Quick Take

The Santa Cruz Fungus Fair was a local institution before the pandemic. Now, four years after its previous event, the fair returns for its 50th anniversary, with presentations, lectures and other programs celebrating the versatile mushroom.

All you have to do this time of year is keep your eyes open and you’ll see them everywhere. It’s mushroom season in Santa Cruz County. And, as if to call attention to a particularly good season for shroom hunting and foraging, a grand old local tradition is coming back.

For five decades, local fungus lovers and mycologists (professional and otherwise) have come together every winter for a multiday celebration of all things fungi. But the annual Santa Cruz Fungus Fair disappeared after the 2020 event, and you likely can guess why. This weekend, however, for the first time since the pandemic, the Fungus Fair is back. 

The Santa Cruz Fungus Fair is famous for its presentation of the variety and diversity of mushroom species in the wild, particularly those common around Monterey Bay.

Just in time to mark its 50th anniversary, the Fungus Fair arrives Friday and goes through the weekend, transforming the London Nelson Center in downtown Santa Cruz into a kind of demonstration forest showcasing the variety of local fungi species. Local producers of the event say they expect up to 200 different species of mushrooms and other fungi, all on display with informational tables, guest lectures, guides for identification in the wild, recipes and lots more.

Before the pandemic, the Fungus Fair was a celebrated Santa Cruz touchstone, attracting up to 4,000 people over the course of the 2½-day event, with about 250 volunteers contributing to make it happen. People came from near and far to enjoy the bounty. “The only complaint we get is that it’s too crowded,” said Phil Carpenter, who’s been part of the event’s organizing team for years. “But for us, that means we’ve had a successful event.”

After three years dark, expectations are high for the fair’s return. “We’re expecting a really great turnout this year,” said Carpenter, “just because of the interest we’ve been seeing.”

The event is a co-production of the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History and the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz. Obviously, not every city in California has a fungus federation, but the local chapter is an especially robust organization, with membership at about 350 households throughout the Monterey Bay area. 

Other than the displays in both the main room and the children’s room, the fair will also host a Friday night Mushroom Dinner (which is now sold out), along with a variety of lectures and workshops on such subjects as mushroom cooking techniques, recent discoveries in the mushroom world, how to cultivate mushrooms, identifying dangerous or toxic fungi, and the world of “magic” mushrooms, or psilocybin. 

If there is one element that might separate the future Fungus Fair from the event in past years, it’s the focus on psilocybin. For most of its 50-year existence, psychedelic mushrooms have always been part of the conversation at the Fungus Fair and wherever fungus lovers congregate. But the illegality of that category of mushrooms has kept the subject in more or less a state of taboo. In recent years, however, scientific advances in psychedelic therapy and moves by many cities, including Santa Cruz, to decriminalize psilocybin has led to a thaw in more open discussions of the topic — though psilocybin mushrooms continue to be illegal on a federal level.

Crowds gather at the London Nelson Center in Santa Cruz to admire the abundance of the 2020 Fungus Fair, which took place a few weeks before the pandemic shutdown. The fair did not return for three years, but it’s poised to make a triumphant comeback this weekend. Credit: Marisa Gomez

“That’s definitely something that’s drawing people in to learn more about mushrooms,” said Marisa Gomez of the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. “In our modern society,” she said, “a lot of people feel less connected to their natural environment, and less aware of the plants and animals and fungi around them. Mushrooms help people get more connected to their natural environment. They might have an interest in food. They might have an interest in the medicinal qualities, the psychoactive qualities. I do think that, for a lot of people, that’s an entry point for them. They’re interested in opening their minds through psychedelic mushroom experiences. And that’s the first thing that they want to know about.”

Gomez leads mushroom walks locally in the winter months, and she said her own deep interest in fungi came out of the Fungus Fair. “I did not know much about mushrooms before the 2020 fair. And I attended it, just as a community member, and was just blown away. It opened my eyes to look more closely at mushrooms around me. And then the programs that I participated in just took it to another level.”

Foraging for mushrooms is an increasingly popular pastime, but people need to be armed with a bit of experience and/or knowledge to avoid mushrooms that can prove deadly. Still, everyone, it seems, is hunting fungi. “Mushrooms are everywhere,” said Gomez. “I encourage people to peer into the mulch and the soil of planter boxes in downtown Santa Cruz on their neighborhood walks and see what you can find. I bet you will find a mushroom.”

The 2024 Santa Cruz Fungus Fair takes place at the London Nelson Community Center, at 301 Center St. downtown, on Friday from 2 to 5 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. General admission tickets are $10 for Friday and $15 Saturday and Sunday. Extra tickets are needed for many lectures and other programs. 

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Wallace reports and writes not only across his familiar areas of deep interest — including arts, entertainment and culture — but also is chronicling for Lookout the challenges the people of Santa Cruz...