I’ve always lived in big cities (Phoenix, pop. 4 million plus; California, Google – did you know that’s an actual number?) . Even my “small college town” had a population of 53,000 and that was a quaint, quiet, lovely place for me.
But I’ve been visiting my mother who recently retired from the Phoenix road-rage rat race to Bordertown, Idaho, for the past 10 days. One thing I’ve learned is that “Small Town” isn’t just a number, but a state of being. Take for example, the county fair.
By comparison, the Maricopa County Fair in Arizona is held in downtown Phoenix, between Nightwalker Avenue and Hookers-in-Fishnets Street. It’s a great time. You muck your way through neck-deep traffic for about half an hour to 45 minutes, getting increasingly pissed off at thy [damned idiot fool just cut you off] neighbor, drive around for about 20 minutes cursing the $15 parking, and eventually park about 5 miles away. Then you pay $467 admission to get in, have your bags searched, no dogs allowed, you’re lucky they’re letting your monkey children in, to pay $38 for a corn dog, listen to rap music blaring from the local station’s speakers, peruse the booths selling bling and tramp stamps, look at all the big stuffed animals you’ll never win no matter how many $5 darts you buy, and avoid sideways looks from the rival gangs prowling the booths. The front page news the next day in the paper is the newest global or local tragedy. Maybe a blurb in the ad section about the fair, proclaiming Wristband day, where you can get unlimited rides on Wednesday for only your firstborn’s college fund.
But in Idaho…things are different.
Mom and I – we WALKED, because we could. Those who drove were actually ALLOWED to use the nearby Safeway parking lot – FREE. !!!? Am I in Kansas or something, Toto? Pleasantville? Nope, small town Idaho.
It got crazier.
There were no fences, barbed wire, barriers around the fairgrounds. No…admission? And there were people walking with their whole families – Fido included. The line for “Elephant Ears”, apparently the local version of Indian Fry Bread, was a mile long with friendly people clutching their dozens of stuffed animals they’d won at the games. And would you know, it was the smallest and least flashy fair I’ve ever been to, but it was the best. The center stage was the older local generation in their frilly dresses and plaid farmer shirts do-see-doe-ing to their heart’s content; my corn dog didn’t mean a month’s worth of Ramen, and best of all…
There is tragedy and destruction in Texas and all over out in the world today. But – no joke – today’s front page news was about…Elephant Ears.
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16. September 2008 at 4:57 pm
but do you have home-made high-throughput carnie barbecues, made from rolling clothing racks cheap modernist coffeetables and ironwork made by the same mexican welders who do fences and trash enclosures? If you do, they’re probably imported by relatives from NYC.
http://web.ivy.net/~carton/nyc-streetfair.jpg
at least all our fairs aren’t named after vegetables. also…I walked to get there, dogs and children allowed, no fences.
I wasn’t going to the fair though, just walked through it on my lunch break trying to get somewhere else and picked up an apple-on-a-stick on the way. the fair Lauren helped organize last year, the Atlantic Antic, was better because they had food I could actually eat besides overpriced candy apples. I admit there were some Hiraldo Rivera canned food fights and obnoxious churches with megaphones at that fair, but maybe a big party needs a few assholes for conversation purposes.
not sure what to say about the gang members because one of my coworkers just got his jaw punched in through an unfair fight instigated by a bunch of hoodlums he asked to quit riding their motorcycles on the sidewalk. I don’t want to minimize that, but I do feel safer in Bed-Stuy than in seattle during a protest. Get off the sidewalk Yid and onto the street with the other animals, don’t get out of the cab in my ‘hood frighty-whitie, don’t stand in front of the corporate art dirty hippie—the people in the street ought to feel like they really own it, and this violent sociopathic american fascist attitude is really unacceptable whether it comes from Krauts or Blacks or Cops or Poor or whateverthefuck. Some of the worst pockets of it are maybe the cleverly disguised ones, but that doesn’t make the undisguised ones any less bad so…yeah…I didn’t meet any at the Antic but they were probably there.
also maybe Phoenix just sucks.
30. October 2008 at 11:39 pm
I’m not sure if you are talking about the Maricopa County Fair or the Arizona State Fair. Both are on the same fairgrounds. It’s true that the Maricopa County Fair fights some of the battles you mention, but I think they are trying to give a little bit of a small town experience in the middle of a town that has far outgrown it’s own skin.
The Maricopa County Fair is the smaller, safer, and family fair. They have adequate security that is unobtrusive. Gangs left the fair long ago leaving behind families with little kids (not exactly what gangs are looking for).
The fair is all about the community with the usual barrage of traditional small county fair exhibits like, jam, jellies, quilts, and livestock exhibits. Yes livestock over 2,000 animals all raised by children in the vast metropolitan sprawl of Maricopa County. You can enjoy family entertainment like Kobert’s Amazing World of Bird Show, watch a puppet show presented by Mitchell Marionettes, a renowned marionette show performed by Nancy Mitchell a second generation puppeteer that performed in Greenwich Village and counted the demised Jim Henson in a long list of notorious friends. To compliment the variety of professional entertainers at the fair (by the way all the entertainment is included with fair admission) the fair provides the opportunity for over 100 community performers to take to the stage and present their art.
The fair is a non-profit association. They receive no funding from the County or from tax dollars. They do charge for you to get in, that’s how they pay the bills so that they can run their youth programs. But interestingly enough if you want to you could go to the fair for free. Wed-Friday from 9am – 3pm they open the gates and let anyone that wants to have a good time in for free including the over 6,000 kids that come in for free as part of the fair’s school field trip program. Not everyone can make it out to the fair during the day so the fair partnered with the food bank and you can come to the fair from 3pm-9pm and get in for free when you donate two cans of food. Now that’s two reasons to smile. Of course the rides do have an associated cost but if you’re a student in the sixth grade or below you can come to the fair for free and ride 4 carnival rides for free on Thursday night when you read 4 books. It’s an effort to help those that don’t have a ton of money to have a great time and promote literacy at the same time.
The State Fair has maybe a million people come to the fair. The Maricopa County Fair has about 70 thousand. In a town of 4 million it truly is a small town experience. I hope you’ll visit the Maricopa County Fair when they open their gates next Spring from April 15-19, 2009 and offer to the community a taste of a small town experience in our over crowded hustle town. Maybe I’ll bump into you, I’ll be the one there with my wife and kids, the ones with the big smiles and cotton candy sticky fingers. I’ll be the one that says “excuse me” when I bump into you because we haven’t all forgotten our manners or that we’re neighbors no matter how large the neighborhood has become.
31. October 2008 at 11:40 am
Lol, thanks for the wealth of info, Fair Friend. I wasn’t actually talking about either the Maricopa or the Arizona State fair, I was just making a joke to illustrate the differences between the big city that I grew up in and the small town that I was visiting. I could have said the Urban County Fair; I just chose the one held in Phoenix because I could see it in my head from all the years I’ve patronized it and yes walked through with Mom and looked at all the goats and chickens and the home-baked dessert displays, eaten the bbq sandwiches, watched the show in the Coliseum. Hell I even played French horn as a wee tyke on the stage there for all the fair-goers, families and foes alike. But that wasn’t the point. The point is that it was a joke.
31. October 2008 at 1:32 pm
You too, G!?! WTF is up with these uber technical, straight arrow, latte sipping posers that want to correct every detail of your articles…I thought I was the only one getting shelled with these.
ITS A COMEDY WEBSITE YOU FRICKIN DINGUS!!! LIVE WITH IT!!!