Fickle fortune befell last year’s Pine Hill Steampunk Festival in the form of Hurricane Sandy. "A lot of people decided not to come to the Catskills that weekend, and some who did come left early as the situation worsened," said Pine Hill Books owner and festival organizer Rusty Mae Moore. "But the people that did come had such fun they insisted we do it again."
Margaretville has its cauliflowers, Rosendale has its rock-n-roll, and Moore says that Pine Hill has qualities that make it an ideal setting for a celebration of the anachronistic aesthetic ethos that is steampunk.
"A lot of the conventions and events that involve steampunk and fantasy take place in big event venues like hotels," she said. "We don’t have one of those. What we have is a preserved Victorian resort community -- an entire hamlet in which the library, the community center, the bookstore, the gallery, the historic railroad tracks all become venues. The accommodations are local B&B style."
Very steampunk. The subculture, which has been building steadily for at least 30 years, centers on a fascination with the early Industrial Age and Victoriana. Steampunk aficionados adopt and adapt art, fashion, music, literature, décor and just about everything else to suit their vision of a culture many of our great-grandparents would find curiously familiar. In the world of steampunk, it's as if history had proceeded along an alternative track, in which the golden age of invention led not to planned obsolescence and sterile mass production, but to most everyone having their own inventor’s workshop.
"I think everybody has a little steampunk in them," said Chelsea Goodwin, Moore’s life and business partner and the co-host of the WIOX radio show In Goth We Trust. "Alice in Wonderland, Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan, Sherlock Holmes, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne -- these are the stories that defined our childhoods, and they’ve never been outdone. There’s a lot to be said for things that are time-tested and loved. Steampunk harks back to the very dawn of industrialization, before things got super-cheap and ugly, before everything became aggressively franchised and homogenized and plastic. When some plastic object becomes used and shabby, it looks much shabbier than Victorian-era creations do."
With its fantasy and sci-fi and its fondness for tinkering and making, steampunk indeed seems a good fit for the Catskills. Prominent steampunk singer/songwriter and promoter Jeff Mach agrees, and will be headlining Saturday’s music fresh from a performance at the Steampunk World’s Fair.
Besides Mach’s performance, there will be vendors, bellydancing, comedy, magic, art, a barbershop quartet, and discussions of the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Henry Morton. On Sunday at noon, the Fest's best-dressed will embark on a Tweed Ride, bicycling from Pine Hill Books on Main Street to a picnicking spot at a farm on Lower Birch Creek Road. ("It's BYOB -- bring your own basket," said Goodwin.) Guests are invited to dress in their finest Victorian or fantastical glad rags at any and all points, and there will be a “Dress Up Your Steampunk Pet” event in the park on Saturday afternoon.
The gist, though, is to come as yourself and bring your imagination. "There’s a lot of whimsy in steampunk," says Moore. "I’m 72, and for most of my life I never paid much attention to any particular subculture, but this one is great. People are intelligent and literate and accepting, nobody’s putting each other down."
2nd Annual Pine Hill Steampunk Festival. Friday, Oct. 25 through Sunday, Oct. 27. Multiple venues throughout Pine Hill. Free admission. For more information, check out the organizers' post on our site, “What’s Happening at the Pine Hill Steampunk Fest,” or the event's website and Facebook page.
