Fungifest kicks off in Echo Park

It wasn't the "Magical Mystery Tour," but the more than 60 people who gathered at a North Alvarado Street storefront Saturday night in Echo Park to celebrate the secrets of mushrooms took a culinary and educational journey of discovery of their own.

Over toasts of shiitake-infused cocktail, a mascot in a mushroom costume, and a slime-mold race, the Machine Project, a cultural organization, used the event to kick off a week-long celebration of mushrooms.

“I saw some of the most incredible things while tramping through the forest, and I thought this event was a perfect way to find out more about them,” said guest Brian Wakil, referring to his newfound discovery of mushrooms while on a hike recently in the Pacific Northwest.

Attendees enjoyed mushroom-flavored gelato, black truffle ice cream, and chanterelle schnapps. The evening began with the screening of two short documentaries. One of them featured mycologist Robert Cummings, a botany professor at Santa Barbara City College, who later spoke to guests.

He said species lists are valuable snapshots of the biodiversity of an area, and can offer insights into the biological effects of environmental changes like global warming. He said that climate change could cause different, more parasitical fungi to grow that could eat plants.

“ ... The recent appearance of Oak Sudden Death Syndrome is decimating California’s oaks," he said, showing samples of mushrooms from Santa Barbara. "And, of course, the Monterey Pine fungus disease of the last couple of decades that wiped out so many of our Monterey Pines.”

The event ended with the inauguration of a slime mold race that used several strips of growth medium - strips of paper with a substance to facilitate the growth of mold sprayed on it - as a race track. The mold that grows the farthest over the next week will be declared winner.

Attendees were encouraged to collect mushrooms over the next week, from their “yards, behind your toilet or in the woods.”

“We will make a list of the species collected, and this will be added to my herbarium at SBCC, and also made available to the Los Angeles Mycological Society," Cummings said.

Mushrooms can be found anywhere.

“Since L.A. has a lot of suburban areas, mushrooms can be found in yards, lawns, parks, and planter beds," Cummings said. "If one hikes on any of the many trails in the Santa Monica Mountains, there are abundant mushrooms in the oak woodlands, streambeds, even in the chaparral.”

Just don't eat anything before you know what you have, he warned.