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We would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn’t been for those meddling hatchlings.

If this is yours, contact me by email. I’ll be back in town, and I’d very much like to buy you a pint of the local for your efforts.

Music

Listening to music is probably the number one reason I go to fair. While the music lineup at Sherwood is largely the same as last season, this is no bad thing. Personal favorites The Bard O’Neill, Circa Paleo, Wino Vino, Abby Green, The Rambling Sailors and The Darbuki Kings are still there.  The schedule is such that it’s more a problem of making hard choices between several good things than it is of passing time until the next interesting show begins.

Speaking of the schedule, there’s quite a lot of variability to it — you’ll need to check the SWFF website a few days before you go and print out the latest and greatest. (Kudos to the organizers for providing the schedule as a downloadable PDF formatted for printing.)

Food and Drink

The Solare at Como’s Ristorante Italiano now has full table service with proper tableware, and an excellent menu (PDF). While a bit more expensive that the usual fair food, it compares very favorably — in terms of both cuisine and value — with fine-dining restaurants in the mundane world. They’ve got a comfortable vibe, quick and friendly service, and the food I’ve tried has all been tasty.

Reservations accepted and suggested. Try to get one of the window tables, and ask about the daily specials. The tira misu is outstanding.

Another good option is the steak on a stick from Dragon’s Kitchen (booth #212). I’ve eaten many steaks on many sticks in my day, and this is among the biggest and by far the tastiest and most tender.

Most of the small pubs (but oddly, not the Ye Old Trip to Jerusalem) are now serving the Long Hammer IPA (BA) , which is my make-do option for beer. (Not a great IPA, but more pleasing to my palette than the other options on offer.) The Bootlegger brown ale (BA) from Austin-local Independence Brewing is another good option. (It’s actually a much better beer, albeit not in a style I favor.)

Cider fanciers might appreciate the availability of Crispin Browns Lane (in cans). I’m no great cider drinker, but I thought it was a bit of all right. SWMBO found it a little dry (but that was rectified with the addition of a drop of grenadine, at the suggestion of the barmaid).

Practical Matters

My chief complaint from last season had to do with privies. They were too few in number, and most of them were the porta-can variety, which tend to be pretty dire. The Sherwood folks have definitively fixed the problem, adding two new privy-houses with proper modern-day plumbing, running water and sufficient capacity that I never had to wait in line. (Disclaimer: I am told that those in possession of two X chromosomes may experience a brief wait in the more crowded of the two sites at certain times of day.)

Sufficient supplies were present and cleanliness was quite adequate during all my visits. They’d also added (to both gents’ and ladies’ sides) some changing tables for infants. Very thoughtful, and spares non-parents such as yours truly the spectacle of people changing babies in the middle of the lane (or worse, on the tables at the pub).

All things considered, I think those in charge of the site are doing a great job. Things are clean and safe and, for the most part, work. (If they could do something about all the fine, silty dust on the paths, that’d be a blessing…) My complements especially to the “trash lepers” keeping things picked up — you’re doing a good job and being extremely funny while doing it.

Season passes are another nice addition this year. With the exception of some minor confusion on opening day, this saves money and hassle.

Rumor-Mongering

I did hear a couple of recurring gripes from friends among the merchant class. First, that after a successful first season, Sherwood seemingly backed off on advertising. While I haven’t seen ad budget or attendance numbers, my subjective impression is that I’ve seen fewer ads and that the crowds are comparable to late-season last year (but no bigger).

The other gripe had to do with the jousting tournament on April 09. This is after the close of the season, and according to the official Sherwood website, is not a fair day. The problem comes in that merchants are under pressure to have their shops open on that day. That’s viewed as a nuisance because of the expectation of flat sales. It’s viewed as a major nuisance because that day also happens to be the opening day of Scarborough Renaissance Festival, an event to which many of the same merchants have already committed prior to finding out about the “extra” day.

Conclusion

All my days at Sherwood thus far have been outstanding fun, and I’m looking forward to going back for more, for many seasons to come. Even now that the honeymoon is over, so to speak, I’d still pick Sherwood over either TRF or Scarby, if I could pick only one.

If you haven’t been to a renaissance fair, a day trip to Sherwood is a great way to get started. If you’re a regular patron but haven’t been to this fair yet: you need to give this one a try.

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More gushing praise, links and even a few pictures after the jump.

If you’ve been to a renaissance fair before, a lot of what you’ll see at Sherwood will be familiar, even though Sherwood (set in 1189CE) is technically a medieval fair rather than renaissance. Like TRF and Scarborough, they aren’t terribly strict about historical authenticity; there’s a strong fantasy element present.

The biggest surprise about Sherwood is how many of the typical “new fair” mistakes they managed to avoid. To cases:

Music

Entertainment was a rousing success. They had a good mix of old favorites and new faces. The schedule was such that you could spend the whole day listening to music to the exclusion of all else, and still have to make a lot of choices. I didn’t see any given performer condemned to consecutive shows on opposite sides of the grounds, though they did sentence poor Diane Linn to play one of her several shows at a pub full of loud, inattentive drunks — her considerable talents[1] would be better showcased on any of the various quiet, intimate stages.

Not pictured: Roy Coon on clarinet, since he was running through the audience like a madman.

One outstanding new-to-me act was the Austin-based WinoVino. I’d never expected to see a Klezmer band at fair, but they were energetic, musically versatile and fantastic fun. While they may not be 100% period-appropriate[2], neither are all the performers out there passing off 18th C. minstrel-show songs as “renaissance”.

Antonio Albarran (who I’d previously seen only at TRF, on drums) was there as a string player, and presented a wonderfully relaxing and meditative performance on the laouto.

Abby Green was someone I’d not heard before, and I’m glad I stopped to listen. She has a lovely voice. Buy her CD.

The paper next to "12:15" reads: "-ish"

Fronted by E Muzeki veteran Jenny O’Connor, Circa Paleo were there and, as always, a total pleasure for the ears. It didn’t hurt that their first show of the day was on a stage right next to the place that had the good coffee and tea.

All things considered, the music on offer at Sherwood would have been impressive even for a big, established fair. For a new fair on a new site, it was just about miraculous.

Merchants

They’re there. If you want shopping, Sherwood brings quality and quantity to the table. While you can easily shop the entire fair in a little over half a day, they’ve got an impressive vendor list.

Quality was surprisingly good, too, rated on the all-important scale of “stuff I personally was excited to see”. Not every shop was a winner (according to my very subjective tastes) but the odds seemed a lot better than usual. Certainly moreso than TRF (my “home” fair). While TRF is huge, so very much of it is mass-produced drek, and Asian junk-shop imports and modern-day “country cute” crafts. It’s a shopping mall with dust.

At Sherwood, I can only recall one instance where I said to myself, “Self, what does this possibly have to do with the middle ages / renaissance / fantasy? Why does this belong here?” I applaud what appears to be some careful selectivity on the part of the craft director, and hope to see the same continue into future seasons.

Site

This is mostly very good, but a bit of a mixed bag. They have a lovely wooded site with (what should be) plenty of shade, for when the weather gets hotter. There are lots of permanent structures (albeit mostly fairly basic, and lacking the character that accrues to buildings at older fairs): stages, pubs, food vendors and merchants. Actual buildings outnumber tents by a huge margin. Layout seems reasonably sensible. They’re waiting to see where people actually walk before establishing paths, which strikes me as sensible.

One obvious problem area is privies. There aren’t any purpose-built ones. They had a few trailers, which were quite spacious and luxurious (and had hand-washing facilities), but could only handle three people at a time. These were supplemented by porta-cans, which… well, if you’ve been in one, you know why that ellipsis is there. On opening Saturday, I saw lines develop — even for the gents, which is unheard-of. By Sunday, more porta-cans had arrived and the crowds were smaller, so no lines. Still, having proper permanent accommodations would make for a nicer day out. Even a basic trough-style urinal for the gentlemen would help cut down the lines (for both genders) and would make answering nature’s call a whole lot more pleasant. Adding some handwash stations and/or some alcohol-gel hand sanitizer seem like prudent improvements also. (On my second visit, both handwash stations and sanitizer were available and, except in one case, well-stocked.)

I can’t find too much fault with the privy situation, since they’d expected a thousand people and got over 3500 on opening day. It also reflects credit on those involved that they’d made major efforts over Saturday night to add capacity. Full marks for recognizing there was a problem and acting decisively to fix it. Still, if I had to choose the single biggest problem with Sherwood: this was it.

Electricity, water and data seemed to mostly be getting to the places they were supposed to. (If you’re wondering why this matters for an event set centuries in the past, I’ll start by pointing out that most of the food isn’t cooked over wood fires, and they’re not pulling that ale out of a cask in the cellar using a hand pump.) The air fairies were acting quite balky. (Translation: credit card verification machines which depended on the cellular telephone networks did not seem to work reliably.) Ye Olde ATMs were also inoperative. Reasonable alternatives (old-fashioned credit-card imprint and voice authorization in one case, cash advance via front gate souvenir booth in the other) were put into action and appeared to work. On 20 March at opening time, they were unable to take credit cards at the front gate ticket booth — the rain had gotten into the machine. Fortunately I had cash, and the problem was resolved by the next day.

Both the grounds proper and the parking lot seem like they’d become very muddy after a hard rain. (The parking lot and road leading thereunto, perhaps enough so that folks would get stuck.) Maybe I’m wrong; I can’t speak from direct experience, as the weather was lovely and dry the whole first weekend. Update: Early on the morning of 20 March, a cold front moved through, bringing with it a line of brief but extremely intense rain. Both the fairground itself and the parking lot fared better than I expected, though I still have some concerns about what would come of a prolonged rain.

It would have been nice if there were a few more places to sit (just around the grounds, not necessarily at pubs and shows). There were a few times when finding a nearby trash receptacle took a bit of searching. By my second visit, lots of new seating had been installed, and there were plenty of trash cans.

All things considered, though, the site was lovely. The building and greens guys deserve a big huzzah. So do the folks keeping the trash picked up and the privies mucked out.

Food and Drink

There’s no way we could sample all the food and beverage choices in the course of a single weekend, but there were some pleasant surprises among the things we did try.

center: pub; far left: Como Ristorante

The Como Ristorante Italiano (adjacent to Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem pub) was consistently good. Ask about the daily specials.  It isn’t on the menu, but they’ll cheerfully do whole pizzas. They also have a nice covered dining area upstairs; look for the entrance to the far right of the order window.

The hookah bar next to Elven Hill Stage is where you go to get good coffee and tea.

Where miniature horses always drink for free!

Bottled soft drinks and water were available for the only slightly ridiculous price of US$2.00 — better than many other fairs I’ve visited recently. The vendors were, without exception, happy to give me a mug of ice at no charge with my soda. (Pro tip for counter staff: I have an extra dollar in my hand. You’re getting it either way. If you don’t demand it as payment for the ice, it goes in your tip jar. Amateur tip for counter staff: Have a tip jar.)

Beer choices seemed to be domestic fizzwater, plus Bass and Guiness. Not very exciting for yr. humble narrator, who prefers big Hertfordshire bitters but will risk an IPA in a pinch. Update: The Fagan’s Froth pub near the falconry stage offers Long Hammer IPA, which wouldn’t be my first choice, but isn’t at all bad.

I’m not enough of a wine snob to tell you if the wine cellar was more exciting. Two meads were on offer: Chaucer’s, and another (whose name I didn’t catch) which the pub staff were warning folks had a cinnamon bite. I didn’t sample any mead.

Media

Wow. The Sherwood guys get it.

Sherwood Forest Faire has a web site that actually works (if you’re willing to turn on JavaScript). While it does use Comic Sans, and commits a handful of other design atrocities, the information you want is actually there, findable and legible, and you don’t have to wade through a hellish sea of Flash and autoplaying music to get it. (In this, I hasten to add, they are entirely unlike the much-larger TRF, who commit every possible web site sin and then make up a bunch of horrible new ones in addition.)

Sherwood’s advertising budget is clearly not bottomless, but they seem to have done a good job of getting the word out. An excellent job, considering that (from the secondhand information I have) total paid attendance for the first weekend exceeded 5000.

[Updated 22 Mar 2010 by dhenke to reflect my experience during my return trip.]

[1]– Full disclosure: Diane is a personal friend, and I have an “executive producer” credit on her Tales of the Trickster album. So, any comments from me about her musical genius may reflect a certain bias.

[2]– I’m still not sure if they had Klezmer music in 1189CE. The best answer I’ve come up with so far is “probably, except nobody called it that yet, and it probably sounded a lot different.” Comments from those in the know would be most welcome.

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Despite her persistent questioning, I kept quiet about the fact that pretty much every other shop has an opium den in the back, not to mention the place being a non-stop orgy after closing. She wrote a nice article for her newspaper, one that may well lure more unsuspecting victims into the louche and depraved life of the regular renaissance fair patron.

This handsome (albeit extremely colorful) fellow is inside the shop of Imaginarium Galleries, on the wall above the till. For all I know, he’s been there for years. (Imaginarium’s chief business at TRF involves little shoulder-sitters, which are lovely but not really to my taste. I’d never bothered to go in their booth before.) The sculptor is Albert Alfaro. His son Anthony was minding the shop, and very graciously allowed me to take these pictures.

Most of the time, the dragon-head-on-a-wall thing comes across as a hunting trophy, which I find off-putting in the extreme. The sculpture pictured above struck me as more of a tribute, like a bust of a notable public figure in classical sculpture.

This dragon’s not for sale — I asked — though perhaps in the fullness of time I’ll have to enquire about the possibility of commissioning a similar work.

This gentle-dragon was strolling around the grounds near Sherwood. A patron, I think, not cast (or maybe I just blew my Spot Hidden roll when checking for a badge). He seemed to be a mute dragon, and was having a character moment with a small child, so I didn’t try to chat him up. Thus, I have no names or links to share. (If this is you, or you know who it is, please give me a shout in the comment.)

Great outfit, and well-played sir. Well played. (The two scimitars, though? I understand that’s been done.)