The story so far...

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ATTHEFAIRE PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE
by John-Paul, ATF Staff Writer

AtTheFaire Past, Present and Future:
an open letter concerning John-Paul, Willa, and this site.

(Posted on 7/1/2003) Hi there. Allen (John-Paul) here. I just wanted to share a few things I've been meaning to post for awhile...

PAST

My first renaissance experience was going to both the Texas Renaissance Festival and Scarborough Faire when I was in 6th grade around 1981. Although I thought they were neat, it wasn't until 15 years later that I decided to visit one again. This is a brief (?) history of AtTheFaire to explain how it came to exist.

In 1995 I moved from Texas to Iowa to pursue a dream job. I began re-dating (is this ever a good idea?) a girl I had known a few years before. She had an interest in the S.C.A. but had never gone to a renaissance festival. Thanks to a coworker, James ("foolscap" in the message board here), I learned about the upcoming Iowa Renaissance Festival. I took Delilah to this event in 1997. She wore some stupid medieval dress thing and I walked behind her, trying to keep my distance. I felt it was quite stupid to be going to something like this in a costume. What was this? Halloween?

The following year at Salisbury Faire I purchased a few items of garb myself and the rest, as they say, is history. My involvement with festivals would continue to grow, leading up to me vending roses at a few regional events and taking pictures with my early model digital camera. These pictures were hosted on my personal website, "Al's Place", which later evolved into "Allen's Media Archive Site" which mostly focused on pictures from theme parks I went to. (Hey, a renaissance festival was kinda like a theme park -- just without roller coasters...)

In 1999, Delilah and I parted ways and I attended the two Des Moines events (May and September) by myself. It just wasn't the same. For the second weekend of the 1999 Iowa Renaissance Festival I was trying to get more people there to liven things up. One of these people was a girl I'd met online after doing an internet newsgroup search on Iowa Renaissance Festival. It seems she'd attended this event in past years but was, due to a personal situation, unable to get out and play that year. She wasn't able to make it to the Iowa festival but we did meet up soon after to go on our first date at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival. This is how my relationship with Willa began.

Soon after, Willa (then known as "Maeve") moved to Des Moines to be with me and we started going to as many festivals as we could. Somehow the idea of creating a website to host all of my festival photos came up and AtTheFaire.com was born. (The name was chosen with the intent of offering subdomains such as wenches.atthefaire.com.) At the same time, I was moving all my theme park photos to a new site called DisneyFans.com. If you were to go back to the early days of AtTheFaire, you'd see that both it and DisneyFans used almost the same layout. Back then, theme parks were my main passion and focus and festivals were just something new and fun to explore. A short time later this would reverse as AtTheFaire became the focus of my attention.

In 2000, Willa helped out at the Fall Wybreg Village Renaissance Festival in Bonaparte, Iowa. She was cast as a "washer well wench" and needed two more girls. Sheila was a girl we'd met earlier at the Hamlet of Slater event and Keirra came to us through a mutual friend from the Spring Wybreg (hello to "the god-like Cale"!). This led to a migration from vending roses to performing at festivals with the Washer Well Wenches. The next two years were spent playing at festivals all over the Midwest. I also took a ton of pictures for this site :-)

In December 2000 ATF opened up its message board, The Pub. By May 2001 we had 100 members and 1000 posts. As of today, over 700 members have registered and the post count is over 57,000. This was the first indication that ATF had taken on a life of its own.

This website would have been nothing more than an online photo gallery if it were not for Willa. While I did the technical layout and worked on things like counter scripts and message boards, she went on to generate all the other content: newbie guides, song indexes, link exchanges, costuming details, etc. Virtually everything here, other than the photos, exists because of all the work she did. In fact, to this day I still claim almost complete ignorance when it comes to anything renaissance related. I just like to go and have fun (though I did finally learn all the words to one festival song last year...)

PRESENT

On February 14th 2003, nearly three and a half years after our first date, Willa and I split up.  Sadly, we were just not going to be compatible life partners. I will always cherish deeply our time together. We shared great fun, wondrous laughter and beautiful memories. The brief years we spent together were easily the best in my life so far.

What's the point of all this? Well... As you can see, I was never into renaissance stuff before I started dating women who were. Had it not been for Delilah getting into the SCA wayback when, I may have never gotten around to going to another renaissance festival. Had I not wanted to play so much that I went online to find someone to help me, I may never have met Willa. Had I not met Willa, AtTheFaire may have never been started.

It has been months since we split up, and festival season started without me looking forward to it. Even before the breakup, the wenches were going to be taking time off (Keirra had to go give birth again, you see). Without contracts to perform all over the place, and without some project (like photos) to focus on, I found myself just not really having any desire to go play at festivals. My employment situation didn't help either. (Remember that dream job I moved to Iowa for? I was laid off from it in 2001, then laid off from a nearly as good follow up job in early 2002. Today I am back making $6.50/hour working retail, which requires extensive weekend hours... Blah.)

So far this season, I have done quick daytrips with friends to the Greater St. Louis Renaissance Faire, My Waterloo Days Renaissance Festival and the Hamlet of Mid Missouri. While I did enjoy bits and pieces, it has become obvious my heart just isn't in it right now. I've found myself describing it like this: You know how you might go bowling with your coworkers every month? There is always someone who does it that says "oh yeah, I go bowling with them alot, but it's kinda funny. I don't really like bowling and doubt I'd ever go by myself." I think that's kinda me when it comes to festivals right now.

Without some grand purpose to justify all the effort and expense, and without a job that generates me tons of disposable income, festivals have become something low on my priority list. I'm sad to say that this may mean changes for this website in the future. It seems I still spend an hour or so each day just trying to stay caught up with what few ATF projects I am working on. I'm just not into this enough to do it all by myself.

FUTURE

Since the bulk of the content that people come to visit (photos, guides, links, etc.) hasn't really been updated in over a year, it appears that ATF is going to end up frozen in time as a reminder of a great few years. New photos may be added, but not like they used to. Front page news will probably continue to be posted when someone sends something in, and the message board continues to spiral out of control as more and more people sign up all the time. The main reason the site existed in the first place, though, may go away.

AtTheFaire.com WAS John-Paul and Willa. Without both, there isn't much left. The original reason we did this was to get photos and news about midwest events online. Today, everyone has a digital camera -- already hundreds of photos have been posted from, for example, Waterloo. There are plenty of sites talking about garb and creating characters (where do you think we got our information from?), so perhaps just having archive photos (from before the time when everyone had a camera), news items and a regional message board will be enough. I certainly hope so. After all, AtTheFaire has had enough donations and support in the past few years that it can remain online for awhile...

In the future, this may all change, but right now don't expect much to be added. ATF is still here; it just has an absentee landlord. Hopefully he will return to fix the leaky roof some day...

Thanks, gang, for all your support over the years. It has been a great ride! And special thanks to Willa for giving me some of the best experiences I have ever had. I will always have love for her.

-- Allen Huffman, co-founder of AtTheFaire.com

Help keep us online. Book your travel here, or patronize some of these folke:

1. Des Moines Ren Faire (IA)
2. Iowa Ren Festival (IA)
3. Iowa-Minnesota Pirate Fest (IA)
4. Greater Quad Cities Ren Faire (IL)
5. Midlands Pirate Festival (NE)
6. Nebraska Ren Faire (NE)
7. Ren Faire at Sleepy Hollow (IA)

1. thescotsdragon.com
2. threegryphons.com

1. danzamystique.com
2. gypsycomedyshow.com
3. mydragonstories
4. phoenixswords.atthefaire.com
5. piratecomedyshow.com
6. queenbea.atthefaire.com
7. revelers.atthefaire.com
8. wenchville.com

1. anothercrappypodcast.com
2. atthefaire.com
3. crocolyle.atthefaire.com
4. perin.atthefaire.com
5. renbanner.net
6. renreporter.com
7. sirclisto.com

Host your site with ATF and be listed here! $50/year (and the publicity is free!)

Permanent festivals in our area: Kansas City Renaissance Festival, Bristol Renaissance Faire, Des Moines Renaissance Faire and Minnesota Renaissance Festival.
Other ATF sites: DisneyFans.com DMHauntedHouses.com