Fair Wind Blowing Across Southland

Maybe it’s just me, but the change in seasons always prompts contemplation of my surroundings, a mental check to remind myself why I still live in Los Angeles. As I drive down a very crowded Wilshire Boulevard en route to KLSX from my home in the San Fernando Valley, lanes full of sport utility vehicles pass me, drivers steering with their elbows as they juggle cellular phones and nonfat lattes through yellow-turning-red lights. These are the times that I ask myself, “Why do I live here?”

The answer comes quickly enough: the wonderful weather. It’s always followed by two distinct childhood memories. The first: a winter in Chicago, my mother scraping the ice off the car windshield for nearly half an hour before she can drive me to school. I watch her endless scraping as my runny nose, a symptom of a winter cold, culminates in two icicles dangling from my nostrils. The second: a summer in Baltimore, 98 degrees with humidity to match. I sit on the family riding mower wheezing from summer pollen allergies. As I circle around to cut the grass under an old oak tree, a nest, with a family of wasps residing in it, falls onto my head.

It’s almost summer in L.A.--a mild, dry, breezy, glorious summer. No humidity and very few wasps. Time to wash out the cooler, find the beach towels in the back of the linen closet and dust off the charcoal grill. Days spent behind desks are lost daydreaming about beaches, barbecues, roller coasters and rock concerts. I, too, am prone to these flights of fancy, but my summer fantasies always revolve around those wonderful events that only the hottest season of the year can bring: fabulous, fun-filled fairs.

Some fairs begin even before spring is ready to relinquish its crown. One of the greatest early summer fairs is the Renaissance Pleasure Faire held every year at Glen Helen Regional Park in San Bernardino County. Running weekends until June 17, the Renaissance Faire catapults you back in time to a period when dragons were man’s best friends and “drunk and disorderly” was not only legal but encouraged.

Wandering the paths lined by an array of craftsmen and artisans, you can gnaw on a giant turkey leg and sip your beverage of choice from an authentic wine skin. Elizabethan shows take place all around you, sometimes mere feet from your face.

The Ren Faire provides such an intoxicating blend of eating, drinking and being merry that a friend to whom I once gave tickets became a Faire-aholic. It’s strange but true. One minute he was a perfectly sane bass guitar player and the next a 16th-century Spanish pirate donning Captain Hook’s hat and thigh-high leather boots I’m pretty sure once belonged to Lita Ford.

Glen Helen Regional Park is also home to the Blockbuster Pavilion, where ‘70s arena rock is still large and looming. Don’t believe me? Well, maybe I’ll see you at one of these shows: Styx and Bad Company (June 22), Journey and Peter Frampton (June 23), Ozzfest 2001 (July 17), Aerosmith (Sept. 9). I’ll be the one with the feathered hair wearing the smiley face T-shirt, holding the pet rock.

Perhaps my favorite theme fair of the summer is the Great American Irish Fair and Music Festival (June 16 and 17). OK, I’m biased. I’m a shameless Irish American. If it’s got a shamrock or a leprechaun on it, I’ll buy it, wear it or display it in my house.

So, as you can well imagine, I’m like a kid in a candy store at the Irish Fair, where I can find Irish gifts, Irish food, Irish music, Irish wolfhounds and, of course, lots of Irish beer. The fair, to be held this year at Woodley Park’s Festival Fields in Encino, is simply a great time. Remember, you don’t have to be Irish to enjoy drinking songs and jigging, but it helps.

For sure, a must for all the Valley Girls (and guys) is the San Fernando Valley Fair at the Hansen Dam Equestrian Center in Lake View Terrace. It’s held early in the season (June 7-10) because the fair administrators live in the Valley, as do I, and know that by the third week in July, it’ll be roughly 120 degrees here in the shade. In that kind of heat, people pass out on the Tilt-A-Whirl. It’s a smaller fair but fun and friendly, much like the Valley that shares its name.

I may be a die-hard Valley maniac now, but I spent most of my adolescence in Huntington Beach and hence have watched the Orange County Fair grow from a pig, a sheep, a Ferris wheel and a snow cone stand (OK, maybe it wasn’t that small, but it is 109 years old) into a formidable fair. I’m amazed from year to year just how much this event, held at the Orange County Fair & Exposition Center in Costa Mesa, grows. Each section of the fair: the rides, the animals, the exhibition halls and the vendors, could be a fair of its own. This year’s fair--the theme is “Twist & Shout--Celebrate Citrus & Sun”--runs July 13 through 29.

Speaking of Orange County, nothing else makes me as nostalgic as the Huntington Beach July Fourth Parade and Fireworks Celebration. It reminds me of my years as a Huntington Beach-bum, when my daily routine was: beach-school-beach-work-beach. Yes, those were the days.

In its 97th year, Huntington Beach’s Fourth of July parade is the largest west of the Mississippi River, with more than 350 entries and 250,000 crazed beach-goers attending each year. Not bad for a little seaside town. After the last float has rolled down Main Street, it’s time to make your way to the Huntington Beach High School (Yep! It’s my alma mater!) football stadium for great music and a truly spectacular fireworks extravaganza. I wouldn’t spend the Fourth of July anywhere else.

For those who like their parties with an ocean breeze, the beach bash of the year will be held on Aug. 11 in Malibu. It’s KLSX radio’s premiere event of the summer: a birthday party for talk guru Tom Leykis, live on the beach right outside Gladstone’s Restaurant. What makes this party so excellent every year? There will be loads of crazy guys, hoards of hot sexy women, madness and mayhem. It’s what living in L.A. is all about. Well, it’s what people in Middle America think living in L.A. is all about.

Not all of my summer activities require sunny weather. When the clouds appear, I take refuge at my favorite indoor haunt: the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which will be featuring a Winslow Homer exhibit this summer (June 10 through Sept. 9). And when the sun goes down, there are always great shows at the Troubadour, the Key Club and, of course, the world famous Comedy Store.

And people say there’s nothing to do in L.A.

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Sheena Metal, co-host of “The Sheena and Sam Show” on KLSX-FM (97.1), hosts and produces “Sheena Metal’s Music Madness” on SpikeRadio.com and fronts the ‘80s satire band Sheena Metal’s Beer Bong.