By Pepper Fisher
PORT ANGELES – Saturday’s first ever Fungi Festival in Port Angeles was by all accounts a smashing success, with a sellout crowd and impressive participation by local business owners.
The festival is the brainchild of local mushroom grower David Rogers, owner of Maddie’s Mushrooms, who says he’s blown away by how well the event came off it’s first time around, and glad he didn’t try to go too big, too soon.
“Or doing multiple dates. But at the same time, organizing even just a 250 person event on that kind of short time line with as few people as we had, trying to make it all happen, there’s definitely parts of me that are glad we only had the one day and only 250 people to accommodate.”
Rogers not only packed the venue at the Red Lion Hotel with speakers and mushroom enthusiasts, he organized a special section at the farmer’s market where multiple vendors took part. He also enrolled several restaurants in town to offer special menu items to entice their customers to sample the fungus among us.
“I think every speaker asked to be a part of a future event, You know, they all had a really great time and really enjoyed it, thought the crowd was amazing. The farmers market was very excited. They’ve really asked us to come back and and be there more often. You know, we were the highest vendor the market that day, I believe. It was pretty impressive for our first appearance there. I know it’s not always easy for restaurants to work with smaller farms and, sometimes, vice versa. But it’s really great when the two can work together to bring local food to the people of our community.”
Another aspect of the Fungi Festival was to advocate for the decriminalization of psychedelic mushrooms.
“The group that’s helping us with that process, out of Oakland, is actually sending up a film crew for us next weekend. So, on Sunday we’re doing some shooting for a documentary that’s a part of a nationwide movement to kind of highlight the importance of the grassroots movement to decriminalize, and the importance of plant medicine.”
Finally, it’s not every day that a small group of people put on a new festival and make a profit, but Rogers says that might be the most surprising outcome of the weekend. Looking ahead, he says the City has reached out to him to talk about getting a Lodging Tax grant to make his next event bigger and better.
“You know, as much of a role as we played, the community definitely played a very big role in making it such a successful event as well, and we definitely appreciate that.”
(Photo: David Rogers and daughter Madison)