Fire Opera and Steampunk

Have you ever had the experience where you learn a new term and suddenly it pops up all over the place and you think, "why didn't I know this before?" That's been my experience this week with Steampunk. Carolena of FatChanceBellyDance was telling me about a store in the San Francisco Mission called Five and Diamond which sells Steampunk fashion. It seems to be a fantasy genre lifestyle based on the age of steam power invention and centers around Victorian era England.

Here are images from Five and Diamond's online gallery:
On Saturday night Megan and I attended The Crucible's Fire Arts Festival featuring big, noisy, fiery machines. Last year Rachel and David took me to this spectacle and I was literally blown away by, well, the noise. This year I brought earplugs. (As a side note, Saturday I babysat David and Rachel's newborn baby Chloe - another special one-year-back-anniversary experience.)

The intersection of Steampunk and The Fire Arts Festival was the Rootabaga Fire Opera by Emmy-award winning composer Dan Cantrell and featured ShadowLight Productions' puppets and Oakland's KITKA women's vocal musical ensemble. It was all about Steampunk. Here's an image:

Throughout the evening Megan and I pointed out Steampunk fashion and folks. This was clearly their evening.