Attended Bob Baker day a second time...
Last year I posted about going to Bob Baker Day, a kind of puppet/clown festival at a park in Los Angeles. I went again this year!
I had a much more interesting time this year, honestly - mostly because I attended with a friend of mine who actually makes puppets. I got to watch them chat with other actual puppet makers, and I learned a lot about something I don't do at all!! I wish I could talk more about it, but it was really more about my friend sharing puppet passion I don't myself understand. I'd have to know more about this stuff to tell you about all the fabrics and eye manufacturing techniques and dyeing processes and stuff they were discussing.
Anyway, if you are in LA and like puppets and are thinking about making or performing with puppets, then the two people I got to see talking about their work and their craft were from the LA Guild of Puppetry and the Glorious Ladies of Puppetry.. If I was planning to pivot my life to puppetry, I guess that's who I'd talk to!
I also got to see all the usual Bob Baker Day shenanigans: clowns on trapezes, massive seething crowds of people, loads of crafts and merch vendors selling truly strange stuff, and random ass clowns and puppeteers and clown-aesthetic people from, like, the community at large just rolling up and doing their thing. I even saw some of the same acts... though this year, there might have been fewer random members of the public walking off the train and immediately clowning. It was still great, though!! Here are some pictures:
This guy was using a Gonzo puppet while wearing a vest covered in images of Gonzo:
Anyway, Bob Baker Day still rules. You should still go. It's strange for me to realize that the last one I went to was in April 2025, spring... it was still hot as fuck last year, though. This year was bigger and hotter and more crowded and it's really starting to feel like this should be a two-day thing!!