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Cancel your plans to go to IKEA, because this weekend is about to get crazy. The Natural History Museum will be hosting their 30th annual Bug Fair, a two-day celebration of all things creepy and crawly, on Saturday and Sunday.
Depending on your personal phobias and fetishes, the Bug Fair is either a dream—or a nightmare—come true. The museum will host more than fifty exhibitors, showcasing everything from exotic insect collections to honey, silk and bug-inspired artwork and jewelry. Young visitors will be able to get their hands dirty with a variety of interactive workshops, including building a bee hotel, the art and skill of bug pinning, and screen printing insect imagery with Self Help Graphics.
All that is fun, but the weekend's real draw starts with an "e" and ends with "ntomophagy." That's right, entomophagy, or, in more colloquial terms, the glorious practice of eating bugs. Our friends at the Natural History Museum report that there will be a bug chef cook-off featuring noted entomophagists David George Gordon and Zach Lemann. The chefs will prepare their best bug dishes to be judged by Alie Ward, host of the Cooking Channel’s “Tripping Out with Alie & Georgia,” and entomologist and science communicator Phil Torres. In that sense, the Bug Fair sounds a lot like any of my past relationships—we start out admiring each other, cataloguing and studying, and then eventually one person consumes the other and we are both left with nothing.
Lila Higgins, manager of Citizen Science at the Natural History Museum, tells LAist that her favorite insects to eat are roasted wax worms: "They have a crunchy texture and nutty flavor, delicious!" Higgins will also be moonlighting as the fair's emcee, and reciting bug limericks from the stage alongside her colleague Emily Hartop.
The Bug Fair is not only the Natural History Museum's most popular weekend, it's also the largest bug festival in North America. Yes, you heard that correctly, L.A.'s Bug Fair is No. 1 (suck on that, Raleigh and Philadelphia).
There will also be bug tours of the museum's Nature Gardens, a Citizen Science bug hunt, behind-the-scenes tours of the Museum’s entomology collection and live insect meet & greets.
Admission to Bug Fair is $12 for adults, $9 for seniors and students with valid I.D., and $5 for children (3-12). Museum Members and children under 2 are free.
