The Minnesota State Fair runs for ten days in late August up to Labor Day. The gates open at 7:00 am and close at 11:00 pm except on Labor Day when they close at 9:00 pm. A true Fair rat could potentially spend a total of 158 hours on the fairgrounds. Such a person could work a six hour daily shift for one of the hundreds of vendors, which would get him or her free admission to the Fair (a $20 per day value) plus cash for buying treats and gimcracks.
Teresa and I might have done that in our younger days, but that window has closed. We now content ourselves with a single day at the Fair. We used to arrive early and stay late. Even that window is slowly closing. A few years back we would park directly on the fairgrounds. The rate was reasonable and at the end of the day, our car was right there. But the Fair wants to expand into its parking lot and has been raising the fee to discourage people from parking there. It's discouraged us.
The Fair provides free bus rides from numerous church, school and business parking lots in the area. We will park, for example, at a church located 10 or 15 minutes from the Fair. There may be a short wait for one of the buses which run constantly between the Fair and the parking lots. There's a transit center near the entry to buy a ticket, and at the end of the day the bus brings us back to our car.
The problem with this system is if we don't get to a parking lot by around 8:30, the lot may be full. If it's full we'll check the list of parking lots and drive to another one. And even if it's not full, there may be a long line for the bus and we'll have to wait for the second or third bus. We stay at a motel the night before our Fair day. We've lost the old urgency to get to the Fair early and we end up paying for that. We sleep a little late. We linger over our complimentary motel breakfast. This year we didn't get to our chosen church lot till 9:00 am. The lot of course was full. We were about to drive to the next lot when we saw people parking along the residential street next to the church. It has to be ok if everyone's doing it. There was a very long line in the sun waiting for the bus. I slathered on the sunscreen. We made it on the third bus.
Instead of taking us to the transit center, the bus dropped us at the much closer main entry. The problem here was the busy street between us and the gate. On the far side of the street, hundreds of people were slowly funneling towards the ticket windows. The two cops only stopped traffic when some of the mob got into the Fair to make room for us. Once we joined the mob we felt like we were stuck, but some people seemed to know a secret. Teresa asked why the woman with purple hair who had been beside us a minute before was now much closer to the ticket windows. I started looking for openings and at last we were inside the gates. It was 10:30 am!
There are about a dozen things we try do every year. This year we only managed five of them. We always liked to see the crop art. This is a collection of amazing creations made with seeds that can be grown in Minnesota. Some of the works go on exhibit at the Smithsonian, but they've gotten so political the Smithsonian has banned them. There was a half hour wait to get to walk past the crop art so we skipped it. Even the scarecrow exhibit had a scary line. Long lines are part of the Fair experience but only when we have a long day to absorb them. There's lots of free music at the Fair. We used to study the list for the day and would listen to two or three performances. This year we only listened to three songs by a Slovene/Czech band.
We soon noticed the Fair was exceptionally crowded for a weekday. When we met up with our friend Maud, she blamed influencers for the big crowd. Apparently the Fair is cool and everyone wants to be there to be seen by everyone else. Maud used to live in Roseau and we meet her at the Fair every year so she can catch up on Roseau gossip if there has been any, or at least learn who has died.
Maud joined us on our tour of the Fine Arts building to see what Minnesota artists have been up to. We spend about an hour taking at least a quick glance at the 350 paintings, photographs and sculptures. We had just learned that these 350 works are only one tenth of all the works submitted. It had been a traumatic winter for the Twin Cities and many of the works had an anti-Ice theme. The Smithsonian won't be calling.
We usually enjoy several meals at the Fair. This year we confined ourselves to egg-roll-on-a-stick bombs and chocolate malts from the Kiwanis stand. We bought a set of peelers after watching Larry demonstrate making vegetarian sushi, and we caught the two pm parade, another must see. We grumbled amongst ourselves about the crowds and long lines but at the end of the day decided we still had fun and would be back next year. Maud would miss us if we weren't there, at least for a few hours.
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" ... plus cash for buying treats and gimcracks." What the heck are g-i-m-c-r-a-c-k-s? Is this in reference to c-r-a-c-k-e-r-j-a-c-k-s, perchance? Or n-i-c-k-n-a-c-s? Or alternately, k-n-i-c-k-k-n-a-c-k-s? (Not to be confused with the inner bark of red willow that I can't remember how to spell in Ojibwe ...)
ReplyDeletemiskwaabiimizh
DeleteGimcrack would be odaminwaagan in Ojibwe.
DeleteWe can’t remember which fair we went to with you way back then, but we can’t help but wonder if you had anything to say about the carnies. No stuffies for T?
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