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    The Humboldt Juggling Society put on its second festival on March 22-24th 2002. This year's festival was held at the New Arcata Community Center, which was a much nicer space than last year's Manila Dunes Community Center. This space was about 6 times larger than the Manila space, and was only a few blocks from downtown Arcata. This made it easier to drive to, and the Center has a great parking lot as well. Unfortunately it rained Friday and Saturday most of the day, so many of our planned outdoor events had to be canceled and replaced with indoor versions. But because of the size of the gym, everyone was comfortable despite the lack of sunshine.
     
    This year's festival, like last year's, was a benefit to raise money for the Vagabond Players Children's Theatre. Vagabond in a non-profit theatre group that offers, free of charge, the opportunity, for children of all ages, to be involved in the various aspects of a professional theatrical production. The money raised from our festival will go to their summer production of "Treasure Island."
     
    The schedule of our festival was similar to last years festival. On Saturday and Sunday we offered a variety of workshops being taught by local jugglers and jugglers visiting from afar. Because of the rain, since we had planned on having a few of the workshops outside, finding workshop space was a little tricky, but it all worked out fine. This year's festival also included a structured schedule of competitions. Jessi Hoffschildt designed and helped build ceramic mugs, that had engraved on them the Humboldt Juggling Society "TreeClub" logo and the year "2002," as first place prizes for the winners of the competitions. Our schedule also included a Saturday evening Taco Dinner, and four seperate shows. These shows included the Friday night Renegade Show that was emceed by Silas Knight, a student at the Del Arte School of Physical Theatre, the Saturday night Public Variety Show that was emceed by Rudi Galindo, who is an incredible physical theatre performer and a new member of the Karamozov Brothers, the Sunday afternoon Kids Talent Show that was emceed by Jessi Hoffschildt, who will never stop being a kid herself, and the Sunday matinee "one-man-show" by our special guest performer.
     
    This year we were fortunate to have Jason Garfield as our special guest performer. Jason performed a short "teaser" in our Saturday Evening Public Show, and he also performed a 1 hour one-man-show on Sunday afternoon. His show was both hilarious and awe-inspiring. Having Jason at our festival was a fun and unique experience. We will fondly remember him working on his 7 club cascade in the gym and threatening a dropped club by yelling, "Do you want to step outside?"
     
    This year's festival T-shirt was designed by Jessi Hoffschildt. We ordered 64 T-shirts and they were sold out by the end of the festival.
     
    As we suspected it might happen, the attendance of our festival almost doubled from last year's festival. This map shows from where the various jugglers came to visit our festival. We had approximately 239 people register at our Welcome Desk.
     
    This year's festival also attracted several local businesses who were eager to support our festival. Our sponsors were many. One example of how a local business got involved was through coffee. Sacred Grounds, a local coffee shop, designed, by using authentic jugglers as taste testers, a blend of coffee beans uniquely for the Humboldt Juggling Festival. This coffee was available for tasting for free at the festival, and 1/2 pound bags were available for sale with the proceeds going towards the festival. Other sponsors who should be mentioned are News Channel 3, who helped out by creating a TV commercial that aired several times promoting our festival, Wildberries Marketplace, who in exchange for the Humboldt Juggling Society teaching a "Juggling Camp" at their store, provided a large portion of the food needed for the festival, Life Cycle, who dontated a unicycle as one of our drawing prizes, and Associated Students, who awarded us a small grant to cover some of the expenses of the festival. There were several other sponsors as well, who provided donations, services, and products for our prize drawings. Many thanks to our sponsors!
     
    All in all, the Second Annual Humboldt Juggling Festival was a smashing success. Much fun was had by all, and everyone seems eager to make this festival a tradition of Humboldt County. Please feel free to browse our images gallery. We look forward to seeing you at our next Humboldt Juggling Festival!
     
    Email From People Who Attended:
     
    (From Laura Green in San Francisco)
     
    I just wanted to say thank you. When my boyfriend, Shawn, suggested that we
    drive up for the San Francisco area to go to your festival I was little
    wary. We had never been to a juggling festival before. In fact, I didn't
    know how to juggle at all. And Shawn had juggled only a few basic 3-ball
    moves, and had just started contact juggling. We are a little afraid that
    we would be out of our league.
    But we had so much fun last weekend. We were our of our league, but we never
    felt that it mattered. Everyone was so wonderfully helpful.
    We also appreciate how organized everything was.
    We learn so much, and had such a fun time learning.
    Thank you,
    Laura
    (From Jason Garfield in Los Angeles)
     
    I just wanted to let you know that I had fun performing for your festival. Very
    nice venue-nice people (Some smelly but what can you do), great space, and the
    stage was pretty good too. So anyway, thanks for the fun weekend.
    Jason
     
     
(From Athena Dave in Pheonix Arizona)
 
Thanks everyone involved for putting on a great festival. To be honest we drove all the way from Phoenix, Arizona, not because we expected a great festival, but because we wanted to walk through your redwoods. Once we got there, however, we had such a great time at the festival that we never took that walk through the trees. We ended up staying an extra day in the area to take in a few trees. If someone asks me if it was worth the 18 hour drive, I would say, "you bet". We will be there next year, keep up the good work! Athena Dave
 
 

 

 

 
 
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