A Brief History of BRATFEST
BRATFEST was originated in 1979 in Tucson,
Arizona by enterprising young grad students,
longing for a taste of traditional Wisconsin
fall fare. It takes on a flavor of Oktoberfest,
but not entirely. For nearly 3 decades, the Fest was
held at its original location,
Hawthorne House , now looking nothing
like it did then.
The tradition has been continued by grad students
of the Lunar & Planetary Lab, University of
Arizona. This year
in Tucson marks the 39th annual event.
T-shirts are printed each year
(examples given in links on previous page)
and can even be seen
being sported in random cities across the US
by people
you've never heard of and some you have.
Bratfest has been presented as a
poster talk
(see within this link)
at DPS and asteroid
(7887) Bratfest
has been
named in its honor. People have traveled from
many states and even foreign countries to
attend.
The popularity of the event had mushroomed,
with BratFest East, known as
BratfEast (Maryland), and there were, for a while,
BratFest Australia,
BratFest New Mexico (Albuquerque), and a
BratFest West (Ames),
This had put the founders of Bratfest (Bill Merline of SwRI,
Nick Schneider of CU, and Gordy Bjoraker of
Goddard) in a particularly difficult spot ---
two founders in one location and no Fest. Eventually,
we finally had enough of the shame and embarrassment.
To remedy this, we initiated Bratfest Colorado in
2008, and the tradition continues.
For historical interest, the earliest known records of
Bratfest have revealed that there were actually two Fests
held in the pre-Bratfest era, both on Bowen Court in
Madison, Wisconsin. They now come under reference as
Bratfest (0) [August 1978] and Bratfest (-1) [August 1977].
But they were known at that time as the Bowen Court Corn Festival,
and provide the key link to the offering of corn to this day.
Munich's Oktoberfest started as a wedding celebration
in 1810. We note that Bratfest has now run for almost
20% of the span of Oktoberfest.