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| Victoria Steam Exposition III | Ical:
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Export Event
When: From Friday 20 April 2012
To Sunday 22 April 2012
Where: Fairmont Empress Hotel, 721 Government St., Victoria
Cost: Weekend Pass $50 which is good for Saturday and Sunday, Friday Tasting Pass $50
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Info:
Steampunk is the collision of history, technology, imagination, and attitude; nineteenth-century sensibilities with impossible Jules-Verne-inspired technology. Teak-panelled computers, corsets and jetpacks, top hats and ray guns.
For the third year in a row, Victoria, British Columbia, will host an art-happening of steampunk art, tech, fashion, music, architecture, and story. Not your typical "con" or convention, the Dominion of Canada's premiere steampunk event, VSE III is more intimate; a living art-show with evocative venues, and more oriented around conversation and sharing in an authentic Victorian atmosphere.
"Amongst all the beautiful places in the world, and I think I have seen the most beautiful of them, Victoria ranks the highest." – Rudyard Kipling, 1889
Kipling was the paragon of the Victorian adventure-storyteller, so how fitting that this year's Victoria Steam Exposition returns to the magnificent 1904 granite palace of the Empress Hotel (In the Kipling Room, no less), a monument to the exuberance of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. A National Historic Site, The Empress has hosted kings and queens, smugglers and inventors, explorers, artists, and Kipling himself.
The weekend pass gives you access both Saturday and Sunday to steampunk jewelers, tinkerers, corsetieres, milliners, leather and glassworkers, artisans and anachronists. Additionally there are continuous panel discussions on costuming, history, literary readings, and prop-making. Your weekend pass also admits you to the Saturday Evening Steampunk Cabaret Burlesque, a dance party to the haunted gypsy folk antics of Tarran the Tailor and the boisterous Bučan Bučan.
The Friday Night Absinthe Tasting and History Presentation is at the Union Club, a private (formerly gentlemen-only) institution founded in 1879, and still bears the wingbacked-leather-chair atmosphere as in its founding year. Tickets are an additional $50 for Friday evening's festivities, which includes a flight of three absinthes, a history lecture on its culture and appreciation, and a tour of the club's magnificent 1884 architecture.
Please note: Children under 13 are free when accompanied by a ticketed adult and you must be 18+ to attend the Cabaret Burlesque. For more details, please see their site.