History ain’t what it used to be! Steampunks mash up the past and present while looking to the future. Altered History and Alternate Histories are two websites that have fun scrambling the past.

Captain Kit Kaboom (aka Abbey Manalli of Milwaukee, WI) designed Altered History to be “a world that never quite existed. This is a world of airships and trains, steamships and submarines.”

The site has buttons, postcards and stickers for the travelers of the yesteryear that never was.

It also has patches and bronze pins for the explorers and mechanics of the fleet.

Alternate Histories at Etsy.com offers prints with incongruities. Pittsburgh, PA artist Matthew Buccholz (via New York and Arizona) presents a world “Where the Past Comes Monstrously to Life.”

Dinosaurs roam a young America. Zombies and monsters feature in old cartography. Giant robots and Godzilla threaten a familiar city (hint: it’s not Tokyo).

Take the alternate route.

As summer slowly approaches one’s mind may wander to what a steampunker, or just general human being, might go about doing?  If that is the case with you, and you happen to be local to Northern Illinois or Chicagoland, then turn until your compass points North.

There, there is a land that begets whimsy and wonder.  It lets your mind wander and expand with new possibilities and perspectives. This land is called Wisconsin, and you can have an amazing day just outside of the Wisconsin Dells.

The Dells hosts an assortment of mini golf courses, haunted houses, amphibious craft and buffets. It’s an excursion in and of itself, but there are greater adventures to be held outside of the town.

Start by taking Route 12 south and visit the Circus World Museum in Baraboo. You begin in the Circus Museum, winding through an array of bright circus posters. These capture the thrills and hucksterism of the days when the circus wagons would come through town. It leads you to the grounds where you can take in circus acts, ride an elephant or view the circus wagon collection. The gift shop is not to be missed either.

Continue south on Route 12 and visit Dr. Evermor’s Forevertron, the world’s largest scrap metal sculpture.  To find it, just look for the metal birds and beasts and then park in Delaney’s Surplus in New Freedom, Wisconsin.  Continue through the scrap metal yard to find Dr. Evermor’s sculpture garden.  There you’ll see a flock of birds made from old brass musical instruments.  Metal critters and odd aliens dot the artistic landscape.  The centerpiece of all is the Forevertron.  It’s a contraption unto itself and you almost expect it’s arms to begin pumping out Danny Elfman oompah music.

An hour east is the House on the Rock.  Architect Alex Jordan began building the house into the side of a hill in the 1940s.  As time went on it expanded into a maze of collectables that would shame any grandparent’s basement.  There are a wide array of armaments, a whale battling a giant squid (giant being the key word here), self-playing mechanical orchestras, the world’s largest carousel, a room that is held up completely by cantilevers called the “Infinity Room”, rare books and a stroll down the Streets of Yesterday.  It’s a museum dedicated to nothing in particular.  It’s sense of whimsy and wonder was even captured by Neil Gaiman in his novel American Gods. To see photos of two of the contributors of Steampunk Chicago (Rev. Cpt. Samuel Flint, and Lady NoLucky) taken by the latter look no farther than here.

When I took this trip, it left me with a heightened sense of awareness. The Wisconsin scenery seemed even more magical.  As I drove past farmland, I wasn’t sure if I saw machinery in a field or if it were some sort of Evermor-like mechanical wonder-beast. Each turn of the hilly countryside was open to a new amazement.

These places provide hours of joy and wonder. If there is any time at the end of the day and you need to head back to a hotel room in the dells, you can always wind down with a bit of “Pottering” around an interactive game at Wizard Quest or have an educational excursion to Ripley’s Believe It or Not!

Enjoy!

Thanks to our friends at Terra Mysterium for this heads up.  Local Chicago theatre troop The Bohemian Theatre Ensemble is doing a “steampunk” rendition of the French classic Tartuffe running at The Wit theater in Lakeview through Feb 12th.

To quote their website.

Using steampunk (a scifi subgenre that mixes Victorian history and aesthetic with futuristic steam-powered technology) as a backdrop, BoHo’s production mirrors the tumultuous societal landscape of 17th century France as a world that at once seems both familiar and alien, when old and new exist side by side. Without losing any of Molière’s wit, BoHo’s Tartuffe makes it obvious why a man would desperately believe the lies of a swindler over the word of his own family. Continuing our season-long exploration of the Bohemian pillars of truth, beauty, freedom, and love, Tartuffe explores the pillar of truth through the eyes of a liar.

Sounds fantastic!  Also, check out the trailer below!

For more information and to buy tickets to this show do visit their website HERE.

On Saturday, July 2nd Jellyboy The Clown of The Squidling Brothers was caught in a non-performance related fire in his friend’s Queens apartment.  He’s presently in critical, but stable condition and can use any and all of our wishes and prayers.

I’ve had the wonderful pleasure of getting to know Jelly Boy, as well as counting him amongst one of my friends.  He’s as genuine a gent as you can get and a truly dedicated performer.  I, for one, can attest to it that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him sans-make up.  On stage, and off stage, he’s as charming as one can get, and we’re always honored to have him, and the rest of the Squidlings, here with us in Chicago.

As with many performers, Jelly Boy does not have ample enough insurance to help with the needed medical costs.  If you’re in New York definitely check out this show, it’s happening July 15th at Leyla’s in Brooklyn.  Here in Chicago we, too, are working on some events.  Doubly, you can always go to the PayPal Donation Page to help out.  Every little bit does.

Much love Jelly Boy, we’re all rooting for you.

Regardless of what anyone says, I stand by the notion that steampunk is an impossible idea to ultimately define (at least as I write this it still seems to be). That does not, however, mean it is impossible to talk about the various aspects that feed into the greater idea of what Steampunk is, and one of those core tropes, I would argue, is that of  The Circus.

Before I continue on, yes, this article is precisely being timed to go live as we at Steampunk Chicago build up promotional steam for our next big show – The Gearbox Fantastique – which is, unabashedly, a steampunk circus event. But more on that later.

The circus. To run away and join it is freedom, to actually work it is often destitution, to find fame in it a Herculean task and yet the image of The Circus, both in reality and in the fantastique, refuses to die.  I was first exposed to the whimsy of circus through such modes as the music of Tom Waits, the film The City of Lost Children and the television show Carnivale, amongst a whole host of other things.  To say the least, I found the circus in exactly the same places I found steampunk, and for me, the two are inextricably linked.

But why are they linked?  Yes, the circus does not typically include big gears or airships, but I’ve never felt that gears and airships directly label something as steampunk either.  Aesthetics aside, the two essentially come from the same place.  A world on the brink of something, where laws and rules are shoddy at best and non-existent at worse (I do stand by the “punk” in steampunk. )  Both celebrate a strong DIY ethos and a means toward self-invention.   The steampunk world is one composed of inventors, tinkerers, fringe academics and ideologues.  The circus, carnivale, vaudeville and cabaret are populated by re-invented people, fringe entertainers, bigger than life barkers and people who either just don’t fit, or refuse to fit, into every day culture.

Perhaps at it’s core, this is why I see them so intrinsically linked.   The circus is just another part of the steampunk motif.  What type of entertainment could be better for those of us who, while we still enjoy our television and Internet, are finding a new vitality in seeing live acts? In one night you see more unbelievable things (before your eyes none-the-less) than you see on the average television program anymore, and keep in mind, television has post-production going for it.

In this environment of growing mainstream banality, is it any surprise that over the past five years some very large, and mainstream, acts have evoked both steampunk and circus themes?  Britney Spears, Rush, Motley Crue and Primus are just a few of the many.  These are performers who are trying to reach and excite a new audience while retaining their old, and it seems that the DIY, retro-future appeal of steampunk, cabaret and the circus are just the vehicle for the job. That said, I have no issue with popular culture trying to capitalize on any of the aforementioned.  Certainly some acts have done a great job incorporating the subtlety and whimsy of it all while others have grotesquely abused the form.  That aside, I feel that still the most honest and best of such acts can be seen on your smaller stages (but who’s to complain should we all be graduated to larger ones?). I only hope the number of stages and acts grows in each coming year.

So! Did I catch your whimsy? I do hope so, because The Gearbox Fantastique is this Friday, featuring the triumphant return of The Squidling Brothers with Bunny Savage on guitar, Maray Fuego on Squeezebox and Haley Jane performing burlesque.  Alongside these phenomenal show-people are The White Ghost Shivers, a band that I can guarantee will be a crowd pleaser. We round the event off with Chicago’s own Mutiny Sideshow with their mind bending suspensions and the crowd favorite, Magician Michael Burke.   Of course we also have The Steampunk Chicago Djs on the Fusion-O-Scope, The Ladies of Dieselpunk hosting and myself – The Lord Baron – as your MC.   You can RSVP for reduced admission at either Do312.com or Yelp.com (and win tickets!)  Or if  you prefer to purchase them, simply go HERE.

Oh, what was that?  You are starting to think this entire article was just a big ploy to get you into the big tent?

Well then good readers, all I can say is welcome to the circus.