Revival a zany, fanciful tribute to Petaluma River

An estimated 8,000 visitors streamed into Petaluma’s Steamer Landing Park on Saturday for the ninth annual event honoring the ‘greatest slough on earth.’|

Stella Corson considered the various highlights of Saturday’s Rivertown Revival festival, but her eyes grew big as she described one of its two 40-foot-long teeter-totters.

“The teeter-totter has carvings on it,” Corson said of the device that requires ladders for mounting. “And it’s fun.”

Corson, who like the festival has been around nine years, was one of an estimated ?8,000 visitors Saturday to Petaluma’s Steamer Landing Park. The ninth- annual gathering offered the chance to dress in eccentric costumes, gawk at imaginative creations and behold the “greatest slough on earth,” namely the adjacent Petaluma River.

The one-day festival is a benefit for the Friends of the Petaluma River, which manages the mostly undeveloped park. And several attendees spoke enthusiastically of combining fun with helping preserve a waterway that has been central to the city’s history.

“You might as well celebrate something that makes Petaluma special,” said resident Lamar Shahbazian.

Perhaps the most striking creation on hand Saturday was the one that caught the attention of Stella’s mother, Kristel Corson: the Flower Tower. The arched temple, with pointed spires rising as much 40 feet in the air, was the top half of an 80-foot-tall creation originally made for the 2017 Burning Man festivities in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert.

Its Petaluma creators, Michelle Ramatici and Kevin Clark, were inspired by Antoni Gaudí’s architecture at La Sagrada Familia Roman Catholic church in Barcelona. The combined tower held roughly 4,000 metal flowers.

Unlike some Burning Man pieces, the Flower Tower wasn’t meant to be consumed in flames, Ramatici said, “but it blows fire.”

Fire also can come from Clark’s “Rhino Redemption” car, a former three-quarter ton pickup parked nearby that had been refashioned into the likeness of an immense horned rhinoceros. Packs of attendees Saturday climbed in to get a closer look at the contraption.

The Flower Tower, meanwhile, became the venue for the festival’s $5 weddings, a regular offering that comes with an officiant, the use of a white dress and photos. On Saturday, one couple got married and 12 more renewed their vows.

Overseeing the venue was Debbie Wilson, one of more than 300 volunteers at the festival. Like many interviewed, she spoke of the event as a way to build community, especially for the volunteers.

“It’s like a family getting together and making it happen,” she said of the preparations.

Among the other volunteers helping at the wedding venue were David and Jennifer Billstrom of Asheville, North Carolina. The couple said they are thinking of moving to Petaluma, so they decided to help with the festival in order to meet people and learn about the community.

Asked about the event, Jennifer Billstrom replied, “It’s awesome. It reminds us of home.”

Saturday’s festivities included musical entertainment on three stages, as well as food and merchandise vendors.

For costumes, hats of all eras and styles seemed popular. Many guests also offered their version of steam punk, with parasols occasionally completing the women’s outfits.

Last year’s festival raised $25,000 for the river preservation group.

Elizabeth Howland, a founder of the event, said the sponsors seek to bring neighbors together and also to show off the beauty of the river, a waterway that was used for shipping goods between Petaluma and San Francisco in the years before bridges.

“This river was essential to the founding of our community,” said Howland. “And we’re working hard to preserve it.”

For their top choice at the festival, Stella’s father Forrest Corson and her 7-year-old brother Strider selected the 60-foot-long scow schooner Alma, part of the collection at the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park. The flat-bottomed vessel, which made its first appearance at the event, represents the last of the schooners that once carried goods to Petaluma and also along the shallow waters of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

But what of those carvings on that teeter-totter, one of two extended seesaws that can lift riders 12 feet high, aided by a 700-pound concrete foundation built into the earth?

Stephen Lockert, their creator, said the series of carved panels takes viewers back thousands of years to the days of the wooly mammoth and then shows them local scenes of native Miwok peoples, early Petalumans, the early 20th Century and the present.

“We’re just one piece of that history,” Lockert said, “and that history is big.”

UPDATED: Please read and follow our commenting policy:
  • This is a family newspaper, please use a kind and respectful tone.
  • No profanity, hate speech or personal attacks. No off-topic remarks.
  • No disinformation about current events.
  • We will remove any comments — or commenters — that do not follow this commenting policy.