In the afterglow

The 2010 Sideshow Gathering is over.  But in a sense it's not over, for me at least:  it will provide me with a Happy Place to go to mentally from now until I get recharged by the next one.

I'm a terrible consumer, really.  I consider myself a bibliophile, but I buy many of my books from clearance racks and from remaindered book stores.  In the same sense I consider myself a Johnny-come-lately fan of the Sideshow, but in the past year all I've invested in it financially is $10 for a ticket to this year's Gathering.  (And $5 for a bag of Doc Wilson's Prize Candy, which came with a $1 bill tucked inside...and a dollar for a peep at Thrill Kill Jill in her blade box, and another dollar for the blow-off Cyndora, the half-dog, half-spider, and $20 for a copy of Volume 9 of Shocked and Amazed...but you get my point.)  I've never actually been to a sideshow.  The closest I got was listening to Ward Hall's bally outside of the World of Wonders tent at the Bloomsburg Fair a few years ago.  (It went on and on, and eventually my friends decided to move on.  I have no idea how long he had been going on before we got there, or how long he went after we walked away.)  Someday I will get out and see the Cheeky Monkey Sideshow or the Lucky Daredevil Thrillshow in its natural habitat, in person, for money.  Someday.

Someday I'll also sort through all of my photos from this weekend and distill out the best ones.  For now, check out John Robinson's Sideshow World entry.  He did such a great job punching up (and in one case, animating!) the photos that I had a hard time believing they were actually the ones I took!

I mentioned earlier that there were more cameras going this year than I have ever seen before.  I'm just hoping that some of these photographers post these photos to a place where they can be seen by everyone!  James Mundie pointed out to me that there is a Flickr page for uploading pictures from the Sideshow Gathering - but I don't have a Flickr account and can't get around to making one just now.

One of the people taking pictures asked about how he could share photos with others, and I mentioned the Inkin' the Valley and Sideshow Gathering Facebook page.  I also suggested that he could post them to a Flickr account or something like that with a Sideshow Gathering tag and we would eventually find them through Googling.  I forgot another, obvious route:  Google "sideshow gathering" and contact someone at one of the sites that pop up.  If you do that now you will come across these sites, in this order:

http://www.inkinthevalley.com/
http://www.myspace.com/inkinthevalley
http://anothermonkey.blogspot.com/2010/02/mark-your-calendars-sideshow-gathering.html
http://www.mundieart.com/ssg2010.htm

...which is pretty awesome.  The official site, the official MySpace page, me, and the official press release!

If you have photos and come across my page, follow these links or just get in touch with me and I'll put you in touch with the relevant parties.  And thank you for sharing!