Shutter Speed shattered when it upended during the 2014 Obtainium Cup Rally, which earned the father-son duo of Michael Nelson, Vallejo and Benjamin Holson, Mountain View, the Lornful Luck Award. Donna Beth Weilenman / Staff.
Organizers call the entrants “mutant human-powered vehicles” whose pilots face assaults from zombies, flying monkeys and the Queen of Hearts at a Mad Hatter’s tea party.
It’s not your usual road race.
And that’s the point, said Shannon O’Hare, the event’s “Grand Poobah and “Major Catastrophe” of Obtainium Works, the arts collective headquartered on Mare Island.
O’Hare has been a participant in the Kinetic Grand Championship in Humboldt County, a three-day contest that takes participants in their people-powered vehicles along a 42-mile course from Arcata to Ferndale through sand, mud and water on the state’s north coast. That event has been going on for 45 years. Another Obtainium Works member has entered several times.
“It’s the grandmother of all kinetic races — the kinetic olympics,” O’Hare said. “It is an amazing challenge.” He remains impressed with the engineering and artistic accomplishments of the competitors as well as the physical strength it takes to complete the race.
When concocting the Obtainium Cup Rally, O’Hare and his cohorts went a different direction. Contestants are expected to recycle, re-use and re-purpose things others might have discarded — “obtainium” — in order to build the vehicles they enter in the 4-plus mile rally. In fact, one contestant last year joined at the last minute, assembling a vehicle on the fly using items salvaged from Mare Island trash bins.
“The Obtainium Cup is user friendly and accessible,” O’Hare said.
Not that he doesn’t aspire to give the Kinetic Grand Championship a run for its money. “I only hope eventually to be on that quality of level,” he said, speaking with admiration of its “phenomenally beautiful pieces.” But then, the Championship has more than a 40-year head start on the Obtainium Cup, he noted.
The local contest gives area “contraptors” — those same tinkerers and artists — a chance to build and enter their human-powered vehicles in a race around Mare Island that lasts but a few hours. Spectators can ride bicycles to follow the entrants from start to finish.
“I’m always amazed at people’s ingenuity,” O’Hare said of the Obtainium Cup entrants.
One summer, one of the Obtainium Works’s own interns showed up with a pile of junk that, had O’Hare seen it by the side of the road, he would have passed by.
But the intern used the skateboard and bicycle parts, a plastic seat and “pure detritus” to make a single-wheel vehicle in which he could sit and pedal onward.
“It becomes magical,” O’Hare said.
And sometimes, items show up at just the right time.
For instance, O’Hare needed a bed for the Dormouse competitors will meet along the way. At first, he thought he would need to buy some plywood to create the bed. Instead, a friend showed up with a trundle bed already loaded up in a truck.
The same thing happened when O’Hare wanted to compete in Vallejo’s recent bathtub regatta, and he was donated three hot tubs shortly before the race. “Once again, they just showed up,” he said. “I’m constantly astounded the obtainium just appears.”
The Obtainium Cup Rally is more than a race. For some, it’s an experiment to see if their peculiar-looking devices can last until the finish line. For others, it’s the challenge of facing down flying monkeys, zombies and the riddles of the Queen of Hearts.
Those obstacles are part of the fun of the race, a silly alternative to the Kinetic Grand Championship’s sand dunes, mud and other topographical challenges.
A flying monkey captured Toto at the 2014 Obtainium Cup. Donna Beth Weilenman / Staff
The idea of the new challenge was for participants to demonstrate “their monkey artillery skills — their monkey ballistics — basically, to see if they can hit a target with the monkey,” he said.
Because Lennar, Mare Island’s primary developer, wanted to charge more for parking lots’ use than event organizers felt they could afford, there was no place for the robot obstacles that competitors had faced in the past, nor will they have to endure The Inspectors’ red tape.
But there will be zombies.
“I like to think of them as professional zombies,” O’Hare said. “They come with their own zombie makeup person. I find them well-dressed, like ‘Amberzombie and Fitch.’ They’re very fashionable, not the shambling mob. They have a lot of style.”
The zombies may be dressed to the nines, but competitors still will need to find a way to get through them — bribing them with brains, convincing them there are no brains aboard the vehicle or otherwise trick their way past the hungry living dead.
But zombie-bashing is not allowed. The zombies are in the Victor Halperin Memorial Zombie Preserve, named for the director of such horror films as the 1930s horror films “White Zombie,” “Revolt of the Zombies” and other horror films. As such, the zombies are considered as protected preserve inhabitants.
After getting through the reanimated dead, participants then get to try to wake the living – the sleepy dormouse in his comfortable trundle bed. That’s one of many elements of the Mad Hatter Tea Party, where the Queen of Hearts will further challenge participants with riddles, some taken directly from conversations scripted by Lewis Carroll in “Alice in Wonderland.
“The Mad Hatters will have a much nicer area this year,” O’Hare said. They’ll be situated in the south end in Alden park, and the setting will have a greater Wonderland atmosphere. “This is a more beautiful venue.”
Last year, the questions were posed by author Edgar Allen Poe. Participants also had to carry cups of tea while performing silly walks. Contestants can expect three or four challenges again this year, but the Mad Hatters can be obscure in explaining their games ahead of time, O’Hare said it’s difficult to learn. “They’re mad!” he said. “I’m sure there will be strange and mad challenges.”
If some of this sounds like some of this belongs in the genre called steampunk, that’s true, although O’Hare said he and some of the artists and contraptors have been involved in such creativity long before the term “steampunk” was concocted to refer to science fiction and fantasy postulations of modern devices that could have been created during the Victorian era of steam power.
“Personally, I consider this whole genre something that I have been doing since high school,” O’Hare said.
He said he has been building “weird contraptions” and dressing in a vintage, eclectic style, “not quite authentic, not quite fantasy” for years. The difference is now the style has a name.
“It turns out a lot of other people said, ‘Oh that’s what I like to do,’” he said. And for some, the style has given them permission to follow those likes. “I never asked anybody,” he said. Instead, he and his brother developed a collection of antique, Victorian clothing, built zeppelins and flying machines out of cardboard and paper, read such books as “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” and watched the original “Wild Wild West” on television.
As a child, he said, “I read everything Jules Verne wrote…that style of science fiction I dearly love, and anything remotely similar.” He watched the bright, Technicolor movies portraying Captain Nemo and his underwater ship, “Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines,” “Around The World in 80 Days,” “The Great Race” and other Victorian fantasies.
The Obtainium Works studio has its own fantastic description. Home of the “Hibernian Academy of UnNatural Sciences,” Obtainium Works is where self-described “tinkerers, gearheads and steam bohemians” use discards from area industries to fabricate steam-powered art that is inspired by the writings of such Victorian-era authors as Jules Verne and H.G. Wells.
“I always had a love for building contraptions fit for a Jules Verne story,” O’Hare said. Only later were books and movies, particularly Japanese animation and graphic art books designated “steampunk,” what O’Hare calls “The future from the past that never was.”
Speaking of “never was,” one of O’Hare’s own contraptions, the Neverwas Haul, won’t be making an appearance Sunday, but will be making one of its final trips to the desert event Burning Man Aug. 30-Sept. 7. Eventually, he said, he hopes the house-on-wheels becomes part of a giant art garden display somewhere in Vallejo.
While Vallejo is becoming known as a steampunk art community, O’Hare said the area also has its share of those involved in the Maker movement, another grass-roots effort to encourage creativity, particularly through collaboration and classes.
“Everyone who participates is a maker — anyone who loves to crate things, make costume, any form of craft we consider part of the Maker movement,” he said. In particular, he praised how the Maker movement is encouraging children to explore and learn skills so they can build things and “get their hands dirty and make something.” At Obtainium Works, his own studio will get children involved in putting skin on a steampunk submarine, he said.
This may be may be the last time the Obtaininum Cup Rally will take place on Mare Island, O’Hare said. In the future, the event may merge with an art car show to become an art car and contraption festival at Vallejo Waterfront Park.
In addition to the wacky contests and creative vehicles, visitors to this year’s rally will get to see some of the art that is being produced on Mare Island. If they dress for the part, they also can become participants, not simply viewers.
O’Hare encouraged visitors to take up their bicycles and follow along the course, explaining it is the easiest way to see multiple aspects of the rally. The rules are simple, he said. “Don’t get run over, and enjoy themselves, and get inspired to build their own.”
Those who want to travel by car to see the hazards may use Azuar Drive and park in designated areas.
Once the Obtainium Cup competitors complete the course, they’ll be greeted by spectators and live music and other entertainment — a duo on ukulele playing fun songs, an all-acoustic band “and three or four others in a fine group of entertainers,” O’Hare said.
Spectators and participants also can shop for food and steampunk-oriented merchandise from vendors while waiting for judges to tally their scores and award prizes.
The prizes are of obtainium, too, made by Gregg Neff, “the guru of embellishment,” O’Hare said. Judges will be at least two members of the Vallejo City Council and other area dignitaries.
Mad Scientist posters will direct spectators to the start of the rally in Alden Park, at Eighth and Walnut streets on Mare Island, Vallejo.
Parking is available at Fourth and Connolly streets, along Railroad Avenue and along Walnut Avenue. Parking for the challenges will be marked on a map participants will receive at the start of the rally.
The festival starts at 1 p.m. at Alden Park with a viewing of the vehicles, giving visitors time to tour the Walnut Avenue Mansions and the Mare Island Historical Museum while live musicians and DJ Grego play music. Admission is free.
The rally starts at 3 p.m. and concludes at 6 p.m. or earlier if all the contestants cross the finish line before then. The awards ceremony will take place afterwards, and the after party with music will conclude at 9 p.m. Those interested may visit the website obtainiumworks.net.
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