If you’re a Laguna Beach resident, maybe you’ve given up on the Sawdust Festival. It happens. You get burned out. You go through cycles. You think you know better.
Let’s face it, how many times can you see those freaky psychedelic mushrooms?
But maybe that’s the point. Where else can you experience everything from 1969 to the present?
If nothing else, the Sawdust is – and will always be – the most eclectic art show in Southern California.
The Winter Fantasy, in particular, sneaks up on you like an endearing, intoxicated elf. Need proof? Stand by the petting zoo for any length of time. For the kids, it’s bliss. For the parents, any farmyard nostalgia has been replaced with hyperventilated chaos.
You’re sure that at any moment the demented goat is going to bite off your child’s nose.
But it doesn’t happen, of course. Instead, you’re thankful that there are still real experiences for children.
And there are real experiences for adults, too, like drinking wine before noon.
Perhaps it’s this realness that defines the spirit of the Sawdust.
For most suburban families, relegated to strip mall Santa’s and polished carousels, the opportunities for festive connection are limited, replaced with frantic, anonymous crowds.
In the real world outside of Laguna, the time from Thanksgiving to Christmas is a month’s worth of obligation, defined by tasks, wrapped with a veneer of hope – hope that you will make it to New Year’s.
Honestly, most people are just trying to keep everything together. Whatever traditions have been piled on like bad sweaters, you want to keep the ones that are most worthwhile. If that happens, perhaps the spirit of the season survives another year.
Which is why the Sawdust thrives.
Its authenticity is palpable. Real artists, real-time, talking face-to-face about how art overcomes.
It overcomes in the moment. All you have to do is see Doug Miller, wizened by years of smiling, fix his miniature old-school train for a 6-year-old girl. They watch together as it meanders through his treehouse. As she leaves with her mom, he hands her a free toy.
Or Star Shields, the spray-paint artist who looks like Keith Richards’ brother. He smiles too because he’s learned that life is best lived in the moment.
Or Patsee Ober, who will describe what it’s like to dive in the ocean and see an octopus.
You can’t get that at the Mission Viejo Mall.
You can’t capture authenticity where it doesn’t exist.
Maybe you’ve forgotten. Maybe you’ve succumbed to Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays.
Maybe it’s time you rekindle your roots to the things that matter.
