SO SOCAL: The Best...The Beautiful...And The Bizarre : A LA ODE : Bye, Bye, L.A. County Fair Pie

For the past 27 seasons of the L.A. County Fair in Pomona, Jim Bowen’s hands were flurries of constant motion. Revelers could watch them through glass at his Pie A La Mode stand, stretching crust over the lip of 8-inch tins, filling them with boysenberries or cherries or apple or peaches, slipping the finished pies into an enormous oven. But before all that, Bowen’s hands would knead their way through mountains of dough--enough for the 2,500 pies he’d routinely bake during an 18-day span. “Never use the machine,” he’d remind himself, “because then you’ll toughen it. Then if you add shortening, what do you get but the taste of shortening? Which ruins it.”

When the fair opened last Thursday, Bowen’s hands were idle. Stripped from the stand, located near the racetrack, were his fanciful neon sign, blinking “Hot, Hot,” into the electrified night sky, and the three-sided billboard of pie hunks that touted Bowen’s most enduringly popular flavors. Gone too was nearby Bev’s Cafe Siesta, run by Jim Bowen’s wife, Beverly. (Jim, who manages a pie-making factory, would spend his two-week vacation baking at the fair.)

The Bowens claim they have become personae non gratae because they refused to sign a “Self-Service Storage Rental Agreement”--which defines their two stands as the legal equivalent of a storage locker, owned not by them but the Fairplex. “When they decide to tear it down, they wouldn’t have to give us anything,” Beverly reasons. “You own nothing but the air inside your stand.”

Adding to their trepidation was the proposed 550,000-square-foot Fairplex Village, a year-round entertainment complex replete with multiplex cinemas, restaurants and shops. The development, set for fall 2001, is slated to swallow the land where the most quaint and photogenic stands now sit. “It’s like a mall,” mourns Jim Bowen. “You can go to a mall any time of the week.”

After explaining that concessionaires may either relocate their stands or be moved to trailers to make way for Fairplex Village, Ron Juliff, Fairplex’s vice president of administration, bristles at the Bowens’ contention that their exile is somehow related to the new development. “Frankly, I don’t care what they thought about it,” Juliff says. “It has nothing to do with Fairplex Village. Thank you.” He abruptly hangs up.

What is known is that the Bowens, for the first time in more than a quarter century, will be absent from this year’s fair. “We’re thinking of going on vacation,” Beverly sighs. “MaybeCancun.”