For Nearby Residents, the Fair Can Seem Unfair

Everyone loves the fair, right? Corn dogs, clowns, carousels. What’s not to like?

Well, how about noise, litter, blocked streets and snarled parking lots? For those living in its shadow, the Ventura County Fair can be a big, luminous, cacophonous intrusion into their lives.

“It’s really almost comical,” said Willie Rice, straining to be heard over the rumble of a bus carrying fair-goers past his South Olive Street home.

“There’s a lot of noise with all the people coming by, and the parking--well, I’ve got to say that the parking is a bit of a problem.”

True, there aren’t many people who are going to pan the county’s biggest celebration. The fair, after all, is synonymous with fun.

But for a few, it’s an issue.

It takes some character, they say, to show a stiff upper lip when people urinate and dump trash on their lawns. It’s a test to hold their tongues when fair-goers pass by their homes and yell at the top of their lungs like they were still riding the gut-busting Twister.

“I thank God that I live in this brick house,” said Rice, as a pair of boys smashed each other with a pair of oversized, inflatable hammers as they walked along. “That way when I shut the doors I can’t hear anything, except when the fireworks go off.”

Not that he is a crusty old curmudgeon, bent on finding the worst in everything.

Rice likes a lot about the fair. He sometimes sits on his front lawn to listen to the concerts. Even though he must be cleared by a police officer to drive through the barricades to his home, Rice thinks the fair is great for the county and the city of Ventura and is surprised there aren’t more problems. Yet if the fair were to go on any longer than two weeks, he’d have to talk to some higher-ups.

“I’d be the first in line to shout the loudest,” he said, chuckling. “And they’d hear me, I promise you that.”

Adelia Norman admits she is a curmudgeon. And she is ready to go “all the way to the Supreme Court” if she finds another beer can, cigarette butt or car parked illegally at her apartment complex on Ventura Avenue.

Norman, 57, used to look forward to the fair like a child does Christmas.

But that all changed a few years ago when she moved close to the fairgrounds and had to fight traffic, out-of-towners and the other nuisances that typically follow the festivities.

“Is this a problem?” she asked rhetorically, pointing to a cigarette butt on the sidewalk. “I’d certainly have to say so. . . . People just walk by here and treat it like it were their home, with the way they’re littering and all.”

During the fair, most of the parking lots at Surfers Point are cordoned off for fair workers and exhibitors. That leaves surfers like Bill De La Rosa high and dry.

“It’s good to have the fair and all, but some of us surfers have no place to park,” he said, just before slipping into the water for an early morning surf. “In my opinion they should leave the lots open for people who want to use the beach, because for two weeks a year you really can’t.”

Swabby Simmons, who directs traffic in front of a sign that says “No Beach Parking,” said he has heard an earful from people like De La Rosa who are miffed about the situation.

But he said he takes it in stride. So far, the frustration has never gone beyond words.

Not that many would test the burly Simmons, who has a long, gnarled beard, a hard stare and tattooed arms.

“It’s because I’m so polite,” he said, directing a car away from the beach parking lot. “I can understand, though. . . . But it will all be over soon and everything will be back to normal.”