seasonal rituals of mummers plays, parades, pageants and traditional revelry. “The Faire reminds us of simpler times more in touch with nature and the world,” said Phyllis, who passed away on May 18th, 2014, at the age of 82. Ron passed in 2011, aged 80.
It certainly was a dream of sorts, one that lasted thirty-one years in the two Marin County locations. The Patterson family and team put on quite the show at the retrospective lasting the entire several days of the county fair. Musicians and many other longtime friends of fair were there to entertain, meet and greet and reconnect with thousands of faire goers who miss this annual right of passage in the forest in Marin County, as much as I do.
I spent many an hour with Phyllis on-site during the faire, in full Elizabethan attire, despite the often soaring temperatures each September and October. Phyllis and Ron and son Kevin's personal costumes were a sight to behold for those of us who knew and know the folk who fit them.
In Kevin Patterson's words: "The lot was a microcosm of the wild west of the counterculture — part gypsy caravan, part Barnum & Bailey and part hay farm."
Those who worked the crew included liberal arts majors, Vietnam vets, ex-bikers and a slew of creative geniuses. Living conditions were rustic and working conditions hard, but it was a place where those who made it, thrived and frequently found themselves in charge of an entire department. Being quirky and eccentric was a bonus in this eclectic and super creative community.
The handcraft movement in California was just beginning. The Pattersons tapped into artisans from around the state and the Renaissance Pleasure Faire was the first and finest place to source hand hewn treasures.
There are now four generations of "Faire Brats" living creative and constructive lives around the world. For the kids raised at the Renaissance Faires, childhood was a place to make friends, build forts, climb trees, hammer nails, immerse themselves in the sights, sounds and smells of a small, Elizabethan market town. It was pure magic.
To quote from the origins of Faire history: "These early Faires had a visible influence on American culture: the crafts revival of the 1960s to 1970s; gourmet foods at festivals; musical hybrids involving ethnic, folk and psychedelic genres; the “psychedelic fop” fashions ultimately embodied by such popular musicians as Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, and Jim Morrison; the introduction to Americans of many British foods and beverages.
Tony Award-winning actor Bill Irwin, mime Robert Shields, magicians Penn and Teller, The Flying Karamazov Brothers and the Reduced Shakespeare Company, all performed at Faires early in their careers. As the Living History Centre promoted the concept of first-person interpretive living history and improvisational theater, its value to the larger world was beginning to be recognized.
Phyllis became a living-history consultant for the California State Parks, Plymouth Plantation, Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, and Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. Her legacy extends to the United Kingdom as well, where a former student produces living history at the Tower of London and other Royal properties."
This terrific new retrospective exhibit has been created to be available to tour. For information contact
Fairehistory.org
The Patterson Family Archives
Red Barn Productions
P.O. Box 1768, Novato, Ca. 94948
email: kevin.redbarn@gmail.com
Comments