Who Needs Burning Man? We Have Competitive Picnicking

The tension was mounting (well, sort of) late Saturday afternoon at East Rock Park: Team Popcorn Colonel — dressed in matching Orville Redenbacher outfits, complete with red suspenders and bow ties — were busy jumping on a trampoline while trying to sink a beachball-size papier-mâché popcorn kernel into a bucket. 

Nearby across a blanket strewn with bike look-alike food (Cheetos and toothpicks in the shape of a two-wheeler?), Team Bicycle were forming themselves into a human velocipede. 

Welcome to a unique marking of Saturday’s Earth Day, New Haven’s first-ever competitive picnicking event.

It’s the brainchild of Martin Mendyuk and Brian Hughes, and an organization they are just forming up, called Farce, Inc.

The two young men met at a regional Burning Man conclave, and it was only a matter of time before the Elm City’s first competitive picnicking event was born: two dozen New Haveners in four teams each brought picnic food, a game, costumes, and a gift to the mildly deranged competition by the ranger station in East Rock’s College Woods park.

“I thought about Earth Day,” said Team Popcorn Colonel’s lead organizer Ariel Unger. 

Yet mostly she thought about the fabulous level of interrelated detail she brought to the event: the pitch-perfect costumes, the popper machine and the popcorn with a dozen toppings or mixings – Raisinettes were a discovery and a hit – down to balloons devised in large white and small yellow configurations to look like, yes, an airborne colonel, er, a kernel.

The harmlessly anarchic fun spirit of the celebration, which the organizers said mirrored the values of Burning Man events, was best captured by Her Gothic Honor Judge Aurora Wetherill (she actually works in insurance but shared the persona of a judge for the event, along with bewigged Mendyuk, an engineer, and Hughes, who is a real life lawyer): ​“Being an adult, to work all day is such a grind and to have no outlet. Then there’s this. It’s fearless to do this, to be silly and not self-conscious.”

“Play can be grown-up and any time you can bring people together it’s joyful,” chimed in Hughes as he adjusted his barrister’s hairpiece so it would not graze the main prize, an impressive strawberry shortcake that he personally and lovingly had created for the event.

Mendyuk took a more aerial view: ​“This is a first event for a community like this. New Haven has a lot of creativity but nothing like this so far. An outlet to be the weirdest, most outgoing version of yourself, creativity without the backdrop of commodification.”

Pressed by a reporter to be more far more serious than he wanted to be, Mendyuk added: ​“This is imagining a kind of utopian society, all our needs provided for, taking care of ourselves and others in a creative way, outgoing, colorful, weird. The default world (your job, paying your taxes!) has certain expectations of us whereas here you wear whatever you want and nothing seems outlandish because no matter what you do, you’re home.”

Nearby after a strolling family was invited over (as were many during the afternoon) to share food and fun, the dad sunk the popcorn ball and Ariel Unger gave him his reward, personalized dental floss in a container the color of buttered popcorn. 

The two other teams, the Stepford Wives and FratXXX were running around distributing gifts, offering each other food and other substances, and meeting each other, another main aim of the event. While he consulted with the other judges and filled out award certificates, Hughes estimated he knew only three of the people at the gathering when it began and, three hours later, was delighted to have met some others. ​“All the participants here are bringing their full selves.”

“This is a place,” said Mendyuk, ​“where you make things without (other motives like) buying and selling.”

He referenced another group, besides Burning Man, in New York City, as an inspiration and model: Shadow Traffic, a kind of urban guerilla performance and place-making group. ​“Last year they built a functioning ski slope in Brooklyn. It had everything, including a fondue fountain. I loved it.”

What were some of the participant take-aways?

“I try to live the message [of the event] every day. To be silly, fearless, and honest, and happy,” said Wetherill.

Lior Trestman, of Team Bicycle, said the idea of a competitive picnic is such a non-sequitur, it’s especially enjoyable. They’re social and it’s fun to be in the park.

Then he alerted a reporter to another possible story: ​“There’s a meteor shower tonight. Perhaps extra-terrestrials are coming here for Earth Day.”

Makes sense.

“We’ll give them some potato salad,” added Lior’s fellow team member Rebecca Slotkin.

Will this be the last competitive picknicking event?

Not to worry. ​“This is Farce, Inc.’s first big event,” said Hughes. ​“We’re making a lot of connections.”

In a note after the event, Mendyuk wrote: ​“Our new email is [email protected] , Our facebook page is at Facebook.com/FarceInc and my personal instagram handle is @Poetic_Cynic all of these work to contact us! Also this google form can be used to sign up for our email list.”

Oh, the results: Everyone won! 

But, among many of the citations Best in Show and Best Costume went to Popcorn Colonel; Frat XXX won Most Psychedelic as well as the profoundly deserved Most Confusing award; Stepford Wives won for Most Nostalgic; and Bicycle Team (everyone agreed they were ​“wheely cool”) won the coveted Most Fit, Best Aura, and Most Committed awards.

And on a touching personal note this reporter won the ​“Best Press” award for achievements in picnicking. Full disclosure: I was touched.