In 1986, in the closing half of college I was with my brother and friend Richard Greenhalgh and one of our instructors (Robert Kirbo) told the whole class about this place called the Renaissance Faire. I had grown up in SoCal all my life but never heard of anything like this before. One of the things Robert said was "you should go in costume". Jumping in with both feet as I usually do, My brother, Richard, and I found a local costume rental shop and splurged immensely on costumes. We were all clean shaven so we even spent the money on real hair handlebar mustaches and goatees. We dressed as French cavaliers, wigs and all. We suspected it was not the exact right period, but was close enough for the theme. We felt so weird driving up to Agoura. We felt everyone was looking at us. After we got on site we were swallowed in this "other world" There were three of us, so we were quickly associated as the three musketeers. We had a blast and really wanted to get involved in this "magic". We got to watch for our first time the "Reduced Shakespeare Company" on stage. While there we saw this other black knight kind of character. He had a black head mask on made of wings. In letter years we would find out that this person was Randy Lefkowitz. A person, unbeknownst to any of us at that time, we would, in the near future, get very involved with in the faire circuit. We also ended up watching a sword and comedy stage show on, the then, Mountebank Stage and spoke with the performers after the show. We collected #'s so we could get in touch about how to begin participating.
Nearly an entire year went by and the guys we got the #'s from seemed to have disappeared. A convention in the LAX Hilton (if I remember correctly) was being held on January 1st 1987. It was a fantasy/Sci-Fi convention or something of that nature.
My brother, Richard, and I all went back to the same costume shop and we all rented costumes. I went as a thief type guy, Richard as a full armored night. made out of fiberglass/plastic or something of that sort. I don't remember if my Brother went dressed.
I went around the exhibit room trying to engage people as I remember it being done at the Renaissance Faire the previous year. Everyone looked at me funny and didn't respond as I had hoped. Then I came upon this one simple booth that had a man dressed in some renaissance/medieval style clothing and I engaged him. He responded immediately and we began to talk. His name was Larry Horne. He said he knew the who, when , and where of working the faire and was looking to start up a English military there. I shared the info with my friends and in the coming weeks we all set out to go up to north Los Angeles to meet at one of his friends house (Bill Handel).
We went up there practically every weekend to help make our costumes. I made my first pair of leather boots completely by hand. The costumes were made of Corduroy and the under color visible in "large" slashes down the chest was actually glued in. Bill's wife professed she didn't know hardly anything about sewing, but she knew %500 more than we did.
A couple months later we found ourselves dressed at registration - blackmail costumes they may have been - but we stood proud as could be. Little did we know what kind of monster was about to take over our lives.
As no English military group existed. It turned out we wouldn't be playing English soldiers. The 1st year we found ourselves placed into St. Helena's, the peasant guild - even though we were more dressed like bad examples of middle class.
The following year St. Michael's guild was formed that combined the different military style groups already being portrayed at the faire - and the seven members of "Blackshire's Company of the Sword" became English military. We got little to no recognition as we were small - not very well dressed - had minimal props - and of course were very few people.
The following year the faire moved to San Bernardino and with the new site it gave us a new opportunity to expand. We still had very few props - we were a little better dressed and about a dozen members strong. We were given the disconnected patch of land about 15' by 15' on the other side of the military camp road - effectively separating us from the rest of St. Michael's. We marched in progress, but always in the very back. We still had a long way to go to show we were worthy of leading progress. With our efforts to expand and become more accurate we needed to come up with a historical company name. I was voted in by the members of the group to portray this captain. A little research later we came up with Stoddard's company of Foote. A historical pike company stationed at the Tower of London in 1587-8 (Armada year) under the command of a well to do gentleman, Nicholas Stoddard. We would now be Blackshire's Company of the Sword Portraying Stoddard's Companie of Foote.
As we worked smaller faires, and our numbers grew, our financial position did too. We got a large tent, we collected more props, a new flag, made a folding kitchen, made a huge table, made a bunch of benches, made a bunch of pikes, purchased a fashion line of cassocks. Then, after about 5 years after Blackshire's was created we walked our first progress - in the very front of the parade.............. Stoddard's company banner led progress!