NEFFA 2009

[AMM]

Is anyone from the Cafe going to NEFFA this year?

For those who don't know, "NEFFA" is the New England Folk Festival Association, which does a weekend-long music and dance festival in the suburbs of Boston, MA, USA. Folk festivals, especially ones with Contra Dancing, are quite open to the idea of men in skirts and there are generally a few dozen at each festival. They're also lots of fun, especially if you like making music, dancing, and/or flirting. This year, it's at Mansfield, and is happening this coming weekend (Apr. 24-26.)

[JRMILLER]

AMM,
Looks like a wonderful event and if it were a little closer to central OH, I would go.

Are you going to make a weekend of it?

[crfriend]

... and the clock, she is a-ticking!

Sapphire and I are going to bolt south to meet up with AMM this afternoon near the NEFFA festival in Mansfield, MA. We leave in about an hour.

I just hope my hair dries in time, and I still have no idea what I'm going to wear -- there are so many choices!

[AMM]

1. I had a great dinner with CR and Sapphire. It was a little "interesting": they found a restaurant on-line, but when we got there, it had evidently been closed, reopened under another name, and shut down again since the on-line entry was put it! But they found another place nearby and we had a nice dinner.

2. NEFFA had more men in skirts this year than last year. At a wild guess, I'd say there were about 100 men in skirts, out of (also a WAG) maybe 1000 participants. As expected, lots of music, including jamming in the halls and on the lawn, and lots of dancing. There was other stuff too, which I didn't go to.

[sapphire]

AMM,
It was nice meeting you last evening. We did indeed have a pleasant time of it.

I absolutely loved the skirt you were wearing. You mentiioned that it was your design and construction. Well done! If I may say so with becoming it was very flattering.

[Milfmog]

Pictures folks! Your friends need pictures.... (pretty please?)

Have fun,


Ian.

[crfriend]

Pictures folks! Your friends need pictures.... (pretty please?)

Interestingly, nobody thought of taking any pictures. I didn't bring my cameras, but did have my cell' 'phone with me which has a (cruddy) camera in it.

It must've been a hoot for the passers-by to see two large chaps, both dressed in skirts, chatting aimiably in the lobby of the restaurant whilst Sapphire was "otherwise engaged". I do not recall so much as a single comment or sideways glance from the afternoon.

AMM was in a decidedly casual mode (as befits the millieu he was coming from) with a T-shirt, blue box-pleated skirt, and sandals; I presented slightly more formally with a white dress shirt, red waistcoat with pocket-watch chain, long-ish black tiered skirt, and black dress shoes.

[AMM]

AMM was in a decidedly casual mode (as befits the millieu he was coming from) with a T-shirt, blue box-pleated skirt, and sandals;

The bold-faced text is not strictly accurate; my outfit was casual, but I don't dress casually for festivals or for evening dances. I usually wear a button-down shirt over any T-shirt. As for the skirt, Friday night, I wore my red satin skirt, Saturday I wore my rainbow skirt and then changed into my red skirt. Sunday I wore a brown 25" skirt. I changed into the "casual" outfit partly because I'd heard it was as hot as a furnace outside (not really true) and wanted to dress lightly and partly because I was going to be driving for 3 hours, stopping off at gas stations and turnpike "rest areas."

I discovered a down side to the box pleats: my car has various pokey things in odd places, and there was one pleat that was perfectly placed to catch on one of those pokey things every time I got into the car. There's an odd tear and some torn-out stitching that I'll need to fix before I wear the skirt again.

On another note, I got to educate several people about men-in-skirts that weekend.

When I went to get gas on Sunday morning, I was wearing my brown 25" skirt (with yellow piping) and blue socks, and the man in the service station asked why I was wearing a skirt. I told him I was going to a music and dance festival and a lot of us liked to dress like this for fun.

At the festival, one girl (maybe 18? maybe younger?) asked me why so many men were wearing skirts, so I told her it was for fun and also because it's cooler. I think this was her first festival, maybe she was even a student from the high school who'd come to see what it was all about, as she was a rank beginner at dancing (but that was OK -- Contra Dancing is boring if everyone knows what they're doing.)

And one guy selling CD's was telling me that at his motel, some men in skirts came to breakfast and other people were having "context difficulties." I told him I went around my home town in a skirt and had, so far, not had anyone act all that weirded out. I'd also stayed at the same motel and worn a skirt to breakfast and no one had looked at me funny. (But I wore a casual skirt to breakfast, and changed before going to the Festival.) I even spent an hour Out In Public in my skirt, because the lock on my room got jammed and we had to wait for the Official Un-Jammer to get there.

[crfriend]

AMM was in a decidedly casual mode (as befits the millieu he was coming from) with a T-shirt, blue box-pleated skirt, and sandals;

The bold-faced text is not strictly accurate; my outfit was casual, but I don't dress casually for festivals or for evening dances.

My characterisation on that count was out of line, and I apologise for that gaffe. The above having been said, and as Sapphire has alluded to, the rig she and I saw just simply worked. Make no bones about it, it was completely and absolutely believeable as a man's outfit.

I have to admit, I was hoping for the "rainbow" skirt -- the images of that are just supreme -- although as an electronics geek I can't help but assign numeric values to all the colours. (If I were to construct such a garment for myself, I might be tempted to embroider the decimal values for each colour along one vertical line.) Of course the satin skirt would have been welcome as well; I think that's the next fabric I must try.

I discovered a down side to the box pleats: my car has various pokey things in odd places, and there was one pleat that was perfectly placed to catch on one of those pokey things every time I got into the car. There's an odd tear and some torn-out stitching that I'll need to fix before I wear the skirt again.

I hope you fix it well, because that's a great garment. I recall thinking to myself upon seeing your choice of vehicle, "Well done"; I drove that same type for 20 years and almost a half-million miles. I started wearing skirts before my last one had to be "put to pasture" and never had a lick of trouble with bits catching.

When I went to get gas on Sunday morning, I was wearing my brown 25" skirt (with yellow piping) and blue socks, and the man in the service station asked why I was wearing a skirt. I told him I was going to a music and dance festival and a lot of us liked to dress like this for fun.

Out of curiosity, what was his response? I've had a few "questioners" who, when presented with a reasonable and sane response, actually seem to "get" the notion that skirts can work really well on men.

[Jared]

hello,
then neffa is really a good event to enjoy...but i cant understand the men in skirt...where does men use skirt...i haven't seen anyone...and if i want to participate in neffa what should i do? to whom i contact?

[Since1982]

Carl said: Out of curiosity, what was his response? I've had a few "questioners" who, when presented with a reasonable and sane response, actually seem to "get" the notion that skirts can work really well on men.

In the last year, "every" skirt related comment I've gotten from men was positive.

A lot of men DO seem to be "getting" the idea that it's OK to not get stuck in stiff trousers for life. In fact the last odd question I got...was by an oldish man prolly early 60's, who asked how I could ride a motorcycle wearing a sarong. Actually, I could have said I don't, but I do.. sarongs are great for folding this way and that to do various chores that you can't do well with either a skirt or trousers. You can fold an ankle length sarong to the size of a pair of swim trunks and use it for that. I learned how to do that in the Marshall Islands.