San Mateo, California

“This is the nerdiest thing on the planet.”

My friend looks a bit dismayed at the crushing throng before the stage, excited for the live performance of the Internet-meme famous Mentos and Diet Coke fountain. People are even leaning out the observation tower of the nearby retrofitted blue school bus, now bedecked with solar panels and installed with a biodiesel engine, compostable toilet, and other green amenities. Off in the distance, a tall metal contraption belches a billowing plume of fire and smoke into the air above.

“You realize you’re at an inventors fair, right?”

She concedes to the fact that, of all places to appropriately and full-heartedly geek out, we are at the mecca. Maker Faire is the nerdiest thing on the planet. And that’s the point. For two days of the year, all species of creators transform the San Mateo Expo Center into a whirling hubbub of lectures, demonstrations, workshops, installations, and full-roaming bits of whimsy. Basically, if Bill Nye the Science Guy, Etsy, and Burning Man had a love child, this would be it.

Walking around earlier in the day, I was titillated/amused/inspired by no less than muffin-mobiles, a jellyfish tank, blinkybugs with LED eyes that light up when their antenna detect the slightest air current, a repurposed fashion show, recycled furniture, wandering steampunks, a solar-powered robo-Obama pulling a chariot, plush poo dolls, a 50-foot-high kinetic sculpture made of soda bottles, a homemade airplane, crocheted superhero masks, and the list goes on and on — art, science, engineering, music, craft…all blended together into a wonderland of pure imagination.

I stopped by the SparkFun pavilion to watch a PTH soldering workshop on their Metro-Gnome, Terror-min, or ClockIt kits — a metronome, theremin, or alarm clock, respectively. Grandparents and their grandkids, tattooed 20-somethings, and other electrical engineering hobbyists worked elbow-to-elbow, totally oblivious to onlookers and the constant flow of the crowd as they soldered circuit-boards. The emerging DIY, anti-consumerist movement cuts across cultures and generations like no other trend I’ve ever encountered. It’s empowering in the age of too-big-to-fail corporations, government fiscal bungling, global warming, and other forces seemingly out of the hands of common individuals. “Nations and international corporations do not comprise this grand experiment called civilization, but you and I do.”

As a stereotypical Bay Area foodie, I was happy to see the Homegrown Village, with worm-composting how-tos, homebrewing, urban foraging, mushroom cultivation, cheese aging, and other urban homesteading presentations. At the Beekeepers Guild of San Mateo booth, alfalfa farmer Bonnie enthusiastically informed me about the nuances of pollens and honey color, but admitted that she originally took up the hobby as a way to impress people at dinner parties. Delightful. Where else but at Maker Faire would you meet someone who starting beekeeping as a way to earn “cool” points?

Back at the stage, we listen to the lecture on the chemical reaction between Mentos and Diet Coke, the particulars of which make me want to consume neither again. Then the music is cued and the crowd cheers as the 20-foot geysers of effervescence begin their swirling, synchronized dance. We nerds have not waited in vain.