I had (what
e:Vincent called) an authentic "American" experience at the Erie County fair.
e:Vincent and
e:Metalpeter let me tag along and generally behave like an out-of-control Japanese tourist.
My tourism at the fair started in the earnest with this ticket that
e:vincent got for us. We later learned from
e:theecarey that fair fare was $5 after 5:00 PM for students with an ID.
e:Metalpeter and
e:Vincent plotted and schemed our 12 hours at the fair.
Yeah, no kidding. We spent 12 uber-fun hours at the fair.
e:Vincent was exotically attired in this Lawrence-of-Arabia headgear for most of those 12 hours.
He has a huge smile on his face there because he had just spotted these:
Apparently, these are a fair super-speciality. Every kind of meat was wafer-ed, pickled in brine and dried to a crisp.
e:metalpeter and I spent a few pleasant minutes wondering about who owns these kind of fancy tubs...
...maybe the same people who owned the hybrid Escalade we saw in the parking lot. ;-)
We then saw these heavily ornamented grandfather clocks. They were priced upwards of $3k each. Maybe you could buy one to keep count of how much time you spent in the fancy tub above?
The salesman opened the door to one of these clocks and casually handed me one of these pendulums. I almost dropped it. They look deceptively hollow but they are SO heavy! Apparently, their weight keeps the clock precise and running on time.
There was a stall exclusively selling these Russian Matryoshka dolls. It was weird to see so many of them - smug, wildly coloured and sitting in rows all around me.
Among them was this funny depiction of St.Basil's Cathedral. Heh
Outside, we passed the "North Pole" and these disturbing looking mascots. I don't know how parents felt comfortable sending their kids in the vicinity of these shady characters.
Also, isn't it enough that Buffalo has around eight months of snow? Do we really need fake "North Poles" in the one weekend of summer we have?
We then went through a huge hall of fresh-produce wet-dreams! After months of swiping and stealing from google images for my grocery pictures, these pictures are really mine.
I never knew brussels sprouts look like this when they are harvested!
On the way toward the Bengal Tiger exhibit, this funny little clown car came whirling down the road.
This bloke was so comfortable with the tigers, he just rolled around with them. He coaxed one of the tigers to walk backwards on its hind legs later in the show. It was quite startling to see; they called it a "tribute to MJ".
The announcer kept saying that any donations would go toward rehabilitating the tigers in their natural habitat in the wetlands of Bengal. I had trouble believing it. I wonder how many wild wetlands are left in Bengal anyway - my guess is not that many.
While the tigers got the undivided attention of the crowd, nearby, this sealion was bored out of its mind and decided to take a nap.
In
e:metalpeter style, I thought this tattoo was interesting and took a shot while I was trying unsuccessfully to stand on my tiptoes and see the tigers through the crowds that thronged their arena.
We then walked through a creative arts exhibit. Local photographers had put up their entries. I was surprised that these two photographs didn't win top prizes!
(This cute baby strangely reminds me of my advisor. She must have been one pretty girl. :D )
I loved this photograph as well. There is something about that little boy's expression that is utterly charming. I didn't agree with the judges' choices at all. They were conservative, corny and completely devoid of depth.
Among the creative arts exhibits, was this cool tranformerish sculpture. Apparently, they gave all the participants a bucket of salvaged odds and ends that the organizers had found in various garbage dumps across the city. The participants had to use at least 90% or more of that bucket to make their work of art. While I stood there admiring this "Garbformer", an old man and his wife tried and recognized each and every part that went into making the sculpture. It was such a cool thing to hear.
Halfway through our 12 hour romp at the fair,
e:Vincent's ulterior movies were made clear...
Apparently, there is a special technique to devouring these edible crustacean curiosities. It was posted on the wall of the stall selling them.
I forgot to take a shot of the instructions, but I am fairly certain, you
don't eat it like this:
While we are on the topic of eating, we had the most amazing gourmet pizza at the fair. It was incredibly tasty and ranks right up there with Grimaldi's in NYC.
It was made by a catering company who had come to the fair with their mobile full-scale brick oven in tow. As I watched, they made an outstandingly delicious vegetable pizza in around three minutes. A home-made pizza dough base was layered with onions, tomatoes, green bell peppers, cheddar as well as provolone cheese.
The friendly baker then tossed that pizza base into the brick oven behind him.
This pizza came out of the oven as ours was being tossed in.
They also had white pizza version that I really wanted to try but I was completely stuffed when we came back to the pizza station.
We had live entertainment by one-man-band - Virgil Cain, while we ate our pizza. He was surprisingly very good. He played the keyboard synthesizer, a guitar and an electric violin - all equally well. His songs were funny and had hilarious lyrics.
e:Vincent got his CD. I should have got it too. Maybe
e:Vincent would rip his "Paycheck" song and put it online? (*nudge nudge)
These boots reminded me of the song "Con las botas puestas" by Baron Rojo. I think Angeles del infierno did a cover of that song...
Just so you know, the lilies are fake and are worth $2 each.
We also saw a horse-shoe making live demonstration. The fair had the most varied interesting exhibits ever.
I don't think I have ever seen the bone structure of a horse's leg before.
Near it was a demonstration of this creatively titled old-style home-soap-making operation. No sweat maybe, but plenty of mess.
I think my brother would have loved to visit this fair; there were restored old train bogies, coaches as well as cable cars on display.
I have always wondered how trains run during massive snow storms. This was a cool picture poster of the snow plows they used to have back in the day. I thought it looks so much like a time machine!
The poster had a mention of the nasty storm of 1977 and how they tackled it with only a few snow plows. The design of the snow plows slowly evolved as the years went by.
I think
e:metalpeter took a photograph of the driving area in this cable car. Its totally not what you'd expect!
Outside the historical society museum, the greyhound rescue society had set up camp. I can't imagine why anyone would want to abuse or abandon these graceful dogs!
I faintly recall having played this game in the past. I thought it was the Chinese Chequers but I am not so sure now. Does anyone know what it is? These two women were so engrossed in it, they didn't even see me taking this shot. Maybe they were part of the 1960s exhibit. Heh
The theme for the historical society's museum exhibit was "Back in the rockin' 60s" or some such thing. This price list was a nice wrap-up of times back then.
This 1960's icon reminded us so much of
e:Paul's moustache from not so long ago.
We took a break to go back to the car and caught this beautiful sunset! The sun was like a huge red glowing ball and went down so quickly. It was unreal.
I finally met the lovely
e:theecarey after two years of virtual hellos. We did a digital cross-shoot to mark the occasion. :D
We went to look at the animal stands. I felt sorry for these poor reindeer that were sulking in the corner of their stalls after a long hot day of getting gawked at and just standing around.
e:Vincent kept going on about how cool "the midway" looks after dark. I wasn't sure what he was talking about till we actually walked through all these lighted rides after dark. It was like a completely different place.
Though, I can't imagine why anyone would intentionally want to take a nausea-inducing ride after eating all the fair-food. Some of them looked as it they might have fallen apart at any minute. Just the thought of riding them made me dizzy.
There were all these "Win a stuffed toy" games all around the place. The stall-keepers were trying their best to lure us in. Some of the games seemed impossible to win. Virtually everyone whom I saw playing lost.
However, in one of the stalls they had a hoop for shooting basketballs. A group of young men who looked like they spent their days playing the game got all their shots in one go. They were still at it as we walked away from the stall. They might just have won all the stuffed toys in the stall for a dollar. I guess no job is without its drawbacks and we witnessed the occupational hazard of having "professional" customers at your carnival stuffed-toy stand.
We wanted to gamble in the casino. Well, not really. Mainly, we wanted to go in on the pretence of placing bets on horses and watch some hugely popular singer (I forget who) at concert in the nearby arena.
We were not so lucky because first we worried that I look like a 14 year old (which unfortunately, I do), then we thought up creative schemes like dusting my hair with powdered sugar from the fried dough stall to make me look older. Finally, we decided to just evade the security and walk in using
e:Vincent's knowledge of a evasion-elevator. Unfortunately for us, we were too late and they were shutting down the top horse-betting floor of the casino.
We were somewhat disappointed so we "gambled" away with vengeance at "I got it". It is a highly addictive game that resembles a 3D tic-tac-toe.
e:theecarey won twice and
e:Vincent won once as well - but they didn't get any prizes. They just got extra-tries (that were unsuccessful). Some people are just lucky, because there was this family that won on every single turn in an aisle over from ours!
I think
e:metalpeter and I were spooked by this Simpson doll that completely spoiled our concentration!
By a conservative estimate, I would say that the fair had about 85% heart-attack and tooth-decay inducing food. An example was this:
I was amazed at the variety of desserts people had thought up. But this literally took the cake.
e:metalpeter struck a pose in front of the ingenious stall that sold this out-of-this-planet treat. I think it summed up all our sentiments then.
The deep-fried cheesecake, quite contrary to the unpleasant image it projects, is heavenly. It is mildly sweet, is served piping hot with cold whipped cream and fresh sliced strawberries. The concept came to the fair all the way from Massachusetts.
Of course, eating anything after it was close to impossible.
We spent a nice hour or two just laughing, catching up on life and e:strip and making fun of the old people who rushed to the casino in the dead of the night after we walked out of the fair. I had so much fun. Thank you
e:Vincent, e:metalpeter and
e:theecarey.
If you ever wondered what this blog might have looked like in the 1930s, 1940s and the 1950s...
Quite surprisingly, the content of the fair hasn't changed much though the politically incorrect "reptile lady" was probably eliminated.
