Ohio State Fair!
Aug. 9th, 2012 09:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rain_gryphonThe Ohio State Fair ended Sunday. As usual, I made several trips. This is kind of a composite visit to the 2012 Fair.
I've laid this out in spatial rather than chronological terms. If you're so inclined, you can follow along on the Official State Fair Map.
North Parking Lot and Entrance
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The State Police had this weird control tower set up at the highest point of the parking lot. It looks like it's supposed to be a temporary control tower for aircraft. I suppose they were using it to manage parking somehow. They may just have put it out there to look cool - the Police Academy is right by the Fairgrounds, so they often show off their equipment at the Fair. Last year, when there was an actual bomb scare*, everyone (myself included) crowded around the bomb squad truck as it pulled up outside the Commercial Building, assuming that the police were going to demonstrate their stuff.
At any rate, I got directed into a parking spot about 20 feet away, so there was no trouble at all finding my car later. I couldn't get Sid Collins intoning "High in the Master Control Tower..." out of my mind after seeing that.
*It turned out to be a lost package of granola bars.
Click to Embiggen
We rode into the Fair on wagons pulled by tractors. These are free, and keep circulating through the parking areas all day long. Once you're inside, there's a different set of wagons that will move you around the fair, again for free. To the left up ahead, you can see the unloading area (the fences) and the main gate.
Click to Embiggen
Ohio: It's round on both ends, and high in the middle. That's kind of like the unofficial state motto - everyone says it, and everyone thinks it's hilarious. You may have to have grown up in the midwest to really comprehend stuff like this.
Click to Embiggen
The Giant Cardinal of Ohio, just as you go into the gate. He's been there since 1955. He looks pissed off, and also like he's humping that log. Some have theorized that the bellicose expression is because he's facing toward Michigan, our hereditary enemies to the north. This is his humping log, and no dumb Wolverine is going to come take it away. You can see him just below Gate 1 on the map.
*****
Youth Center
The Youth Center is filled with display areas for youth orgnaization and schools. If you like looking at stuff that children have made, you can spend an hour or so going through here.
Click to Embiggen
A huge papier-mache Shark on display in the CampFire section. I just loved this, for some reason.
Click to Embiggen
The State Fair has perhaps five or six big model train displays. The one that is always the most popular every year is this model of Columbus made from Legos, with Lego trains running around it. For some unknown reason, the organizers hate the thing, and keep shuffling it about trying to hide it. They've even gone to the length of advertising a different train layout* on the Fair map this year.
This year, it was in the Youth Center, and they'd put it in a place where they couldn't get electricity to run the trains or light the buildings. It didn't matter - it still drew the crowds.
Lego Columbus always has these little weird bits throughout - here, Pirates have colonized an apartment building. This seems to be happening in the University District, so an outbreak of Pirates would not be completely unrealistic there.
* 'Model Railroad', near the diSalle building. It's okay (an HO scale railroad) but not half so interesting as Lego Columbus.
*****
DiSalle Creative Arts Building
The DiSalle Building is rather larger inside than you'd guess from looking at the front of it. It has the air of a mid-50s school building, right down to the sheet glass windows and brick box planters built so that they extend partway into the entrance foyer. There's a lovely, comfortable auditorium up front (again, it just exudes 'high school'), and then several display galleries in back, used for kids' art, handicrafts, and food displays. This is one of the buildings I never skip.
Click to Embiggen
Click to Embiggen
Today the auditorium was filled with chefs from various catering firms carving banquet centrepieces from melons. Melon carvings are by their nature an impermanent art, so if you stuck around to the end (I didn't) you got to help eat the artwork.
Click to Embiggen
Click to Embiggen
The display halls at the back of the building holds handicrafts, foods, and children's art. Here're a papier-mache Giraffe, and two creatures having dinner. The second scene makes me think of Spindizzy :)
Click to Embiggen
Someone has made an Armadillo (although it looks to me to be part Aardvark) out of Brillo pads. The whole area smelt of Brillo :) This is the kind of stuff you only get to see at the Fair.
Click to Embiggen
A magnificent Noah's Ark toychest, held together with wooden pegs (no nails). No indication of how long this took to make, but it's obvious that a lot of love and care went into it.
Click to Embiggen
This is an actual cake that someone made and decorated. One hopes it's apple-flavoured, although the sign didn't say. Everyone was dragging their friends 'round to see it. You can see the purple 'Best of Show' rosette that it's won.
*****
Main Stage Area
Click to Embiggen
I stopped to attend a concert by the All State Band, which was quite enjoyable. They've been performing at the Fair since 1925. Afterwards, they formed up and had a parade back to their assembly area near the DNR pavilion.
*****
Commercial Building
The Commercial Building is a huge time-waster. It's an enormous open floor space filled with people selling weird junk. I seldom buy anything, but I love to go look at it all. Very seldom is anything in there worth a picture, though, plus there's the hazard that if you show even marginal interest in someone's booth, they'll immediately start trying to sell you an Amazing Product that will Change the World (not sold in stores).
Click to Embiggen
Yeah, I bought some... They're lamp shades made out of interlocking plastic quadrilaterals. This was easily the most popular product in the Commercial Building. They had all the customers that they could handle, so one could take pictures in peace.
*****
South End
Click to Embiggen
Click to Embiggen
There's a parade every afternoon along the main north/south avenue. Today's parade featured antique fire trucks. There was a brief fashion for white fire trucks in the 50s and 60s. I'm guessing they were thought to be more visible. The town where I grew up had a big white pumper much like this one.
*****
Rides Area
Click to Embiggen
The Giant Slide of Ohio looked like it was about to melt in the sun. It absolutely glared, and you could feel heat reflecting off it. It was probably close to 100F by that time of day. You can see how drastically the camera under-exposed the shot, probably (I think) because it has no IR filter, and was reading the heat.
*****
Agriculture and Horticulture Building
Ag and Hort is most memorable for the Top of the Fair buffet. This is arranged on a hollow square layout on the second floor of the building. There is no air conditioning. What cooling you get comes from natural circulation and big ceiling fans. This makes it oddly nostalgic for me. In my childhood, no-one would have dreamt of having a fair building like that air conditioned.
In the hollow space in the middle of the restaurant, there's one of those climbing towers, so you can watch people climbing up and down from the first floor while you eat. The first floor has a variety of Ag-related exhibits.
Click to Embiggen
This creeped me out. It's well-made, but falls into the class of Things That Should Not Be. It's the sort of planter the Addams family might have. I hadn't noticed before, but in the background you can see the second-floor deck of the buffet surrounding the open area.
Click to Embiggen
Another of the train layouts. This one is agriculture-themed, and uses really big trains, the sort normally seen in a backyard layout. The positively glowing house, along with the giant flowers, make me think there's been some sort of science fictional mishap.
*****
Three Barns
Click to Embiggen
There are three of these big open barns at the south end of the Fairgrounds, all very similar, built in the 1880s. I'm glad they've kept them in pretty close to original condition. The northernmost one (pictured) is the poorer cousin of the Commercial Building. The vendors in here sell pretty much the same variety of weird junk, except more reasonably priced. Next is the antique dealers, filled with an often-fascinating melange of old stuff (this is where![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
taxus's gift came from). Lastly is the display area for Chickens, Ducks and Rabbits.
Click to Embiggen
Some guy was selling (or trying to sell) a variety of common household items decorated with skulls and crossbones that he had made. These are Dog bowls. I suppose they might be appropriate if you were planning to poison your Dog...
Click to Embiggen
The Giant Egg of Ohio, just outside the Rabbits and Poultry barn.
*****
DNR Area
The DNR area is like a little theme park, with so many fascinating things to see. There's a prairie to walk though, a log cabin built in the 1850s and restored to period appearance, several ponds - one for canoes, one for fishing, and one as part of the stage in an amphitheatre (they have boat and lumberjack demos here). There's a tiny movie theatre (I watched a movie about 'Abandoned Mines of Ohio'), an aviary, and a butterfly hatchery. There are live animal and bird exhibits, and a couple times a day there are animal shows.
Click to Embiggen
An Eagle and her babies, on display in the DNR building. It ensaddens me that they're dead, especially the poor babies who never got to see anything outside their nest, but they're still interesting to look at. In the early part of the 20th century, Ohio had the biggest Eagle's nest ever recorded, but it was destroyed in a storm in 1936.
Click to Embiggen
They were giving away these little packets that had sunscreen and aloe gel in them. You can get a lot of free stuff at the Fair.
Click to Embiggen
This delighted me. It's a paved circle with a map of Ohio on it, new this year. The coloured contours are bedrocks of different ages, and there's a sort of walkway that circles this area where you can look at examples of the bedrocks, and learn about Ohio throughout the various geological ages. Due to the size of it, I couldn't get a good picture, but I wanted to include it anyway.
Part of what I love about it is how much it calls to mind the big mosaic of the United States at the 1964 World's Fair. I'm going to write and ask if that played some role in inspiring this.
I've laid this out in spatial rather than chronological terms. If you're so inclined, you can follow along on the Official State Fair Map.
North Parking Lot and Entrance
Click to Embiggen
The State Police had this weird control tower set up at the highest point of the parking lot. It looks like it's supposed to be a temporary control tower for aircraft. I suppose they were using it to manage parking somehow. They may just have put it out there to look cool - the Police Academy is right by the Fairgrounds, so they often show off their equipment at the Fair. Last year, when there was an actual bomb scare*, everyone (myself included) crowded around the bomb squad truck as it pulled up outside the Commercial Building, assuming that the police were going to demonstrate their stuff.
At any rate, I got directed into a parking spot about 20 feet away, so there was no trouble at all finding my car later. I couldn't get Sid Collins intoning "High in the Master Control Tower..." out of my mind after seeing that.
*It turned out to be a lost package of granola bars.
Click to Embiggen
We rode into the Fair on wagons pulled by tractors. These are free, and keep circulating through the parking areas all day long. Once you're inside, there's a different set of wagons that will move you around the fair, again for free. To the left up ahead, you can see the unloading area (the fences) and the main gate.
Click to Embiggen
Ohio: It's round on both ends, and high in the middle. That's kind of like the unofficial state motto - everyone says it, and everyone thinks it's hilarious. You may have to have grown up in the midwest to really comprehend stuff like this.
Click to Embiggen
The Giant Cardinal of Ohio, just as you go into the gate. He's been there since 1955. He looks pissed off, and also like he's humping that log. Some have theorized that the bellicose expression is because he's facing toward Michigan, our hereditary enemies to the north. This is his humping log, and no dumb Wolverine is going to come take it away. You can see him just below Gate 1 on the map.
*****
Youth Center
The Youth Center is filled with display areas for youth orgnaization and schools. If you like looking at stuff that children have made, you can spend an hour or so going through here.
Click to Embiggen
A huge papier-mache Shark on display in the CampFire section. I just loved this, for some reason.
Click to Embiggen
The State Fair has perhaps five or six big model train displays. The one that is always the most popular every year is this model of Columbus made from Legos, with Lego trains running around it. For some unknown reason, the organizers hate the thing, and keep shuffling it about trying to hide it. They've even gone to the length of advertising a different train layout* on the Fair map this year.
This year, it was in the Youth Center, and they'd put it in a place where they couldn't get electricity to run the trains or light the buildings. It didn't matter - it still drew the crowds.
Lego Columbus always has these little weird bits throughout - here, Pirates have colonized an apartment building. This seems to be happening in the University District, so an outbreak of Pirates would not be completely unrealistic there.
* 'Model Railroad', near the diSalle building. It's okay (an HO scale railroad) but not half so interesting as Lego Columbus.
*****
DiSalle Creative Arts Building
The DiSalle Building is rather larger inside than you'd guess from looking at the front of it. It has the air of a mid-50s school building, right down to the sheet glass windows and brick box planters built so that they extend partway into the entrance foyer. There's a lovely, comfortable auditorium up front (again, it just exudes 'high school'), and then several display galleries in back, used for kids' art, handicrafts, and food displays. This is one of the buildings I never skip.
Click to Embiggen
Click to Embiggen
Today the auditorium was filled with chefs from various catering firms carving banquet centrepieces from melons. Melon carvings are by their nature an impermanent art, so if you stuck around to the end (I didn't) you got to help eat the artwork.
Click to Embiggen
Click to Embiggen
The display halls at the back of the building holds handicrafts, foods, and children's art. Here're a papier-mache Giraffe, and two creatures having dinner. The second scene makes me think of Spindizzy :)
Click to Embiggen
Someone has made an Armadillo (although it looks to me to be part Aardvark) out of Brillo pads. The whole area smelt of Brillo :) This is the kind of stuff you only get to see at the Fair.
Click to Embiggen
A magnificent Noah's Ark toychest, held together with wooden pegs (no nails). No indication of how long this took to make, but it's obvious that a lot of love and care went into it.
Click to Embiggen
This is an actual cake that someone made and decorated. One hopes it's apple-flavoured, although the sign didn't say. Everyone was dragging their friends 'round to see it. You can see the purple 'Best of Show' rosette that it's won.
*****
Main Stage Area
Click to Embiggen
I stopped to attend a concert by the All State Band, which was quite enjoyable. They've been performing at the Fair since 1925. Afterwards, they formed up and had a parade back to their assembly area near the DNR pavilion.
*****
Commercial Building
The Commercial Building is a huge time-waster. It's an enormous open floor space filled with people selling weird junk. I seldom buy anything, but I love to go look at it all. Very seldom is anything in there worth a picture, though, plus there's the hazard that if you show even marginal interest in someone's booth, they'll immediately start trying to sell you an Amazing Product that will Change the World (not sold in stores).
Click to Embiggen
Yeah, I bought some... They're lamp shades made out of interlocking plastic quadrilaterals. This was easily the most popular product in the Commercial Building. They had all the customers that they could handle, so one could take pictures in peace.
*****
South End
Click to Embiggen
Click to Embiggen
There's a parade every afternoon along the main north/south avenue. Today's parade featured antique fire trucks. There was a brief fashion for white fire trucks in the 50s and 60s. I'm guessing they were thought to be more visible. The town where I grew up had a big white pumper much like this one.
*****
Rides Area
Click to Embiggen
The Giant Slide of Ohio looked like it was about to melt in the sun. It absolutely glared, and you could feel heat reflecting off it. It was probably close to 100F by that time of day. You can see how drastically the camera under-exposed the shot, probably (I think) because it has no IR filter, and was reading the heat.
*****
Agriculture and Horticulture Building
Ag and Hort is most memorable for the Top of the Fair buffet. This is arranged on a hollow square layout on the second floor of the building. There is no air conditioning. What cooling you get comes from natural circulation and big ceiling fans. This makes it oddly nostalgic for me. In my childhood, no-one would have dreamt of having a fair building like that air conditioned.
In the hollow space in the middle of the restaurant, there's one of those climbing towers, so you can watch people climbing up and down from the first floor while you eat. The first floor has a variety of Ag-related exhibits.
Click to Embiggen
This creeped me out. It's well-made, but falls into the class of Things That Should Not Be. It's the sort of planter the Addams family might have. I hadn't noticed before, but in the background you can see the second-floor deck of the buffet surrounding the open area.
Click to Embiggen
Another of the train layouts. This one is agriculture-themed, and uses really big trains, the sort normally seen in a backyard layout. The positively glowing house, along with the giant flowers, make me think there's been some sort of science fictional mishap.
*****
Three Barns
Click to Embiggen
There are three of these big open barns at the south end of the Fairgrounds, all very similar, built in the 1880s. I'm glad they've kept them in pretty close to original condition. The northernmost one (pictured) is the poorer cousin of the Commercial Building. The vendors in here sell pretty much the same variety of weird junk, except more reasonably priced. Next is the antique dealers, filled with an often-fascinating melange of old stuff (this is where
taxus's gift came from). Lastly is the display area for Chickens, Ducks and Rabbits.
Click to Embiggen
Some guy was selling (or trying to sell) a variety of common household items decorated with skulls and crossbones that he had made. These are Dog bowls. I suppose they might be appropriate if you were planning to poison your Dog...
Click to Embiggen
The Giant Egg of Ohio, just outside the Rabbits and Poultry barn.
*****
DNR Area
The DNR area is like a little theme park, with so many fascinating things to see. There's a prairie to walk though, a log cabin built in the 1850s and restored to period appearance, several ponds - one for canoes, one for fishing, and one as part of the stage in an amphitheatre (they have boat and lumberjack demos here). There's a tiny movie theatre (I watched a movie about 'Abandoned Mines of Ohio'), an aviary, and a butterfly hatchery. There are live animal and bird exhibits, and a couple times a day there are animal shows.
Click to Embiggen
An Eagle and her babies, on display in the DNR building. It ensaddens me that they're dead, especially the poor babies who never got to see anything outside their nest, but they're still interesting to look at. In the early part of the 20th century, Ohio had the biggest Eagle's nest ever recorded, but it was destroyed in a storm in 1936.
Click to Embiggen
They were giving away these little packets that had sunscreen and aloe gel in them. You can get a lot of free stuff at the Fair.
Click to Embiggen
This delighted me. It's a paved circle with a map of Ohio on it, new this year. The coloured contours are bedrocks of different ages, and there's a sort of walkway that circles this area where you can look at examples of the bedrocks, and learn about Ohio throughout the various geological ages. Due to the size of it, I couldn't get a good picture, but I wanted to include it anyway.
Part of what I love about it is how much it calls to mind the big mosaic of the United States at the 1964 World's Fair. I'm going to write and ask if that played some role in inspiring this.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-08-09 05:10 pm (UTC)My brother has a friend who is into pirates the way we're into furries. The guy whose dog got the bone cancer surgery. (The dog's doing well, by the way.) His house is done up in pirate stuff, he had a big pirate-costume-required birthday gala that my brother went to a while back, and at one point he had a crow's nest (non-functional, I assume) on top of his van. I think he might be the person those skull and crossbones dog bowls are aimed at.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-09 06:45 pm (UTC)You and the Coati should come to Ohio's Fair next year. It's not that horribly far, and I'll let the Giant Cardinal of Ohio know that you aren't coming to hump on his log or anything. It really is quite a nice fair, with lots to see and do.
You may be right about the Dog bowls. Skull and crossbones on a food container equals poison for me, although that may be a function of age. Mister Yuck seems to be the current poison symbol, although he never really had the dire associations that this one does.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-09 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-09 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-09 08:03 pm (UTC)That's an American State Fair, exactly, except ours generally go on for a week and a half to two weeks or so. And they're huge. I wish you could come see ours some time.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-10 01:08 am (UTC)Wifey was thinking about going up to Sudbury for a "staycation" this year, but it's a looong drive and nothing to do there but a science museum and a reconstructed-for-tourists nickel mine.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-10 01:38 am (UTC)Next year, though, you should definitely pack up the family and come see the Ohio State Fair!
no subject
Date: 2012-08-10 02:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-10 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-11 12:17 am (UTC)