Fair’s Top Generals Handle It All

They’re still talking about the 4-foot doughnut.

It was promised by a local baker for exhibition in the home arts section of the Del Mar Fair--to offset the more conventional showcase pies and cakes and muffins.

The fellow brought in his monster doughnut just before closing one night, to set up for the next morning. It was still warm from his oven. And, all the way in from the parking lot, it dribbled chocolate frosting.

“The next morning, I think every ant in San Diego must have found that chocolate trail,” sighed Chana Mannen, the exhibits manager at the fair. And yeah, those dark sprinkles on the doughnut did have legs.

Then there are those Monday mornings when the commercial vendors, who turn the exhibit halls into huge garage sales, queue up to moan about one thing or another.

“Oh, the infighting,” laughed Sue Applegate, the manager of commercial exhibits--all the food and product vendors and the Midway carnival rides at the fair.

“They’ll come in and complain to me about so-and-so. They’re bad-mouthing each other, about how one guy’s microphone is too loud, or how the adjoining booth extends 2 inches into the other fellow’s booth, or how the competing spa person is handing out fliers where he shouldn’t be.

“They all know each other, these people, and some days I feel like I’m a great big baby-sitter.”

Meet Chana Mannen and Sue Applegate.

If this was the Indianapolis 500, they’d be pit crew bosses. If this was war, they’d be the generals in the combat-ready room. If this was a space launch, they’d be in mission control.

Mannen, 48, who started working at the fair 21 years ago, is in charge of all the noncommercial display exhibits--45,000 of them, if you count them separately. And she does. Like the 4,000 single-stem roses. The 1,400 chickens. The pies, the cakes, the quilts and the cows.

She heads a staff of 300 exhibit-hall workers and on-site superintendents, and she’s the one who had to smooth ruffled feathers when a judge mistakenly graded a pair of crocheted booties in a knitting contest, effectively putting his credibility on the line.

She’s the person who planned on 1,900 youth art exhibits and had to do some quick rejiggering when 3,000 showed up.

Applegate, 32, who was a bank operations manager before joining the fair six years ago, is the commercial manager. She oversees 85 fair workers, who watch over the 70 carnival rides, the 80 carnival games, the 113 food vendors and the 580 commercial product vendors.

She makes sure two corn-dog vendors aren’t situated within a cinnamon roll’s toss of one another and listens to complaints that carnival games are rigged. Her lexicon on her ever-present walkie-talkie includes Code 40: nausea on the midway.

Applegate is in charge of making money at the fair.

The midway operations generate $3.5 million in ticket sales--48% of which they pay to the fair. The food vendors--who sell more than $4 million in ribs and fries and snow cones and drinks--and the product vendors pay the fair $115 for each linear foot of their booth, trailer or display.

Mannen spends the money--right down to the $800 for the best rock garden display, and $8 for third place in best example of basketry, coiling and twining. “But what the people really want are the ribbons,” she says.

Planning for all this started last fall. The Del Mar Fair serves as its own carnival contractor and negotiates with separate operators for this ride or that, versus hiring a single carnival company to bring its entire package to town.

The result, the operators themselves say, is a higher-class midway because the Del Mar Fair will pass on less-successful rides and because an operator who does not meet the local fair’s standards--right down to ride and game attendants who are told to shave daily and wear a clean uniform every day--can be booted out and not asked to return the next year.

“Running a carnival is like running a big family, and like any well-run household, you’ll find that this one is run by a benevolent dictator,” said Red Wood, who runs three carnival rides at Del Mar.

“Sue Applegate is a master at being a good manager. If someone challenges or questions what she wants done, she’s prepared to give them a bona fide, legitimate answer that they can’t dispute. She’s got her ducks all lined up.”

Others at the fair credit Applegate’s staff for being quick to respond to problems and emergencies.

Jeweler John Levario said he was able to negotiate with Applegate for a new location last year after spending 12 years in the paddock area--and that she gave him three options.

“She made sure there were no other (jewelers) near me, and, when we had trouble with electricity going out, she had an electrician out here in 10 minutes to take care of the problem by stringing us a whole new cable.

“You know, at some fairs, you never see the managers on the ground. They’re holed up in their offices all the time. But I see Sue or her people every day. They’re always coming by to see how we’re doing, and if there are any problems.

“And there haven’t been any.”

Indeed, nine days into the 20-day-long Southern California Exposition, Applegate and Mannen are almost at cruising speed. There shouldn’t be any more surprises. The Clydesdale horses arrived safe and sound Monday afternoon. The huge inflatable cow in the infield is holding its air. And they’ve survived the tuna casserole cook-off that attracted 175--count ‘em, 175!--tuna casseroles.

“In Sunday’s homemade beer contest, we had 180 beers,” said Mannen. The judges were driven home afterwards.

Both reflect on the value of the modern-day fair: a preservation of old-time values and lifestyles, but having successfully shed the honky-tonk glitz of old fairs that kept some families away.

“There are still people out there--and more and more of them, men--who are in two-income families but still have time to can fruits or make preserves,” said Mannen. “But, for a lot of people who have seen San Diego become more and more urbanized, the fair is a chance for them to recall old concepts of America--of what their childhood was like, or what they wished it was.”

At Del Mar, there are no freak sideshows. Beer sales are limited to gated gardens, or in the grandstands during shows. And there aren’t any prizes offered, or products sold, that would be rated anything stronger than PG-13, Mannen said.

“Probably the biggest debates we have as a staff is in judging the art and photography exhibits--of what is appropriate, as art, or not appropriate, in terms of family viewing,” she said.

There are still problems and logistics to be considered for the current fair. How many cigar-box rock collections will show up for judging, or cookies or one-page stamp collections? Will any particular carnival game garner so many complaints as to warrant eviction? How do you get the mechanic’s truck into the heart of the fair to fix the faulty refrigerator in the cinnamon roll trailer?

And already Mannen is looking ahead to next year.

“The theme will be a horse,” she said. This year, it’s a cow and the slogan is, “Better get moooovin’.”

“I’m thinking about ‘Ponies and Posies,’ but that’s too syrupy. Maybe we’ll try, ‘Horsin’ Around.’ ”

The Fair Facts

LOCATION: West of Interstate 5 at the Via de la Valle exit.

HOURS: Fair runs today through July 7. The fairgrounds are open daily, 9 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. Visitors may enter until 10 p.m. Exhibits open 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. The midway Fun Zone is open from noon to 12:30 a.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and 11 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday.

ADMISSION: Adults (13 and older) $6; children (6-12) $1; seniors (62 and older) $3; children under 6 free.

PHONE: Call 259-1355 for recorded information.

PARKING: Free. 12,000 on-site spaces, open from 9:30 a.m. to midnight. Additional spaces available off-site on weekends and July 4 and 5 at Torrey Pines High School (Interstate 5 and Carmel Mountain Road), Eastgate Mall near I-805, and UC San Diego (I-5 and Genesee Avenue). Shuttles will carry fair-goers from the off-site lots to the grounds.

CONTESTS/DEMONSTRATIONS: 9 a.m.: Pigeon judging.

10 a.m.: Salmagundi craft jewelry.

11 a.m.: Big Wheel tricycle contest, horseshoe demonstration.

Noon: Best moo contest, children’s pie-eating contest.

1 p.m.: Hog-calling contest, adult vacation collection contest.

2:30 p.m.: Potato cookery demonstration.

3 p.m.: Tug of war, egg toss, peanut and spoon race, and hula hoop contest.

4 p.m.: Best men’s and women’s legs contest.

4:30 p.m.: Hand-milking contest.

5 p.m.: Paper-making demonstration.

5:30 p.m.: Sheep shearing demonstration.

7:30 p.m.: Judging of best cakes and pies.

SHOWS: 10 a.m.: Dance Mania group.

2 p.m.: Blonde Bruce (blues-rock band).

3 p.m.: Hooked on Country.

4 p.m.: Mariah’s Marouyan Belly Dancers.

5 p.m.: Blonde Bruce (blues-rock band), R.B. Children’s Chorus.

6:30 p.m.: Sheep dog show.

7 p.m.: No Noize Red.

7:30 p.m.: Whispers (rhythm and blues band).