Cooling Off at Hot Street Fair

The midday heat, combined with the black asphalt jungle of crafts, junk food, collectibles and an estimated 30,000 people, made each stroll along the Camarillo Festival and Street Fair feel like a cantina-free jaunt in the High Desert.

Perched shirtless atop the entrance to a children’s play area, Heath McCrary, 21, used watery tactics to lure heated customers to a park of children’s blow-up structures, including a three-story water slide and a competition arena for water-gun fights.

As several hundred people passed by McCrary’s position in old town Camarillo off Ventura Boulevard, he sniped the apparently overheated and shared a squirt of relief from his Storm Tsunami Force 5, the bright, multicolored water rifle at his hip.

“I get them as they’re passing by, to bring them in, to drum up business,” he said. “Every once in awhile, I get someone who will walk up and ask me to squirt them, but that’s OK--it’s hot out here.”

About 10 feet behind McCrary, kids ages 5 to 15 engaged in squirt-gun warfare, cooling off with competitive flair. A few paces farther, still in the blow-up world, were a gigantic water slide and the blow-up boat that could not sink--Titanic.

Craig Johnson, 51, sent his daughter Emily, 11, climbing the ship for five minutes of sliding. The street fair offered him a chance to entertain the kids close to where he works, Dorothy’s Chuck Wagon. He and his wife, Dorothy, own the cafe.

Johnson was waiting Sunday afternoon for his wife to get off work so she could take her turn with the children. Emily and Mary, 5, enjoyed the afternoon of activity after Sunday school, but only Emily was old enough for Titanic.

“Sliding down fast was fun,” she said. “I like all the rides; they’re fun.”

A pair of stages hosted live music, but a band of people in gypsy dress offered one stage a welcome change of pace. As they marched down the aisles of picture peddlers and cotton candy salesmen, en route to where they danced, they built a train of interested onlookers.

Much of the seating was in the sun, so many in the crowd for the gypsies retreated to the shade. As the performance carried on, curiosity drove people back to the sun-soaked haystacks closer to the stage.

Camarillo resident Angela Nichols, 41, sat with her two boys, Andrew, 9, and Alex, 5. They said they endured the heat because the gypsies put on such an interesting show. Nichols, who takes photographs for a class, said she had never seen a dance troupe quite like it.

“It’s very interesting, so colorful,” she said. “I love the clothes, and I wish I had my camera.”

One group that planned for the heat--and to profit from it--was Westlake Village’s Boy Scout Troop 718. They were raising money with a snow cone machine they had purchased.

Scoutmaster Lee Hess said the experience teaches kids about money. The young workers keep 90% of the profits, with 10% going to the troop. Most of the Scouts use the money to pay for summer camp, he said, so the heat was welcome.

Barely more than a week before the Aug. 2 opening of the Ventura County Fair, the battle cry of 12-year-old Josh Frankel had a familiar ring.

He bellowed in his best peanut-salesman tone: “Come and get your cotton candy, snow cones and ice water! Support the Boy Scouts of Troop 718!”

And sure enough, some did.