Collar City gears up for steampunk festival
TROY, N.Y. » The city is gearing up for an enchanted weekend of steampunk festivities with the return of one unique yearly event.
The fifth annual Enchanted City steampunk festival is scheduled for 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday in downtown Troy, featuring steampunk costumes, live entertainment, a parade of inventions and more.
“We’re really going all out steampunk,” said producer Susan Dunckel, who founded the event in 2014.
The Enchanted City is an urban street fair and spectacle of steampunk fashion, fantasy and fabrications that magically transforms the historic blocks of downtown Troy into a cosplay alternative reality where Victorian fancy meets modern technology.
Drawing thousands of attendees each year, the free festival offers a familyfriendly inspired day of music, magic, games, performance, food and fantasy.
Now in its fifth year, The Enchanted City steampunk festival has proven to be popular among both locals and steampunk enthusiasts from far and wide.
This year the festival is expecting a bigger turnout than ever with the cancellation of the Steampunk World’s Fair in New Jersey, but along with attracting steampunkers from around the country, organizers are making an effort to engage the entire Collar City community.
For the first time ever, each of the city’s six districts has been challenged to create a “mechanical conveyance,” or a parade float, to be part of the festival’s parade of Mad Machinery and compete in a contest with a prize of a beautification grant for their district. Some teams have been hard at work for months, and are eager to show off their neighborhoods’ invention sat this Saturday’s fest.
These special floats will be paraded along with professional vehicles created for the 2018 Inventors Challenge as well as festival figurehead Queen Mab.
Competitive types can also take part in the The Great Costumer Costume Contest during the event. Local business The Costumer’s teamof costume experts will be on hand to judge and award the magnificent creations festival-goers come dressed in, and hand out prizes to those who look the best. Adults and children are encouraged to come dressed in steampunk-themed costumes, though it is not required.
Attendees can take their outfits for a test run on Friday night at the new Mad Steampunk Art Show Gala. This pre-party, a fundraiser for the festival, will include absinthe tasting onthe eve of the festival in the newly renovated Avery House in Troy (home of Sweet Sue’s Copper Pot).
After Saturday’s main events, all are invited to see the San Diego-based musical act Steam Powered Giraffe, one of the top steampunk acts in the country, perform at the historic Troy Savings Bank Music Hall.
“We’re thrilled that Steam Powered Giraffe is making one of their rare East Coast appearances on the stage of our historic music hall as headliners to The Enchanted City,” Troy Savings Bank Music Hall Executive Director Jon Elbaum said in a press release. “We think this act will draw many out-of-town visitors for the concert and festival which really show- case the creative vibe that is so much a part of Troy now. Troy is a fun cultural tourist destination.”
Dunckel added, “Even if you’re lucky enough to have seen Steam Powered Giraffe in concert, you have never seen them in a Victorian space as magical as the legendary Troy Savings Bank Music Hall. Experiencing this act in this musical hall in our perfectly preserved Victorian downtown will be the actualization of a dream. It does not get any better than this in steampunk.”
For those who have never been to The Enchanted City or any steampunk festival before, “Expect to walk into an alternative reality where youmight think for asecond that you walked into a Victorian sci-fi novel,” Dunckel said. “It’s very creative. It’s very open-minded. It’s very inclusive.”
The goal is simply for peo- ple to be entertained, she continued. “Be prepared to bring a little bit of that awe that you had when you were a little kid that allowed you to look at things without judgement and accept it.”
While there’s no real target audience for the festival, Dunckel is putting some special focus on the 50,000 residents of Troy. “This year I really wanted to come back home,” she said.
Tickets to Steam Powered Giraffe at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall are available for $25 each via phone, (518) 2730038, in person at the box office, or online at www.troymusichall.org.
More information about The Enchanted City, which will take place in the area of State Street and First Street, and Friday’s Mad Steampunk Art Show Gala are available online at www.enchantedtroy.com or The Enchanted City’s Facebook page.