Geekfest: No snickering, it's purest pop culture
The scary Babadook showed up. So did Spider-Man, wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Yes, the South Jersey Geek Fest also had an Imperial Stormtrooper and a fuzzy Pikachu Pokémon roaming the grounds of the Woodbury Heights Community Center Saturday.
The scary Babadook showed up.
So did Spider-Man, wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
Yes, the South Jersey Geek Fest also had an Imperial Stormtrooper and a fuzzy Pikachu Pokémon roaming the grounds of the Woodbury Heights Community Center Saturday.
Besides costumed characters, the fourth South Jersey Geek Fest featured swordplay, video-game tournaments, and musicians who mix and arrange nostalgic sound clips from 8-bit and 16-bit Super Nintendo and GameBoy favorites to produce compositions.
Ryan Morrison, an organizer of the all-day event, said ticket sales - $8 at the door, $5 if you wore a costume - were brisk. He anticipated the total would exceed 2,500, the number he sold when the last Geek Fest was held in the spring.
"Geek culture is kind of snickered at, but people don't realize - we geeks run everything. We are pop culture. Movies are all about the comics, and art and music is all about pop culture," Morrison said.
Morrison said attendees traveled from "a radius of two to three hours away," noting online ticket sales from purchasers in Ambler, Red Bank, N.J., and communities in Delaware and Maryland.
Homer Abrom, 27, of Mount Holly, said it was his first time at the Geek Fest and the turnout surprised him.
"I didn't think we had this many awesome people this close to home," Abrom said, as hundreds filled up the community center and strolled between aisles of vendors hawking vintage comic books, board games, and handmade jewelry.
Abrom was dressed head to toe as a "steampunk" Thanos, "the overlord of the Marvel Universe and the baddest of the bad." His homemade costume featured a purple mask rigged to a vaporizer hidden under his shirt that would appear to emit steam at his command.
"Geeks are very passionate about their hobbies," Abrom said, saying that he enjoys comics, video-games, painting, sculpting, and singing and that he recently auditioned for American Idol.
Outside the community center, Quidditch tournaments were in full swing on a grassy field next to an area where cosplays, a variety of costumed skits, were being staged. Shouts went up when a video-gamer in a tent nearby scored a victory on a big screen.
"Impressive," some spectators said, shaking their heads.
AJ Kirk, 30, a yo-yo devotee from New Castle, Del., provided a different, low-tech entertainment. He performed a balancing act by gingerly placing the foot of a six-foot A-frame ladder into the curve of his chin. A crowd clapped and snapped pictures.
That day Kirk had planned to challenge a record in the Guiness Book of World Records by similarly balancing a running lawn mower for five minutes. But Morrison had nixed the plan at the last minute, saying his insurer had warned him his premium would triple.
Kirk, who is in charge of yo-yo sales at Morrison's board-game store, Tiki Tiki in Woodbury, said that he would keep practicing and find a venue that would allow the act at a future date.
Corrinne Daddario, 23, of Pitman, walked among the throng in her Babadook costume. She said it took her nearly an hour to paint her face to mimic the appearance of the monster in the horror movie The Babadook. It was her second time attending the Geek Fest.
"It's a lot of fun and there's lots to see," Daddario said, tucking away her sharpened, clawlike fingers and revealing a friendlier side. "It's growing and they are changing it up to add new things."
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