The Whole Steamy Story (Part 1)
It seems reasonable that if Steamy Tech is going to start a blog we would start it by telling you the story. I’m going to do that here. I’ll give credit where it is due and tell you about a bunch of our amazing friends that made it possible to get where we are today.
So where, when and how did it all start?
That’s the easy part of the story. Some friends invited us to attend Fanime with them in downtown San Jose in May of 2012. At that event we discovered a second convention just starting that year “Clockwork Alchemy”. Now clockwork is a Steampunk convention through and through and we knew nothing about Steampunk. But what we discovered there was amazing. We discovered an entire group of people that were all about making cool and beautiful things. There were also about having fun while doing it. And they were honoring and remembering a world where manners matter. What was there not to love. It was at that point that we realized we had truly found “our people”. The items for sell in their “Artists Bazaar” were beautiful handcrafted items made by some truly delightful people. And we will never forget our first taste of Steampunk music. Music by the likes of Thee Hobo Gobbelins and Lee Presson. We knew things would never be the same. Our favorite artists of that year -- Illana Murray (The Golden Gear) and Fred (Kelly’s Heroes). You’ll hear more about them later.
The only thing we thought was strange about the whole thing was people were using gears simply as decorations. None of the gears moved. At that point, it was just a strange observation. Not something we could actually do anything about.
So, that got us into Steampunk, but not MAKING. I’ll tell you about that in Part 2 of the tale.