Faire Folk at Work

Marshall Bryer

The podcast features speakers host Dan McLaughlin and guest Mashall Bryer reminiscing about their experiences at the Renaissance Faire, discussing their involvement in various booths and activities. The conversation covers the strict period costume requirements, the camaraderie among participants, and the evolution of the event over the years. The speakers highlight memorable characters like the "cookie man" and the challenges of moving the Faire to a new location. They also touch on the sense of community and tradition that has persisted among Faire participants, including annual gatherings to remember those who have passed away. The podcast provides insights into the unique culture and history of the Renaissance Faire, emphasizing the lasting friendships and shared memories that have endured over decades., discussing their involvement in various booths and activities. They also discuss the activites and breif history of The Fool's Guild.

Broadcast on:: 11 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

Welcome to another episode of Fair Folk at Work. You know, there are a lot of different communities at Fair, and one of them was the craftspeople. It was a place for craftspeople to gather and people to buy their work, and it was a place for craftspeople to, well, find other people to explore other things. My guest today started with stained glass, had a slight detour through the children's glade, and then ended up as a pirate. My guest today is Marshall Breyer. Marshall, welcome. Hi, thank you. But before we get to your torture occupational path through the fair, you get the first Fair Folk at Work question, which is, who was the person to say to you there was a thing called Fair, and what did they say to get you out there? Well, that would be my sister. My sister approached me and said, "Hey, her and her husband were doing a stained glass booth at the Renaissance Fair, and do I want to come help out?" And I said, "Sure," and they told me a little bit about it. I didn't know much about it at the time, but I knew that all the costumes had to be in period and that everything had to be like the Renaissance, and we were going to pack up a bunch of stained glass and haul it out to the fair site. Can I ask how old you were? I was about 18 at the time. Okay. Did you have any previous theatrical experience? I took acting and I did the odd couple. That's about the extent of my theatrical experience, really not much. But I had some sales experience and it sounded like fun, and so I went with them out to the site and we set up the booth, and my sister in Berlin had a big stained glass shop on Melrose by the Improv and Fred Seagulls, which they did a lot of the movie stars and rock stars at the time. People like Joni Mitchell and Charles Bronson and people like that would come in their studio. And so my brother on the side would be fun to do the fair. So we packed up this beautiful Renaissance window which had three beuses coming down these stairs and kind of a Greek type setting with a stream and everything. And the window must have been, I don't know, 15 feet by maybe 15 feet. You know, it was a huge thing and it was 15 panels and each panel was like four feet by four feet. And you took that to the fair? We took that to the fair. It was a whole wall. There's pictures of it. It was very impressive. And it was valued at the time of over $100,000. And that was back in the '70s. Got into West Worth today. But we had a beautiful booth and it was right across the main stage. And you're right next door to a guy named Stephen Correa at the time. No one knew who he was. But he later became pretty famous in the stained glass business. Can I ask a couple of questions? Not stained glass. He'd blown glass. He did blown glass. Art glass. But go on. Did you come from a family of glass workers? Or was this your sister Dustin offshoot the family that had an arts and craft spend? My sister was an artist and she was written up when she was seven years old in the LA Times. And then when she was 16 years old, she had a one woman show on Beverly Drive and Beverly Hills. And some of her collectors were Paul Newman and John Wayne and people like that. And that was when she was 16. She later went on to start doing painting and stained glass. She was in her early twenties. I also have another famous artist in my family named Man Ray who was pretty famous. He could look him up. So art does run in my family. And what did your parents do? Well, my mother used to draw for Disney way back when. Really? Yeah. And then she later went into real estate. My father was a pharmacist. So anyway, so my sister loved antiques and she started with an antique shop. And when they started with the antiques, they went up buying a lot of stained glass. And then they converted the stained glass into a stained glass shop. That's how that got started. Anyway, we took the windows out there. We set up the booth and it was a lot of fun and I love the fair, you know, from the first day on the next year, they didn't want to really do it. So I volunteered to run the booth. So in 72, we brought a beautiful, we were going to bring that window up again. That was too much work and there was too much breakage on going up and down the road. So the next year, we brought this beautiful stained glass dome and it had the sun and the moon and the zodiac in the center and all the planets and it's like Saturn and it was a dome was about, I'd say, maybe 10 feet by maybe, you know, 5 feet. Anyway, that was our second year at the fair. And then after that, they really didn't want to do it again because of the breakage problem coming up and down the dirt roads. And so I still wanted to continue with the fair. So I went out working for the children's dome for a year, which was, you know, kind of interesting, but it really wasn't my thing. And you were about 20 years old at this time? Yeah. But one thing I will add about when you are a boothie at the fair, they call us boothies. Everything you do at that time, we had all be in costume, everything had to be in period. Everything had to be something that would have been there in that time period. So you had to, whatever you're selling at the fair, had to go before a panel and they had to look at what you're selling and A, it had to be something that was made by you. You had the artist had to be there, it couldn't be something that's imported from somewhere else. It had to be made by you or made, you know, that you made. The second of all, it had to be in period, something that would have been in existence during that time period. And they were very strict about this. So all the crafts at that time were pretty amazing. And usually the person that made the things had to be there at the booth. And so you could actually, when you're, when you're coming to the fair, you'd actually talk to the artist that actually made whatever it was, whether it be stained glass or whether it would be jewelry or whatever it was. You remember what the judges said about your sister's stained glass? We got second place for the best booth at the fair that year. So like an imagine, we were, yeah, and my sister had, you know, gorgeous things because her artwork was amazing and they had a shop at that point where they had a whole bunch of people making the, she would do all the artwork and then she'd have people that would cut the glass and she had someone else that would let them, I mean, she had a whole factory basically, but it was all her artwork, you know, and it was all her designs and the booth had to be totally in period. So you couldn't have like an aluminum ladder or you couldn't have anything that wouldn't have been there during the Renaissance. Everything had to be something that would have been there had had to be wood or canvas or something that would have been there at that time period. And they're very strict. They'd come around and check out your booth and make sure that everything was in period and everything was just right and that all your costumes were in period and that everything you did was in period. It was very, very, very strict at that time. Who did your costume? My mom made all our costumes for the booth at that time. Was she a seamstress of some sort or was she just sewed on the side? I mean, she wasn't really a seamstress, but she knew how to sew and so she just, it was pretty easy to make a Renaissance fair costume because they're, you know, pretty basic unless you were, if you were a craftsman and your costume was pretty basic or if you were like royalty or something, they were very elaborate, but we weren't royalty. So our costumes were not really that complicated to make. So what I'm gathering is that you were sort of the cute kid in the front of the booth encouraging people to come in and buy your sister's stained glass. Yeah, I was selling prints of her pictures and I was also selling little stained glass windows. Yeah, I was just helping with, you know, answering questions and talking to people and stuff like that. You remember, and I know this is going back a bit, but do you remember what your sort of spiel was or your hawk? No, it goes too far back. I, you know, I don't remember exactly what my hawk was. But did you enjoy talking to passerby's and enticing them into your sister's booth? At that time, I worked more inside the booth, so I talked to people when they came in and I'd answer questions and like, they might ask me how much the window was or, you know, whatever they wanted, like who made it or whatever they wanted to know, I would just answer questions. And I had a lot of prints for paintings and it was more selling those and the little windows because a lot of people wanted to buy a $10 or $15 window. They didn't want to buy a $500 window, you know, but we did sell a few of the expensive ones, but it was more the little stuff that we were selling. Do you have any memories of what it felt like the first couple of years who went out to fair that made it attractive to return over and over again? Yes, I actually do. There was one day I was walking down the road and this lord bumped into me and said, I cry you mercy. And he goes, I cry you mercy isn't good enough. We have to settle this with steel and he pulled out a sword. And so I was with a fair maiden and I said, would you hold my hat in my cape and hands the fair maiden? And I pulled out my sword and we started fencing in the streets back and forth and big crowd gathered around. It was really fun, you know, and it encouraged me to take two years of fencing after that so I could be a little more successful in my bouts when I ran into people at the fair. And back in those days you're allowed to do that, just draw your sword and just go fencing in the streets. And Jay Paul had a skit at four o'clock on the main bridge where he would say, are there any English men to defend the crown and I'd come running up with about, you know, seven other people and we're here. And the Spanish would all draw their swords and we all draw our swords and we start fencing up and down the creek and it was just, it was a lot of fun and that was back in the days where you could do that. And then someone got injured and then, you know, now wasn't allowed to draw a sword anymore and now that went away. But early on you could do that and people were allowed to ride their horses on the fair sight and that went away also because of the insurance problems. And then Roger Wilson, Roger was the guy that does the tug of war with the ropes. At nighttime they have special shows for the fair people and events. They would have like a lot of the stage shows that happened during the day. They would do a night but they would do them a little more risqué and a little more different than things that they couldn't do or couldn't say during the day. They would say during the night show. So it was always fun to watch the show during the day and then see the night show version of it when they could do things that weren't allowed during the day. It was always a lot of fun and the game that Roger was playing was called Clench-a-Wench where they get, he'd pick out five guys and he'd pick out five girls from the crowd and the girls would be two, four, six, eight, ten and the guys would be one, three, five, seven, nine and then they'd put a girl in the middle and the girl would call out an odd and an even number and the idea is for the guy to kiss the girl in the center before the other girl kisses him and it got pretty intense and very physical. It was a lot of fun. Everyone would be cheering on the guy or girl with their choice and rooting for them. It was a blast until someone got injured and then that was the end of that and they weren't allowed to do it anymore but there was a lot of fun memories. You had a slight detour in the children's glade? Did you work there? For one year. What was your job there and did you learn sort of any fair skills while working at the children's glade? That's a very good question, it's, again, it was a very long time ago. I don't remember, I don't think I had to go through, I mean when you get into the acting department it's a whole different conversation but I think if I remember correctly the children's glade would still run like a booth. So no, you didn't really have any, it was like they had arts and crafts and they had things for the kids to do, I think they had a petting zoo, I can't remember, but I remember they had things for the children to do and what we did is we just provided entertainment for the kids, the parents who dropped the kids off and we keep them entertained until they came and picked them up with just things like arts and crafts and games and things like that and we would just, did you do like little theatrical things, like let's have a little pageant or anything like that? No, I don't remember doing anything like that, I remember it was more arts and crafts type stuff. Did you sort of go to the children's gal out of default? I just, it was the first thing I found that I could get into after the seeing last booth was no longer available, I wanted to find something else I could do and it was the first thing I stumbled on. So it got me a free pass into the fair and I passed and that's kind of what I was looking for. So I did that for a year. And then you discovered the pirates and... Well actually I went in, I think I went into archery at that point. Oh, okay, talk to me about archery. I was an archery instructor and I would try to show junk people how to not kill themselves with a bow and arrow. Or at least slap the bow against their inner arm, which hurt like crazy by the way. Yes, so I would show them how not to do that. If they followed my instruction, they wouldn't have that problem. And if they weren't too drunk, most of them listen, but you know I have some that were way too drunk and really shouldn't be shooting anything like a bow and arrow, but it was one of the challenges of the job. They'd sell anybody arrows for two dollars and it was up to us to make sure they don't go hurt with them. Did you do the archery before you took fencing lessons or after fencing lessons or in conjunction with fencing lessons? I studied archery when I was seven years old. Okay. So I was a marksman in archery way before I knew anything about the Renaissance Fair. And I was one of the top shooters at my camp when I was 13. And later went on to be a NCAA archery instructor, which is another competition. Was the fair archery boots set up? I mean, how far did an arrow have to go to hit the hay bale? Not far. And I used to bring my bow from home, so I had a really nice bow, which had a sight on it. And I'd use that and I'd bring that to the fair and got to shoot and show other people how to shoot and show them not to hurt themselves whether having fun with the bows and arrows. Then we did some hockey, trying to remember some of the lines we had to get people to come by, like, you know, we talk about our shafts and things like that. Sort of things that naturally lent themselves to a fair environment crowd. And you know, when we got a good looking woman, we could have some fun with them and kind of show them how to shoot. Yeah. That was always a lot of fun. Was there the obligatory tankard as a prize for hitting the target or something like that? You know, I don't remember any prizes for hitting the target. I think our main concern was just making sure everyone was safe and no one's getting hurt. But I did that for a few years and after that, I found myself becoming a pirate. And that's when I chose the pirate because back in that time period, the pirates were like the one loophole in the whole fair. And the reason why the pirates were the loophole is it's because back in the Elizabethan time, you had the peasants which were poor, people had nothing, they're just, you know, in the street. And then you had your royalty and they were ones of all the money, but I didn't really want to be a royalty because that didn't really look fun. And I didn't want to really be a peasant either because that didn't look fun either. The loophole was the pirates because Francis Drake and all the pirates at the time would rob the Spanish galleons and they take all the gold and give it to the queen of England. So the queen of England loved the pirates because they gave it all the gold. And so they were basically exempt. So they can go and they could talk to the royalty, they could talk to the peasants, they could go over here anywhere they want to go, they could wear anything they want, they'd have to worry about, well, you can't wear this or you can't wear that or you can't, they pretty much get away with murder. So being a pirate was just fun because you had basically you can do anything you want, you don't have to worry about anything, you don't have to worry about having the share of common. So if you can't wear this or you can't do this or you can, you could do basically anything. It was a get out of jail free card and at the time there was no pirate skill. Right. If you didn't fall into one of these guilds and they didn't know where to put you, they threw you into St. Helens. That was where they put everybody. They didn't know where to put you. We had no place to go. You'd be in St. Helens. So I found myself in St. Helens Guild. When you work for the fair, it's a huge obligation because first of all, there's like, and the tournament was now, I think it was six weeks of fair. And then there was like four weeks of workshops, I think it was. It was 10 weeks of every weekend, which is a lot of weekends. And the four weekends of workshops, you had to take old English, one old English to improv, acting, Elizabethan history, you had to know how to talk, how to sing, you had to know how to act, all these things you had to know about the time period because you were back in the 1500s. And the genius of the whole thing that was Phyllis Patterson's vision was that she called the Living History Center because every year would be a new year. So you know, if it was, let's say 1978, it was 1978, it was 1578. So the next year would be 1579 and next year would be 1580. Every year was a different year. So that's why it was the living history. And so things would change every year too because history would change. So things would change. And then they had costume department where they're like the Gestapo, you know, and your costume had to be in period. And they'd come by and they first of all, they'd check out your costume and it'd have to be checked off at your costume is cool. And then they walk around, they had the police, the Gestapo police. And if they saw you with a sunglasses or a watch or anything that was out of period, you would get it, you'd get followed in and questioned and yelled at and don't you ever do this again type thing. So I was a photographer and I took a lot of pictures. That was like the, you know, it was my thing at the fair was to take pictures. So I have to hide my camera under my cape, you know, when I was walking around. And then when I wanted to get a picture, I'd have to look both ways, make sure no one was looking, pull out my camera, get the picture and then shove it back under my cape because I couldn't be caught with a camera, you know, it's totally out of period, you know, I couldn't even be caught with a watch or anything. Where did you like to hang out at fair to get good pictures? Does that make sense? Yeah, I didn't really have any Kodak picture moments, but I would just walk around the fair in character. And one thing you had to have is a character. So to work for the entertainment department, you had a name, you had to have a character and you had to have what you were doing at fair. And I was three things you had to have in order to work for the entertainment department. So I was captain, Aaron Sawyer, Aaron Sawyer, I was my character. I was at fair because we were on shore leave. So me and my crew were at fair on shore leave. That's why I was there, that's who I was, that was basically my character as a captain of a ship. I would was walk around trying to be a character and interact with the other characters as best I could. Were you basically trying to recruit them? Was that the sort of basic theme that you were walking on? No, I was just acting in character, I was just acting like a pirate of a captain of a pirate ship. Okay. And I was walking around acting my character and we'd have certain things that they would have us do. Like there'd be a morning parade, a noon parade, hanging out at certain places at certain times. We had certain things that we needed to be, but basically we could pretty much do anything we wanted to do. And we got a pass and then we got a night pass where we could spend the night. And originally back in the day, if you worked in the acting department, you would get food tickets. It was like, buy or attend bucks worth of food, that you can go any food booth and give them your food tickets and get food. And then some of the entertainers would get money. Well, that later turned out to be no food tickets, but you could spend the night there. And then it was like, no pay, no food tickets, and then you could spend the night there. Then it turned out to be no food, no tickets, and you have to pay to spend the night there. So they kept getting less and less things that they gave you for working there. And basically you're working there for free, but you're less allowed to spend the night. After you paid the money to do so, it was still fun and we still had a blast and but the quality of the entertainment did start to go down as the status came less, the quality of the entertainment went down, except for the people that were the old timers, because they just loved the fair and they just went up just doing it for free because they loved the fair. I want to get back to the you taking pictures, Sarah, typically with a camera under your cape. What caught your eye and as you were walking down the street, what were you looking for? Sometimes you have to be there at the right second. I would want to catch that moment. And if you were just at the right place at the right time, one time there was a kid had a lizard hanging from his nose. I just grabbed my camera, pulled it out and bam, I got this awesome picture of the, then I have one of a fire eater that was the guy was, you know, eating fire and I got this awesome picture where the fire was right at his lips when I snapped it. Perfect picture. And I got some pictures of the mayor and the wife, which was B. J. Paul and Judy Corey. I got a really good picture of Lord Burley showing Lord Lester how to eat with a fork. I have some great pictures of the Guildmaster, which is no longer with us, but he was quite a character. He had this little finger stick that was like a hand on a stick and he would know, and he's this old man, right? And he would get the women and he would know just how to lip the dress up and put it right in the right place. So they jump, you know, they look around and see him and smiling and it was very cute. You dirty old man and he worked it. He was great. He was one of my best customers. He bought a lot of my pictures. You know, I started probably at the fair in the early eighties and everybody talks about the cookie man or the guy on the roof of the cookie booth. So I have audio of him and I don't have video because it was, you know, it was too early, but I do have audio of him and I have, like I said, some of the best pictures that his wife said she's ever seen of him. I took Michael. I have heard so many stories about the cookie man stopping traffic. There was just like 400 people just stopped looking up at the guy as he was hurrying people in the audience kind of thing. Don't sit there with your hand on your hips. Put a cookie between your lips, Juliet, how did he go Romeo, Romeo? How did he was a cookie Shakespeare? He called it. He would talk and rhyme. On and on and on and on and on talking about cookies and rhyme and in the Renaissance character. It was truly amazing and people would come just to see the cookie man. Phyllis, I mean, her thing was the queen, Phyllis Patterson. The queen was everything, but there were two people that upstaged the queen and she used to hate that because there was two people that brought in that were just more popular than the queen herself and one of them was the cookie man and the other one would be cock and feathers, cock and feathers always drew like they'd be in the main stage and they would pack the place. Oh, and the other one that was pretty famous was Greg Dean who was known as the up seat juggler. He had great. He was very, very funny and you know, Andy and Skip started the food and Jonathan Cripple started Andy Davis and started the Foos Guild, which started as you know, all the past the hat fools had to get in a guild. So they started the Foos Guild, which was just basically set up because everyone had to be in a guild. So that was the Guild of the Fools and it later turned into a parties and it used to be pretty wild at one point in the beginning, it was, it was a lot of fun. Now today we still get together, you know, 50 years later, we just had a party the other day. We're going to have a Halloween party coming up this year. It's going to be a really big Halloween party, but many Fools have talked about Fools Guild parties. Let me ask you, what was your, if you have a favorite Fools Guild party that springs to mind? One of my favorite was they were doing parties at the voice camp in Griffith Park and it's always a different theme. So one year here they are in Griffith Park at voice camp, right? You can imagine and we had cabins that were spending the night in and everything for New Year's and the theme was a Titanic. So we all had to dress like we were on the Titanic. So I had a captain's hat and I had a double, you know, breasted suit and the party went on and then at 12 o'clock all of a sudden there was lightning and strobe lights and everything and then the ship hit the iceberg. The iceberg came out of the wall at 12 o'clock. It was pretty amazing. I don't know how they did it, but they used to spend days setting these things up. I mean, it was a big a thing that they did. Now it's not like it used to be because everyone's getting older, you know, but you know, back in the day they would put a lot of time and energy into these parties and they would always use entertainment always because you have all these people, it was all the entertainment people from the fair and you'd have Mackie and if you know Mackie, he would do a lot of stuff and there was always really good entertainment. One year they did a Bollywood, it was called Bollywood and it was like an Indian theme. They must have had a table that must have been 20, 30 feet long of food, all Indian themed food. And then when they've done some amazing Halloween themed parties over the years, some of them were really extravagant, some of them weren't so great. Depends on every other is a different king and it depends on who the king was. So some of the kings were really in a Halloween and some weren't. Roger Wilson was king. He did a whole pirate theme because he's not really a fool. He's a pirate. Sandy Green was a king one year and as you know, he really wasn't a fool. He was sandy. I don't know. He was the black wizard and Gary Morgan. He does a every year. He does a New Year's party. He has a castle, he lives in a castle, Hollywood Hills. And he has a huge New Year's party where they drop the ball at 12 o'clock and they're a lot of fun. I'm going to switch focus here for a bit and ask you a different stream of questions. Okay. And it's sort of under the general heading of what life skills did you acquire at fair that you have used outside of fair or put it another way. Have you ever been outside of fair and said to yourself, I've got this because I've done something like that close to this at fair. I've always been, I mean, I'm a sales trainer. I've always been outgoing and I did a workshop with a guy named T. Harveker who does a workshop called Millionaire Mind. And one of the things we had to do is he broke us into three groups. And there was the procrastinators, the spenders and the monks and I'm a procrastinator. So I was in the procrastinator group. And we had to get, there's about 200 of us in the procrastinator group and one of us had to go up on stage after we all talked about our trades. I'll do it and everyone goes, he'll do it. He'll do it. You know, no one would go. No one wanted to go. It's like, you kidding me? We got a stage with T. Harveker in front of 1200 people, I'm down, you know? And I was the only one out of 200 people that wanted to do it. And I had no problem doing it. It was actually a blast. Being up there with T. Harveker on stage was like, you know, that was, it was, I wish had a picture, you know, but I didn't really learn that from fair. I just always been like that. I had something I, you know, I have no fear at all of people and never did. When you say, what did I learn at fair that I would, I guess the one thing I learned at fair was a lot of Elizabethan history and Old English, which, you know, like I would have never known what a doxy was or a hobbledy boy or some of these worlds that, you know, I picked up and, you know, in Old English class, I would never know about that purple is the queen's color or that, things like that that I just, all the years of workshops and things that I picked up. Have I ever used any of that and not really? I mean, did I learn anything that really helped me in life? Not really, but I have another thing maybe, maybe this, I'll disagree with me if this is wrong, but I found audiences at fair, very forgiving and that sort of gives you, at least gave me a sense of I could go out on stage or sell something. And it was going to be okay because my insight that I got at fair was that people basically want to be entertained and if you're halfway decent, they will reward quite a bit. I didn't really do any stage work. I didn't really do a lot of improv. I basically just walked around in character, I interacted with a few people. I mean, I didn't really, the only thing I did is one night they had, in the after hours, they did a conch show and so they were getting people to go up there and do something. And I played their harmonica, so I went up stage and I did the Star Spangled Banner. And as I'm playing it, all of a sudden I'm looking out there and everyone was singing the Star Spangled Banner, which I wasn't ready for that. I was not expecting it, it really threw me for a loop. So I stopped and I kind of stumbled because I wasn't, I didn't know what to do, you know? And then I just went and finished it and that was one of the few things I did on stage at the fair. That's not really what I do. You know, just ask what your day job is? Well right now, I used to, I do a lot of different things. What I was doing until recently was I owned and operated a pizza sports bar restaurant. Okay. So I had arcade games and a lot of teams come in after the game and we had 25 beers on draft and we had pizza and we had, you know, it was about 150 seats. So I did that for about 15 years and then after COVID and all that, now I've been repairing injuries. So I help people with injuries and I help people that have certain diseases like cancer and things like this, holistic. So that's what I've been doing now, pretty much. So getting back to your timeline at fair, how did your fair life evolve after you were walking around as a pirate captain? After I stopped working for a St. Helena's as a pirate, I wound up working with Mary Skier's Good Shepherd Games on the Turtle Race booth and some of her other booths. For those of us not familiar with the Turtle Race booth, could you briefly or take as long as you like, describe how one races turtles in a renaissance fair? Well, Mary had a bunch of booths, Turtle Race was her main booth but she also has crossbows and she has darts and she has, I can't remember, she's got about six or seven different booths. But the Turtle Race was the first one I think and it was basically, she puts the turtles out there and the turtles have numbers on them and they have to cross a finish line and the first turtle to cross a finish line wins and everyone bets on the turtles. So I used to help her with that and I did the photography. How does one help a turtle race? Well, I'd help, like the people that were working with various different booths, they need water so I'd help her in the water. Oh, I see. I would help, you know, if someone didn't show up, I would go work that booth for, you know, whichever the booth was that someone didn't show up, she didn't help that, you know, if she had anything, I was just there to help her whenever she needed and, you know, we became very good friends. We're still friends to this day when I do go to Fair I go see her and visit with her. But, you know, the thing I did was when the Renaissance Fair decided to leave St. Helena's and move to the Rancho Santa Fe dam area, that was when I pretty much, that was the last of my fair career because it was just the dam area, there was no night life, there was no night show. It really took all the fun out of it. I remember that the the boothies were all promised that, you know, this was going to be their place and they were going to be there forever and they, a lot of them put a lot of money in their booths and when the fair took off and kind of left them, they had an investment that they just lost and they were very upset. One of them had a pirate ship and sunk it in the bay. Yeah, a lot of people were very, very upset because they, they were encouraged to put a lot of money in their booths by the fair and then the fair kind of turned on them and pulled out of there. I want to go back and talk about something you mentioned earlier. Talk to me about being an undercover photographer at fair. I mean, at first I was trying to make money and started with that and then when I realized that that wasn't really happening, I started just to try to capture moments. You'd see something that was just perfect and you just bam and you'd capture that moment, you know what I mean? You just had to be at the right place at the right time and I try to get pictures of everybody, you know, I try to get pictures of all the shows and the Queen's parade and this, that, the other and I try to, I did a lot of work for the Garland lady. She wanted me to photograph her Garland so I went around and found the best looking women I can at the fair and I had them put on garlets and took pictures of them so that was fun. What other booths and/or shows do you remember being either photogenic or just fun just to hang out and watch? Well, my favorite was the Wizard Show. That was always fun and Greg Dean was always fun. I like the jugglers, like the fly by night juggling company, there's a few of those that were fun to watch. I mean, Mooney and Broon are always entertaining and they're still there today. Most of the Elizabethan stuff I really didn't care much for, you know? Salami Show was really good. Yes, it was. Back with Billy Scudder and Judy Corey and when I had the original cast, I got some great pictures of that, by the way too. How about food booths? My favorite food booth would probably be Steak on the Steak because the guy would be out there with the hat Steak on a Steak, you know? And I love the bangers, I used to love the banger booth, you know, banger in the morning for breakfast, that was always fun. Those are probably two of my favorite. And then I used to love cuffbirds, so you go in there and it was the hometown buffet of the fair, you go in cuffbirds and you give you a plate and you used for a couple bucks as all you could eat. It was amazing. But it was a blast, you know, before a fair opened where Manny used to do breakfast back in the day and then other people took it over, I remember who was doing it after Manny. And then there'd always be a dinner thing going on somewhere after hours. And then of course the Turkish coffee booth late at night was always a blast where, you know, there'd be belly dancing and people just go over there like at, you know, 10, 11 o'clock at night and just, you know, talk about the day and things that happened and stuff like that. And then one of my favorite things changed the subject was Mark Lewis's stories. You know, I love Mark Lewis. I really miss him a lot, but I have, I do have some audio of his stories, which I promised I would never do anything with, but now that he's gone, I don't see any reason why I can do something with him, that I have some great audio of the stories, I was one of the few people he let report him, because he was always afraid someone would, he said, I don't want anyone to share my stories before I share him with the world, that he's no longer here to share him with the world. That's sad. I mean, he never really got the chance to really, he had so much talent and just, but I have some of the stories. It sort of leads to my next question, which is, as you look back, what things at Fair gave you the most personal joy or satisfaction? The thing I love about Fair, besides the women, I mean, it was a great place to meet women. But besides that, it was great that you could have a place you can go and you could be anybody you want to be for a day. You could pick your character and you could be that person. It's truly the ultimate escape from reality, and it was fun. I could be a pirate and it was okay, you're a pirate, I mean, where can you do that? Do you have any memories of experiencing something at Fair and then going, yeah, this is a good place for me to be right now? I had a lot of fun experiences, but how can I say this nicely? In my younger days when I was in my early 20s, the Renaissance Fair was a place you can go and do things that you did not do in real life. It was a great place to meet women, and it was a wild, crazy place where you could pretty much, I mean, they had a kissing bridge, they had a kissing booth, they had some interesting parties at night, you know, looking back at it, hanging out with the fools people, I mean, these are people that I've known since 1971, '72, some of them, that's a long time. So to be able to get together with these people after all these years, it's a very special thing because it's a lot of years to know somebody, and another thing is that every march, we go to the old site in Agura, and we used to go up to a procession hill and read the names for the people that are no longer with us. We do prayers for those people and they've sprinkled ashes of those people, it's an ancient Indian burial ground also, and a lot of our folks ashes are also on top of that hill. And now the list has gotten so long because there's so many of us that are no longer with us, that the last year or so they haven't been reading the list, which I miss that, but we also now meet in the foot of the fair, we used to meet at the witches' woods and then we met at procession hill and then we met at the glade or the queen's glade and now we all meet like in the Paramount Ranch, which is right there at the parking lot because some of us, like last time I saw Jay Paul two about a year ago, I mean, he was a, he wouldn't have made it there by foot, and he coupled us aren't able to walk that far anymore unfortunately. But it's just great to see everybody again every year and do a prayer for the people that are no longer with us and you know, go back and reminisce the old sight and you know, this is where this was and this is where that was and use all the memories, you know. Well, I want to thank you for sharing those memories with us here today. I think that at least to me sounds like a good point to end this. Yeah, I think there and that's my September 2024 interview with Marshall Breyer. I'm your host Dan McLaughlin and if you have comments for me to pass along to Marshall, you can email them to me at DJNG@earthlink.net questions about the podcast itself can also be directed to me at DJNG@earthlink.net. Finally, if you or someone you know would like to be a guest on Fair Folk at work, email me at DJNG@earthlink.net. But that's it for this time. Thanks for listening. Bye bye. Bye-bye. [BLANK_AUDIO]