I liked the Maker Faire last year, but this year was even better! The faire is sponsored by Make Magazine, and it encourages do-it-yourself-ers to come and display their best – everything from steam powered machines, to homemade robots, to alternative bikes and cars. What’s fun is being able to talk to the inventor and ask questions. There were also various shows and demonstrations – some entertaining, some explaining the science behind the magic. I loved it. Then again it’s very me – quite curious, and super-geeky.

This year’s theme is “Re-Make America”:

Following on President Obama’s call to “begin again the work of remaking America”, Maker Faire 2009 will be organized around the theme of Re-Make America. Held in the San Francisco Bay Area on May 30-31, Maker Faire celebrates what President Obama called “the risk takers, the doers, and the makers of things.” The fourth annual Maker Faire will showcase individual creativity and grassroots innovation in the largest festival devoted to DIY culture and technology in the country.

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Hrm, where to go, where to go…the giant mousetrap? Alternative cars? Robot battle arena?

So many things to see and do…after a few hours there, I still think we only saw a small part of it!

Guess what! We saw the YouTube guys who did the diet coke and mentos video! (If you haven’t seen it, watch it!) There were so many people there. I never actually got to see it because I couldn’t see over the crowd. I did see the diet coke shoot up in the air and get everyone sticky, though. Here’s a picture of them preforming.

A guy pushed me around on these giant wings. It was fun.

This was really cool. There’s a group of local aerial photographers who strap their cameras on kites to take photos. The pictures were amazing! Some even mounted video cameras, and SLR cameras.

This number on this bike jersey displays the speed that the biker is riding at!

This is an awesome surfboard. The structure is star-shaped corrugated cardboard, which is then covered with fiberglass.

Here’s the finished surfboard.

Drug trip?

These wheels were made up from cut up bike wheels. The horn shoots out fire!

I need this bike. My bunny bike is great but this holds way more bunnies in the basket.

This prints plastic 3D models. Plastic is heated and extruded in thin ribbons. Think play-doh or hot glue gun.

Have you seen so many wires before?! This was for a Christmas light display.

This girl was wearing a dress that had a sign that said “intimidate me”. When she gets scared, a mechanism underneath the dress starts blowing so that the bright colors underneath the first layer of cloth balloons out and baffles whoever the attacker is – giving her a chance to take off.

Kids spinning a giant top. It would go one way, and then the other. There were a lot of kids at the fair. The cool thing is you don’t have to buy tickets or pay to go on the “rides”, and there were never any lines.

This was hilarious. It had one purpose – to go “ba-dum-dum-ching!” after it tells you a horrible joke.

Google was there! They showed off their 3D maps.

This is a bike windmill. Someone gets inside of the windmill and rides a bike, which makes the guitars at the top spin and hit a giant pick.

This was an invisible maze – kids wore masks with build in headphones. They had to stay on “track” by listening to the music. They were off track if the music fades away.

A car covered with every pen imaginable.

Loading the giant mousetrap. This guy spent ten years or so building a giant mousetrap in Arizona, then drove it all the way here. That’s passion.

A miniature steam engine.

I was tempted to get a mushroom growing kit. This was in the DIY garden section.

Met up with my buddies Yusuf and Ashley at the faire. They were volunteering at the Renatlic booth. Rentalic is a website that allows users to share and borrow things from each other (lawnmowers, movies, tools). Kind of like Craigslist/eBay. The site isn’t finished yet but I’m excited to try it out!

The puppet dances into a camera, and shows up on a screen at the other end.

I don’t know what this was actually. But it looked like fun. All it did was push out poofs of steam in rings.

Powering a train.

Weird duck looking thing that was wandering around the faire, making strange noises. It was accompanied by two hippies on rollerskates. Of course.

Food

Sigh, here I go again. No matter what kind of event I go to, the one thing I look for is great food. And unless it’s a food festival, the food is usually too greasy, and mediocre at best. BUT…

..the Maker Faire had the BEST food for any festival. They had the expected stuff like hamburgers, garlic fries, etc…but they also had some really great gourmet food. I would go there just to eat. A lot of the food there was from Sonoma County or San Francisco – which usually means quality, and great ingredients!

Organic Dim Sum! At a festival!!! Awesome!

Holy crap, these were the best things ever. This booth sold Venezuelan street food like arepas. But they also had these delicious things called “Maize-wiches” which were sandwiches with fantastic fillings (BBQ chicken, pulled pork, avocado-chicken salad, skirt steak, fried plantains), squeezed in between CORNBREAD. Who would have thunk.

The cornbread was not so much like bread but like a corn pancake…it had chunks of real corn, and some crunchiness from cornmeal. It actually tasted like polenta in solid form. I almost died. Mike got the avocado-chicken Maize-wich. It has less mayo and more avocado – wow, definitely the way to go. I’m trying that at home.

I got Jamabalaya! I never get to eat Jamabalaya so I was happy to find some great Jambalaya here. At a faire!!! I love the Bay Area…ethnic food everywhere. (I eat everything but American.) It was really good.

Spanish paella. I kicked myself for not trying some there (I was so full already), kicked myself again after seeing pictures of it, and the kicked myself AGAIN after seeing that Bobby Flay did a throwndown with the guy who owned this stand (Girard from Girard’s Paella). That’s a lot of kicking.

Anyway, in Food Network’s “Throwdown”, Bobby Flay takes on the best of the best in favorite American dishes. The last throwndown he did was in San Francisco (how was I not there?), with Girard from Girard’s Paella (how did I not try some at the faire? How did I not talk to Girard AT the faire?). Gah! I love my mom’s Paella – but the paella there looked really, really good.

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