Story and photos
by David Abbott
Staff Writer
The sounds of Krank-Boom-Clank will echo throughout downtown
Santa Rosa this weekend as the third Great West End and Railroad
Square Handcar Regatta and Exposition of Mechanical and Artistic
Wonders will once again take over Railroad Square from 11 a.m. to 6
p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 26.
“It’s unfettered creativity, with an unshackled sense of fun …
in a public forum,” said event co-founder Spring Maxfield. “It’s
also a break from the ‘easels on grass’ model of art shows that are
common to Sonoma County.”
Maxfield is part of a group of local artists who envisioned an
arts festival here that can rival the creativity of the Burning Man
festival in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada.
Early indications are that they have succeeded in their
quest.
In its initial year, about 5,000 people crammed themselves into
the square to watch the races and listen to music. Last year,
despite triple digit temperatures, 10,000 to 12,000 people showed
up when 8,000 were expected.
“I spent the day walking around handing out water,” Maxfield
said. “We went through 25,000 servings of water that day.”
This year, festival organizers are planning for 15,000, and have
not even advertised due to the scale of the festival.
According to Maxfield, the Great Handcar Regatta had its seeds
in a discussion she had with interior designer Ty Jones in
2007.
Maxfield had just hosted an event at Chops Teen Center in the
Historic West End Neighborhood, which encompasses Railroad Square
in Santa Rosa.
“We longed for a cool arts fest unique to Sonoma County,
different from the Sausalito Arts Fair or the Santa Rosa downtown
market,” Maxfield said.
The pair enlisted fellow artists David Farish, Clifford Hill and
Skye Barnett — collectively known as Krank-Boom-Clank — who had
just built their creation, the Hennepin Crawler, for Burning Man.
The core group was rounded out with aesthetic director Teresa
Hughes, Joshua Stithem, Kernan Coleman, who does the graphics, and
race coordinator Heather Prandini.
The group thought it would be fun to invite people to build
similar machines to race, and thus the Regatta was born.
“It took us nine months to put (the festival) together and we
were afraid the first year there wouldn’t be any other entries,”
Maxfield said.
But they weren’t disappointed, and there ended up being 18
entries in the initial race. In 2009, there was another full slate
of entrants, including Maxfield’s husband, ceramics artist Todd
Barricklow, who built his 8-foot tall double-penny-farthing
contraption, the Two Penny, for the event.
The festival has been a boon for the neighborhood and has done a
lot to draw attention to an often-overlooked area the city of Santa
Rosa considers to be “blighted,” according to Maxfield.
“We knew the city was wary at first, but they started to come
around,” she said. “This whole neighborhood is teeming with
creative people. (The city has been) waiting for developers (to
revitalize the neighborhood), but we didn’t want to wait for the
developers.”
In addition to the money and attention it brings to the area on
the weekend of the festival, several of the local teams host
fundraisers at venues such as the Toad in the Hole Pub, which is
right around the corner from the heart of the event.
“I haven’t run the numbers yet, so I can’t give you specifics on
numbers of jobs created or the economic impact, but it’s still good
for us culturally and for our city’s brand,” said Raissa de la
Rosa, Santa Rosa’s primary economic development specialist. “This
goes beyond the city and it speaks to offering cultural amenities
to the creative class. We can’t attract the entrepreneurial spirit
without the entrepreneurial culture.”
De la Rosa thinks that local businesses are looking for events
like this, and that its initial success shows the need for
alternatives to “typical Sonoma County art.”
“It’s innovative and I love it. It brings a really good presence
to downtown Santa Rosa, and I hope we’ll be doing more of these
types of things,” she said.
But putting on a festival of this magnitude takes the hard work
of about 300 volunteers, as well as donations and the goodwill of
the entire community.
“I could be here all day telling you how great people have
been,” Maxfield said. “There’s a great participatory aspect with
people willing to put on a costume and say ‘hey, I’ll do that.’
Lagunitas Brewery has been fantastic. Steve (Plamann) at Aaction
Rents in Windsor has been very generous with equipment, generators
and forklifts. We couldn’t do it without his support.”
Plamann became involved when he was helping with a kids’ art
program at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts. He and his heavy
equipment moved a 15-foot salmon sculpture to the property when the
man he was working with, Bryan Tedrick, mentioned the Regatta.
“We try to help the community when we can. This business has
been in the county since 1976. It’s family-owned by two brothers
who are into supporting whatever we can,” Plamann said.
Aaction Rents has helped with many local fundraising festivals
providing discounted services and equipment to the Bodega Seafood,
Art and Wine Festival and also with the Healdsburg Historical
Society’s 100th anniversary event.
Not only has Plamann worked with the organizers, but he has also
become a big fan of the Handcar Regatta. He said he went to the
first one “reluctantly,” but really liked the environment created
within the festival. He also likes what it says about the community
at large.
“I was at a city council meeting in Healdsburg, and one of the
candidates running to replace Mike McGuire talked about making a
machine for the Regatta,” Plamann said. “That’s why I left
Wisconsin. When a candidate uses his participation in the handcar
Regatta as qualifications to run for city council, it says
something about the community.
“That’s what separates us from the monkeys, I guess,” he
added.
The candidate to whom Plamann refers, is Shaun McCaffery, who
recently threw his hat into the political arena.
McCaffery discovered the Regatta two years ago when he was stuck
in the traffic generated by the event.
“I had some friends who were there and they told me I should
have stopped because I would have enjoyed it,” he said. “So I went
last year and, despite the heat, I really liked it.”
McCaffery signed up for the Regatta before he entered the
council race. He’s taken a leave of absence from work to run his
campaign, and now has some spare time to work on his machine.
He’s assembled a team of mechanical engineers and other
professionals, and is out to break the speed record with his
Polynesian Flyer, built by team Muppet Labz, comprised of
hand-picked members throughout Sonoma County, including Kevin
Nolen, Adam Preuss and Joe Messina, of Santa Rosa, Loren Brock, of
Sebastopol, Douglas Reynolds, and Eric Kurman of Healdsburg, Joe
Peterson, of Windsor and DJ Bohlen, of Upper Lake. Thomas Ehlers,
of Seattle, WA is also part of the team.
The machine will be powered by members of the UC Berkeley rowing
team, who will be involved in the process.
“I didn’t want to do a bike-powered machine, and thought about
rowing as a means of propulsion,” McCaffery said. “I work a lot
with aluminum, which is light and perfect for this type of
thing.”
Initially, the machine was going to be covered in bamboo to look
like a canoe, but McCaffery finally decided to create a shell of
black and gold anodized aluminum.
“It’s going to look like something Captain Nemo built in a Jules
Vern novel like ‘Mysterious Island’,” he said “It will fit right in
with the steampunk nature of the Handcar Regatta. It’s a fast
machine and we’re going to shatter the record to set the bar for
next year.”
Not only does McCaffery want to take out the competition this
year, he’s setting his sights high for next year as well, with
dreams of “getting airborne,” in a machine “like an F-16” with
retractable wings. He’d also like to see a satellite event in
Healdsburg eventually.
This year’s Regatta will have 22 teams, and will expand beyond
Railroad Square into the neighborhood. They’ll be closing down 6th
Street from Chops to Wilson Street, which will be closed from 5th
to 3rd streets and 4th Street will be closed to Davis Street.
There will be a stage for art cars and sculptures, and this year
organizers are stressing education.
“We’ll have a skill stage so people can learn useful skills like
tying knots, making junk instruments and canning,” Maxfield said.
“The children’s area will be much larger, too, with a children’s
museum.”
There will be six stages of music as well, with genres to appeal
to many musical tastes.
The size and cost of the Regatta has grown exponentially, and
Maxfield hopes to find educational grants in order to continue. She
says that organizers are in danger of becoming victims of their own
success
“We made enough last year for seed money for this year’s
festival, but it’s still largely a volunteer effort,” Maxfield
said. “We’re hoping to give a stipend to the core group. We’d be
happy to do it without compensation, but it’s mushrooming and takes
a tremendous amount of work.”
For more information about this year’s Regatta, go to
http://handcar-regatta.com.
