Dispatches from the Fair

A few weeks ago, The Family Unit and I made our annual trek to the Erie County Fair, where the usual good time was had by all. (Except for that one guy, who didn't seem to be having a good time at all. Oh well!) Here's some pictorial documentation of our day!

(Below the fold, of course.)



Let's talk fair food first, get it out of the way. Our first order of business at the Fair is always lunch, which means one thing: finding the corn dog place. The corn dog place we usually like has been moved from its usual spot, so we tried another.



This one was OK, but it didn't really hit the Corn Dog Sweet Spot, as it were, so we found another place, where the corn dogs are made with Sahlen's dogs, and they are hand-dipped and fried to order. This is corn dog freshness!



(By the way, God knows that I will make fun of Republicans for just about any reason, but I will not make fun of their corn dog consumption methods. So go ahead, Governor Perry and Congresslunatic Bachmann, deep-throat those corn dogs to your hearts' contents!)

At dinner, The Daughter insists on pizza.



I think she does that so she can eat her pizza, and then nag The Wife and I for bites from our Chiavetta's chicken dinners.



I wish the Chiavetta's people would serve the butter at least a little softened; I think they keep it frozen up until the moment they plunk it on your plate. But oh well.

I didn't do a whole lot of Fud Photography, since a lot of what we ate was the same as what we eat every year: roasted nuts, kettle corn, a big selection of jerky, fried dough, ice cream, milk shakes, et cetera. There was something new that we tried, an arepa, which was basically a grilled-cheese sandwich made on cornbread. The cornbread was really moist and had nice, big corn kernels in it. The thing looked fantastic:



Flavor-wise, though, I was a bit disappointed -- it was awfully bland as served. They used mozzarella cheese, which was really mild; a spicier cheese, or some kind of spicy meat or vegetable, would have helped a lot. I had to put a liberal amount of hot sauce on the thing to really make it taste good. I love the idea, but it needs reworking before next year if I'm to have one again. (Oh, and those things hold heat like few foods I've ever known. The thing was too hot to bite without searing pain for almost five minutes!)

By way of walking around seeing stuff, we love the Creative Arts exhibits, as usual -- and they are in a different spot now, which is actually quite nice. There were wonderful quilts...



...and needlepoint nudes...



...and creative diaramas.



And there were animals, as always! Llamas...



...and chickens...



...and horses on parade.



There was a guy rolling around on a wacky wheel, calling himself the Wacky Wheeler.





We stopped in the Antique Mall, a smaller version of one of our favorite local retail establishments, the Orchard Park Antique Mall. Ever since the Fair, I have been kicking myself for not buying this:



No, I don't like the Alien movies, but that little guy is just so many kinds of awesome! I'll keep an eye out for him at the main Mall now that the Fair has ended.

Then, to the Midway for rides and whatnot, as the moon rose.







There's a ride that apparently has a "spaceship" theme, hence the presence of Darth Vader on its side!



And this amused me greatly. One of my favorite rides to watch is "Enterprise", which is a Star Trek themed ride that can't call itself a Star Trek ride -- it just always has Star Trek artwork. Here's the ride in years gone by:



Note Kirk's enormous chin! And either they've omitted McCoy and put Scotty up there, or they've put McCoy in the wrong color shirt.

Well, now that Trek has been rebooted, it's time to reboot the "Enterprise" ride, too! Here's how it looks now:



You've got Chris Pine as Kirk, and I suppose that's Zachary Quinto as spock, way over on the left. Spock is right next to...wait a minute! That's Padme as she looked at the end of the Battle of Geonosis in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones! And...the Alien from Alien, hanging there! And what's with the pair of cat's eyes hovering over the Earth? Now there's some gonzo stuff, right there. God, I love that ride. If only I wasn't sure that the act of riding it would make me hurl.

Our day at The Fair wasn't totally inclusive of everything we wanted to do. When we were walking the animal barns, the sheep and the cattle were closed, because their respective judging shows were going on right then, so we missed out, unfortunately. I continue to hope each year for a cold front to come through and make the day we go to the Fair cool enough to wear overalls -- if ever an event screams out for overalls, it's the Fair -- but no, it was its usual "pleasantly hot". And The Daughter had gone in, hoping to purchase a hermit crab from a dealer who had been there in years past. No dice this time, unfortunately. No hermit crab...that day. But that's a post for another time.

See you next year, County Fair!

(My complete Fair photo set is here.)