Puppets take Lake Merritt

Trying to find a parade is logistically difficult when your destination is a group of people constantly moving. 

My friend B and I hop in not one but two ride shares to try to catch up, begging the drivers to skip the direct routes and basically hug the curves of the lake. “Have you heard of the Puppet Parade?” They have not. “We’ll tip extra!” We eventually get dropped off at a familiar spot, the corner of Grand at Clio’s. We wander and wonder: “Where are the puppets?”

We had heard if we kept walking the lake we might find them, that all roads would lead us to the pergola, and there they are and here we are, in the palace of the puppets. Puppets are parading among the pergola regulars—the drum circle, the slackliners, capoeiristas, the bubble people, the family picnickers.

We throw our picnic blanket down and take in the revelry as all of these groups come together in a wild hot pot of Oakland goofin’.

A stranger approaches us, pops a squat on our blanket and helps herself to our bag of spicy Doritos. “You like puppets?” she asks nonchalantly. I turn to B and we nod at each other with a conspiratorial glance, shrugging back to her, like yeah, duh, we like puppets. The stranger surveys us up and down, bucks her chin and smirks, “Fuckin’ nerds.” 

It’s important to know that this is all said while she not only eats my Doritos but also while she's lugging a towering Swedish Chef puppet on her back, piloting it using a backpack for the frame and long poles to steer its arms. On its apron, there’s a handwritten note that reads CHEF BOURGEOISIE and EAT THE RICH. She tells us she built it for the pro-billionaire march in San Francisco back in February, where Chef Bourgeoisie, brandishing a foil cleaver, spent the afternoon menacing and chasing around the finance chuds. When she heard about the Puppet Parade, she dusted him off for another outing. She says she came alone, hoping to meet new friends (Hi! Hello!) but, disappointed and also surprised, turns out half her friends are already here. “Just no one was talking about the puppets.”

You’re wondering: how does one find out about the Puppet Parade? 

The ORB Calendar, obviously, is one way. I found out from a flyer at Heart and Dagger. There’s also an Instagram account for the Puppet Society of Lake Merritt that was posting sneak peeks of papier-mâché heads and other puppet anatomies. Another friend, S, who has joined us late, found out because, incredibly enough, she took part in a puppet-making workshop (unaffiliated with the Puppet Society) months ago.

The Puppet People are a special kind of goof, a whole other spectacular breed. Speaking of which: the theme of the Puppet Parade is “Creatures of Lake Merritt.” 

We see a slutty opossum. Fishnets. Pleaser boots. Mouth hissing. We lock eyes—we have all been her. We are her. I know her pronouns are she-ro / her-o. She saunters through the crowd.

We see a trash panda raising the roof. We also see an albino trash panda also raising the roof? Or it’s a kitten? Let’s call it a raccoon and call this particular one by its true name: leucistic raccoon. Do you remember when there was a group of these white critters living by the lake? The volunteer group Trash Falcons discovered them years back and rumor has it they’re still skittering around (my friend M saw one recently!).

Next we spot a spectacular, larger-than-life salmon art bike / kinetic sculpture / parade float / giant puppet siren-singing us toward its iridescent scales. Pleated, gauzy in seafoam green, pale turquoise, silver, and blush pink, with a shimmering, underwater quality. I want to touch it. Sunlight filters through the fabric, making the salmon bioluminesce. Bubbles flutter from it like spawn.

I was surprised to find out that salmon are a Creature of Lake Merritt. (Or they were once, when the creeks still ran open and wild,and more recently a few months ago, arriving here accidentally and briefly before they died in the lake.) B, my super informed friend (my nerdy-ass-hot-naturalist-friend-who-is-single-and-ready-to-co-mingle) tells me that you can find out where salmon are from. That’s because they have crazy bones called otoliths—or "ear stones" if you’re nasty—that act like flight data recorders. As they grow, these stones accumulate rings, absorbing the chemicals and minerals of the specific water they swim in. What in the mother nature natural actual fuck of it? 

We are now making eye contact with the bulging, glowing ruby eyes of a familiar Creature of Lake Merritt; the puppet hunches over awkwardly as it stalks the crowd, trying to find its way to the dance floor. It’s the hero of the lake, of Oakland, of my heart: the black-crowned night heron. The oversized puppet even has the weird, skinny, white feathers that stick out from its head. My nerdy-ass-hot-naturalist-friend-who-is-single-if-you-want-her-numba told me these only burst out during the breeding season, and they grow anywhere from 4 to 8 inches. 

You hear that, female night herons? The males are just OUT HERE swinging their 4 to 8 inch occipital plumes like it’s 5 in the mornin'. SQUAWWWWW.

It’s now dusk, and a group of revelers are on the grass giggling their asses off as a woman glides a bat ray puppet above them. The puppet’s translucent fabric skin is stretched over a rib-like skeletal frame, with LED lights dotted and glowing along its fins. The performer stands smiling beneath the puppet, and I approach her.

This is Ivy, one of the organizers of the Puppet Parade and a member of the Lake Merritt Puppet Society. She tells me the idea grew out of a group of landscape architecture friends who love building things and love ecology. After spending time in New Orleans, where DIY parades are super common, she wanted to bring that same spirit to Oakland. The hope is that this won't be a one-off, that the puppets will return in the fall, and keep returning after that. 

I smile, thanking her, as the purple sky fades now and the parade dissolves into the evening. The giant salmon rides away. The night heron disappears into the dark, as they always do. The bat ray glows against the blackening lake. My friends and I linger a little longer, swimming in the silliness, already hoping we'll be chasing the next Puppet Parade, too.

Put it on your calendar: Our ORB Launchiversary (“Always Be Launching”) party will be at Eli’s on Thursday August 20, 6pm until late. Members get in free, but NOTAFLOF.