Attended Bob Baker Day
This past Sunday, I checked out Bob Baker Day at Los Angeles State Historic Park - the large city park next to the Chinatown metro station. I've never been to this event before - nor to the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, a famous puppet theater here in the city which I've been meaning to visit for a while, but simply haven't found the time.
But Bob Baker Day is free, and open to anyone who wanders in, and easy to get to, so I was glad to go!
This was basically the Clown Aesthetic Fair for the city of LA... it seems like a ton of people who have experience with clowning or puppetry simply showed up and started doing their acts. I have no idea if this guy who started climbing a custom climbing pole in the middle of the crowd and ripping off his clothes was scheduled to be there, or was just doing whatever:
The most incredible thing I saw however was this dog sniffing the butt of a puppet dog almost exactly the same size and shape as itself. Imagine being this dog. What an eerie experience it must have been!! This dog is experiencing the actual experience humans only explore in horror movies!!!
The people-watching was incredible. All the people in LA who have Clown Aesthetic showed up in their best. I saw so many patterned jumpsuits. People were wearing the most complex pastel clothes I've seen in months. Great shit.
If you live in LA, I cannot recommend this event enough. It's really strange. There was a huge crowd that seemed like it was spontaneously generating Clown Acts - you'd walk away and come back and suddenly a woman would be spinning a zillion hoola hoops or walking on stilts or something. I am convinced these were just members of the public here to do clowning. And there's loads of tents full of people selling weird shit. (We may have gotten some strange cat-themed shirts to wear while promoting Skin Deep...)
I did not get a chance to actually see the Bob Baker theater's own performance, because the line for it was so long... but maybe I will next year!