Fall

This coming weekend, World Maker Faire New York returns for its third annual edition. This massive festival of creativity and innovation was launched in San Mateo, California in 2006 by Make magazine, and has since expanded to numerous cities, including ours. It is, in a word, awesome. Lots of other adjectives come to mind too, like outrageous, over-the-top, thought-provoking, enriching and (unfortunately for me) indescribable. It's very hard to explain why World Maker Faire is so cool—hopefully the photos in our slide show give you an idea of what a unique experience it is. My family and I went to the first two fairs and were totally blown away, and we're counting down the days until Saturday arrives!

On the last weekend of September, the fairgrounds surrounding the New York Hall of Science in Flushing Meadows Corona Park will be filled with 500 makers, crafters, tinkerers, hackers, thinkers and artisans, who will proudly show off their wacky robots, homemade needlework, music-making gizmos and zillions of other wild things. Organized into four themed (more or less) Zones, Maker Faire boasts a crafts pavilion, a slew of Young Makers under 18, and fantastic demos, installations and performances like the Coke Zero & Mentos Fountains, Circus Warehouse’s acrobatics and a life-size recreation of the board game Mouse Trap. New this year: An enormous clothing swap with fancy sewing workshops, make-your-own miniature cars and no-rules race, plus areas sponsored by Disney, Chevrolet and other big brands. While Maker Faire's counterculture, do-it-yourself spirit seems to get a little more commercial every year, don't worry: We've gone through the program and there will still be plenty of super-offbeat stuff you won't see anywhere else.