The 2006 Berkeley Juggling and Unicycle Festival is coming up soon (Friday, September 29 to Sunday, October 1). This is the largest juggling/unicycling event in Northern California this year; last year we had 300 participants, and this year we expect even more.
Unlike most of the juggling festivals, the Berkeley festival focuses on unicycling as one of its primary activities; we have two MUni rides, a big-wheel road ride/party (with a thumpin’ sound system–many people thought this the best event of the weekend!), and a number of games and workshops for unicyclists.
Some of the top riders in the world are expected to be there; Nathan and Beau Hoover, Irene Genelin, and Kaori Matsuzawa are confirmed at this point.
The festival is the week after California MUni Weekend; I’ll be at CMW if you have any questions. If we can get enough interest from trials guys, I’d like to have a trials demonstration/competition as well; we’ll talk on Saturday at CMW.
I’ve got some photos from the Berkeley festival up in my gallery.
The festival was a great success, with almost 500 registered attendees, and over 300 paying customers at the show. We had the largest MUni ride ever seen in Joaquin Miller Park (20 riders, plus several walkers), and the most intense collection of unicycling talent ever seen at a juggling festival (including Ryan Woessner, Irene Genelin, Jeff Groves, and Kaori Matsuzawa, not to mention the Hoovers and the rest of our local folks).
We hope to see you next year! (I’m hoping to schedule the next year’s festival to be either the week before or the week after California MUni Weekend in Santa Cruz–think about coming for a whole week of unicycling!)
We are tentatively scheduled for October 5-7, the weekend before CA MUni Weekend in Santa Cruz. There should be plenty of great uni events at the festival, and we’ll have lots of informal stuff during the week, if anyone comes in from out of town for both events. (Uni basketball, disc golf, big wheel rides, whatever sounds fun).
That photo has Sam riding my 26", because I can’t lower the seat on my 24" enough for him to ride it. He did just fine, he’s a strong rider. (Some of you probably met him at Moab).
I hope so! Get in touch with tholub (the starter of this thread), who organizes the unicycle part. He can sign you up with the local unicycling e-mail list too.
Yes, there will be another festival in Berkeley this year! (There is some chance that it will be at a campground outside of Berkeley, but I expect we’ll wind up back in town again). The festival is free and open to the public; there is an admission fee for the Saturday night variety show.
The most likely weekend for the festival in 2008 is October 10-12, but it’s not locked in yet.
