Fair’s Charm Survives Changing Times

Urban sophisticates may argue that county fairs are as anachronistic as butter churns and bundling boards. Then how come more than a million people schlep to Pomona every year for the L.A. County Fair?

Eighty years after its founding, the L.A. County Fair--the county fair with the highest attendance in the nation, according to Amusement Business magazine--appears to be thriving. Management won’t release attendance figures until after the fair ends today, but even as farmland in the county has shrunk from almost 900,000 acres in 1920 to 130,000 acres in 1997 (according to the U.S. Census Bureau), the county fair has flourished.

Even last year, when the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks caused it to close for a day, the fair took in $20 million, enough to meet its expenses, according to spokeswoman Wendy Talarico.

Stephen Chambers, executive director of the Western Fairs Assn. in Sacramento, has a theory on why fairs have survived, and it isn’t just the Kettle Korn. Unlike theme parks that “utilize capital and technology to create fantasy worlds,” he said, fairs “celebrate the accomplishments of ordinary citizens.”

While fairs began as places where farmers could get up-to-date agricultural information, “today’s farmers can’t wait for the fair,” Chambers said. “They’re on the Internet every day.” No longer just celebrations of horticulture, he said, “fairs reflect the success of the community.”

Some things at the Pomona fair never seem to change. It’s often oppressively hot (105 degrees on Wednesday); riders still scream when they get to the top of the Ferris wheel; the weight guesser rarely misses; and unspeakable new uses are inevitably found for Spam.

In many ways, the fair remains true to its agrarian roots. Since this year’s fair, advertised as “Kinder, Simpler, Funner,” opened Sept. 13, visitors have packed the Maternity and Nursery Barn to see cows and sheep give birth on the straw. Those who can’t get to Pomona to watch squirming piglets suckling at imposing sows can see photos at www.lacountyfair.com.

Hands-on activities are a major trend in fairs, said Chambers, who cites such oddball examples as the plant petting zoo at the Orange County Fair.

“I’d never seen Brussels sprouts except neatly trimmed and sitting in a basket,” Chambers recalled of his first encounter at the fair with the vegetable in its natural state.

The fair is also a learning experience for some of those who work it.

For instance, Bob Small, a professor at Cal Poly Pomona and founder of Dr. Bob’s Hand Crafted Ice Creams, this year set up a small production facility operated by his students. The hands-on experience they get making and selling ice cream is reminiscent of the education that technical schools once provided, Small said. “It was called, ‘learning by doing.’ ”

State and county fairs stay relevant by constantly reinventing themselves. In the 1960s, visitors to Pomona snapped up the fad du jour: live chameleons wearing tiny collars that could be pinned to the buyer’s shirt.

The 2002 fair reflects this year’s fads. Visitors ante up $2 a throw to win a stuffed replica of cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, just as earlier fairgoers vied for stuffed Scooby Doos. There are extreme skating shows and daily demonstrations of feng shui--the hip, new version of the ancient Chinese art of arranging spaces.

Entertainment at fairs has also evolved. Despite the appearance this year of Travis Tritt, country is no longer the sole musical option.

“They’re breaking away from, ‘It’s Winona in the grandstands at 8:30 tonight,’ ” said Chambers, who said he was charmed in Pomona by a group singing golden oldies while dressed as vegetables.

One well-attended attraction at the fair this year is the California Department of Justice’s information booth about Megan’s Law, named for Megan Kanka, a 7-year-old New Jersey girl who was raped and killed. There, visitors can tap into the database to see if a registered sex offender is living in their neighborhood.

Recent high-profile abductions seem to have caused inquiries to soar, according to Information Officer Mike Van Winkle. By the end of the day Wednesday, 4,699 people had checked the database in Pomona. That’s almost twice as many as last year, he said.

Another of the fair’s biggest draws are the competitions, from sculpture to milk drinking. “Overall entries--people who are competing at fairs--have skyrocketed in recent years” to hundreds of thousands of entrants nationwide, Chambers said.

One popular competition in Pomona is “tablescaping,” in which entrants create elaborate table settings on such themes as Neil Diamond. In this retro competition, entrants lose points for putting the forks in the wrong place.

Last year, there were 27,000 entrants in various fair competitions in addition to 6,300 livestock entries, Talarico said.

“Where else can you enter your quilt or your jam or jelly?” asked Talarico, who said the fair added two popular contests this year, for best salsas and tamales.

“Creature comforts”--including more shaded places to sit, improved landscaping and the addition of mist-blowing devices--are on the rise at fairs, according to Bob Johnson, president of the Outdoor Amusement Business Assn., whose 5,000 members own carnivals and other concessions.

But the heart of the fair is still a little bit country. In one of the cavernous livestock barns, 4-H member Kelsey Clelland, 14, hand-sheared the brown wool of her yearling ewe Ebony. Wearing a fashionably cropped T-shirt, Kelsey struggled to keep the 150-pound ewe on its shearing platform. “The animals get really stressed out at the fair,” she said.

A ninth-grader at Claremont High School, Kelsey said she likes “regular teenage stuff,” such as surfing and listening to the band Blink 182. Only a few of her classmates have ever wrestled a recalcitrant ewe, and most think her involvement in the fair is cool, she said. If a few of them tease her, so be it.

“I think farming is really important,” Kelsey said. “Some people who come to the fair don’t know some of these animals are going to be eaten.”

Her mother, Donna Clelland, said farm skills are the least of what teens like Kelsey get from the 4-H program.

“They learn social skills, they learn marketing skills, they learn how to speak in front of the public,” Clelland said. “And it keeps her out of the malls.”

Talarico said she believes the county fair is stitched into the personal histories of millions of Angelenos. “There are so many people who have stories--they met their spouse at the fair, or their parents met at the fair, or they had their first date at the fair,” she said.