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Photos now online: Fullerton Cosplay Picnic at Hillcrest Park (22-Mar-2009)

Sunday morning, ladymaxstarr joined me for a potluck cosplay picnic at Fullerton's Hillcrest Park. (right)

Potluck picnics are a great low-cost way to have a day's fun, and this was no exception. library_lynn was off to some author lunch thing (which had interesting people and a disappointing banquet), so it was just me and Melissa representing animelosangeles.

I'd been to the park before, years before, for a jugglers' picnic. We parked on the Valley View side, not sure if we were in the right place. We got there about half an hour late. I put on my bear ears before heading into the park to figure out if I needed to move the car to park closer.

And at the same time that we saw people in costumes, we heard cries of Chaz! and Chaz it up! Fans were running towards us (left), and we had plenty of help carrying everything from the car. It's just as well I hadn't brought a folding cart as it wouldn't have done us any good. There were steps between the parking lot and the playground, and more steps from there to the lawn area, and it was all grassy from there to the picnic tables.

We had a 4-foot folding table, the picnic supplies and clean-up bins, a box of minor snacks (granola bars, mini meringues, Jolly Rancher candies, Japanese rice cakes). A gallon of pink lemonade concentrate, gallon jugs of water and a cooler with two bags of ice to mix them with, a quart-size measuring pitcher, and a medium-sized pitcher to serve the lemonade in. (After bringing two gallons of lemonade home from Bakersfield, I didn't want to bring the barrel cooler this time.) Also two or three pints of fresh strawberries. (There weren't any strawberries left over.)

There are a handful of Orange County people like me that go to these picnics and consistently don't dress up in costume, depending on whether you consider my teddy bear ears a costume. We're there to support the picnic in other ways. Kurt Miller, for example, was there. He brought two or three cases of bottled water. (right)

Jack Kim was there, but there wasn't anything for him to cook. A waste of his talents! If someone had brought burgers, I'm sure we would have gone across the street to get charcoal and cook up some lunch. For that matter, if someone had just brought charcoal, we probably would have put our money together to get burgers and buns... (left)

And Wayne Kaa turned up to quietly take a few pictures. (right)

There was a casserole pan of macaroni and cheese, and some roll-up sandwiches, but not much else in the way of protein. There were a few homemade items, a storebought veg tray and some sour cream-onion potato chips, and a few other things. Not as lavish a spread as I saw in Bakersfield two weeks earlier.

This was the first official outing for the new Animé Los Angeles pop-up tent, and the second time it was used. snobird had borrowed it for a garden party shortly after I received it, and we brought it to Bakersfield without setting it up, so this was its first picnic. (left)

I set it up to shade the lemonade, and most of the food -- we certainly didn't want any birds spoiling our lunch. It ended up being the "hospital tent" when injured or sore fans decided to sit down for a while...

I think it would be handy for someone who's good at organizing field games to come along to these picnics. If you've got twenty or thirty people with a lot of energy for running around, let's get some games going! The fans played hide-and-seek, and Zombie Tag, and a few other games. (right)

Something that I think would be fun is Amoeba Tag -- you start with two people linking arms as "it," they catch up with a third person and link up with them; the threesome keeps going, when they get a fourth they link up on one side, then undergo mitosis: split into two two-person ameobas and chase after the others. When everyone's part of an amoeba, then for the ending they all merge together or something. Maybe go into a giant kick line? I know I've got a book of field games around somewhere. I should figure out where I put it.

As you might imagine from the name, Hillcrest Park is awfully lumpy. There are stone and concrete stairs built into the hillsides to get you from one sloping lawn up to the access road and another to get you to the top of the hill. It does mean that it's easy to stage photos where you're above or below the subject. (left)

One blemish on the afternoon came in the form of two or three gas-powered scooter riders, who zipped around the access roads up and down the park. (Exceeding the posted 10 mph speed limit, of course.) They were there for an hour or more, and were mostly just annoyingly loud. They didn't actually come close to endangering us until one of them decided they should buzz through the grassy expanse we were using. Grrr...

I called the Fullerton PD, and called them again half an hour or so later, and took a few telephoto pictures of them (not shown). The photography scared them off. Next time, I'll remember that, and shoot first.

There were a lot of cosplayers. Some of them in anime or manga-inspired costumes, some random pirates, and so forth. There were about as many people as were at the Bakersfield picnic, but more of them were in costume. (But Bakersfield doesn't have the strong costumers' picnic tradition that we've seen down here in Los Angeles, San Diego and Orange County.)

I met one young lady who had made herself a quick-and-dirty "Shirley Fenette" (Code Geass) costume by taking a dark pink top, bleaching it, and adding fake buttons. (left)

(I met a lot of people whose names I didn't write down and don't remember. Got to do better next time.)

One familiar cosplayer was Willow, Melissa's friend. If all goes well, she'll be one of my minions at Animé Los Angeles next year. I managed to refrain from asking her to commit to a particular shift right then and there... (right)

How was the weather? Oh, it was March weather. It was sunny, cloudy, windy, warm, and chilly, by turns. It threatened rain all day. I felt a few sprinkles once during the day, but we managed to avoid the rainstorms that we could see in the distance. (left)

However, we didn't avoid the wind. It was good March kite weather, and when we were all down at the Naruto Playset (the orange and blue playground equipment) having a group photo session, the unstaked-down tent was caught by a gust of wind and blown about 10 meters. When it landed, two of the legs gave way and were seriously bent. (right)

It was very sad. I was quite rattled by it. (Now you know why I picked "Blue Sunday" for my song/lyrics/title. And you can tell I was rattled, because I didn't take a zillion photos documenting the accident.) First time it was used at a picnic, and this happens? It should have been staked down, obviously. And when I saw that it didn't come with stakes, I could have gone to REI, they would have sold me tent stakes. "Should have, could have, would have" doesn't fix the bent legs, though. Someone had a toolkit and loaned me a hammer to straighten out the legs so we'd be able to collapse the frame and take it home.

I got on the phone Tuesday to the fine folks at 4imprint.com who sold me the tent, and told them what happened, and sent them photos. They confirmed that they didn't include tent stakes with the tent. But we made arrangements for me to get a replacement frame, and it will come with stakes. If all goes well, I'll have it in hand before the next picnic I go to.

Here's my picnic schedule for the next two months:
2009-04-04: Anaheim (Sponsored by LosCon 35)
2009-04-25: Oceanside (Sponsored by Animé Los Angeles 6)
2009-05-02: Bakersfield (summoner_lenne9 and the BHS Anime Club)
2009-05-09: Irvine (SoCal Gathering)
2009-05-30: Van Nuys (Sponsored by Animé Los Angeles 6)