State Fair Disappointments

This morning you are about to suffer through an “Old Man Bel” post, as I complain about something that very few of you will have experienced. Growing up in rural Oklahoma, one of the highlights of our year was the two week run of the Tulsa State Fair. This is not to be confused with the Oklahoma State Fair that happens in Oklahoma City a few weeks prior. It always straddles the border between September and October, and generally speaking Oklahoma starts to get cold at some point during that second weekend. However the first weekend generally is lovely in the high 60s to mid 70s.

I was in a service club called 4-H which was something I had largely been forced into by my mother who had fond memories of it. As such I traditionally had a bunch of exhibits that were entered at the local county fair in woodworking, photography, art or whatever happened to seem reasonable that year. If you won at your local county fair, it trickled up into the nearest State Fair of which ours was Tulsa roughly an hour away from the town I grew up in. As such we would religiously make a trip to the Tulsa State Fair on the second weekend to see how my exhibits had placed in the larger show.

The state fair was magical for a bunch of reasons, but the main one were all of the exhibits. Growing up in rural Oklahoma, you didn’t exactly have a lot of access to things throughout the year. The exhibit halls featured vendors selling pretty much anything imaginable, including merch for all of those bands that I was into as a kid. I remember I got a bunch of metal band patches for my jean jacket at the fair. Even earlier though I remember various booths selling pewter figurines that would serve for years as my first miniatures in various table top gaming sessions.

The other aspect of the fair was that it ended up showing off whatever trends were about to hit the mainstream. Given its place in early October it sort of set the pace for whatever would be the hot new thing for that Christmas, and often was the first time I encountered a bunch of new things. I remember I saw my very first Robotech figures at the Tulsa State Fair, or the year that the Micro RC cars were super popular… there were a dozen or so booths that had them in the early 2000s. In part seeing what was about to be a big deal was a huge part of the fair experience.

We have not be regular attendees of the fair, and it had probably been six or seven years since we last went. Last year my wife decided she wanted to go, and then we were ultimately turned away by the mess that was parking. So this year I wanted to make sure we made it, so that she didn’t have regrets. As such we got up and out the door fairly early and were parked and waiting for about twenty minutes for them to open the doors. The problem is… the State Fair ain’t quite what it used to be for a bunch of reasons.

Firstly the whole trend setting aspect has fallen apart thanks to the internet. I now know the various things that might interest me, months ahead of them actually being available. The thing this year seemed to be them trying to sell bootleg Nintendo Classic consoles or the bigger Pandora’s Box Arcade console in a fighting stick systems. The first seemed like it was maybe a few years too late to really cash in on the craze of the Nintendo Classic. The second seems like it is too expensive to really be the sort of thing that fair goers purchase as an impulse buy as they retail around $150-$200. Both of which I have seen various incarnations of available on Chinese import sites.

Everything else seemed to be the same things that we have seen for years. During the 80s and 90s it seemed like every trip to the fair promised some new innovation of home care. Now we just see recycled versions of the same items that came from that era. I saw no less than five booths trying to sell the same sticky gel lint roller product that I first saw in the mid 80s… but this time the color is green instead of purple or orange and has some sort of a pet attachment. I am not going to roll that thing on my cat, no matter how safe you tell me it is.

The other thing that became clear is that the livestock barns have ultimately pushed out what was exhibitor space. Originally there was the main building, a long skinny row of five buildings called the Exchange Center that spanned the vertical length of the fairgrounds map, and a larger building roughly where the Exchange Center is marked on the map above that housed a theater and exhibit space behind it. We spent some time trying to figure out if it was just that we had gotten older… or if the fair itself was much smaller. Long gone is Bell’s Amusement park, and replaced is an area full of Kiddie Rides.

The midway area itself seemed to be significantly smaller than it used to. I remember during my childhood there would be multiple versions of the same ride, all in the hopes of trying to catch the attention of folks as they walked between buildings. While I couldn’t find a great picture of it, we were completely unable to find any of what was my personal favorite “game of chance” the Coin Pusher. Generally speaking during the 90’s when we were regularly playing it, there would be three or four different kiosks set up with the same coin pusher game each with different prizes. Everything just felt downsized from the splendor that the fair used to be.

Honestly the most impressive thing at the fair was something I tweeted out on Saturday. We have this large statue called the Golden Driller at the fairgrounds. The Tulsa Pop group created a Lego Mini-figure looking version of it. The only disappointing thing is that there was no Lego-ized Oil Derrick to go along with it. There were folks sculpting sand and others sculpting cheese… but honestly after seeing a cheese or butter sculpture at every State Fair since the 80s… it loses some of its novelty. Basically it is a little depressing to see the magic gone from this experience. Again I may just be old and jaded at this point, but the Tulsa State fair aint what it used to be.

The other aspect that made the day frustrating is that generally speaking in September we are as I said before in the high 60s to mid 70s. On Saturday was had a heat index in the 100s with an actual temperature in the 90s. I am not sure about you but when I am hot and sweaty, the last thing I want to partake of us fair food. So we passed up the cheese curds, the spiral potato and the red velvet funnel cakes and didn’t end up buying anything while we were there. We made our way through the booths and then decided to just head home because it was fairly miserable on a large concrete lot with a ton of people. Octoberfest will have a lot of the same vendors, so I figure if we are still craving fair food we can go there in a few weeks.

As far as the State Fair… I think we are good for another six or seven years until we get the urge to go again.