Times Change

I went to the Puyallup Fair yesterday, and although it was a nice day and nothing went wrong, I left there feeling kind of empty.

I've lived here all my life, so I've been going to the Puyallup Fair since I was teeny. Little by little, it has changed so much that it's just a tiny fraction of its former self.

The first notable change that I can recall came back when I was in school: One year they had a big fire in there, and lost the building that held the Spook House, the Fun House, and the House of Mirrors. It also damaged one end of the giant wood roller coaster. They never rebuilt any of those attractions. All three of them were the kind of attractions where you could spend all day in them if you want, wandering back and forth at your own speed. The fun house was where I first found the job I wanted to do for the rest of my life. There was one section of the fun house on the second floor where you walked by an opening along the side where you could see the crowd below and they could see you. On the ground below sat a worker with the perfect job: He had a string hooked to a valve in the floor of that section of the fun house, and when a girl or lady walked through, he could yank on it and a blast of air would blow their dress up. God, I wanted that job...

It used to be that the first thing you noticed when you went into the gate, no wait--Even before you got to the gate--Was the cacophony of smells that instantly assaulted your nose. The fair's famous onion burgers were the big one--The huge pile of limp, grilled onions that smothered the burger so completely that you could hardly see what you were eating. The corn dogs, the raspberry scones, the smoke from Pete's BBQ... All classics that are still there, but for some reason are not nearly as noticeable any more.

One thing that angered me this year was a way they sucked you into another mailing list. It's not unusual to be sucked into mailing lists. Some ignorant people don't notice that the booth you were at when you filled out the card for that "free car" drawing was manned by someone selling windows, or hot tubs, or time share vacations, or any number of things. Anyway, this year as you go into the gate you are handed this little credit card sized paper card with a barcode on it.
"What's this going to do for me?" I ask.
"You might win gas for a year." She says, obviously already explained it 5 million times by then.
As you walk in, directly in front of you is a whole "bank" of electronic touch screen terminals where people are lined up. I looked at it and decided that I would just come back later. Later in the day I did exactly that and walked up, swiped my little card in the card reader and started in. It asked name, address, phone number, then started asking all sorts of marketing questions. I said WTF is this and cancelled out of the whole thing, tore my card up and walked away wondering how I could have been so stupid as to fall into the sheep fleecing thing that I so proudly managed to elude all these years. Then it hit me--It was the "package." The electronics, the touch screens, the actual interaction you got to make. Screw that... A mailing list is a mailing list.

I also got the impression that the animals were there in much smaller numbers than they used to be. Maybe it wasn't that, maybe it was just that there didn't seem to be much human traffic in those areas. Yeah I think that was it--People don't go to the fair for animals anymore.

Ditto the food displays. The careful arrangements of fruits and vegetables that were lovingly grown and nurtured by people and associations and schools... Pretty much a thing of the past. Sure, they were there, but very few of them.

A few things were still there and will probably always be. Things like the vibrating "foot massagers" that are all over the grounds, the booth inside one of the building where there was a giant panel with blinking lights on it that offered "instant handwriting analysis", the people with the microphones around their necks that drone on whether anyone is listening to their cookware sales pitch or not.

The prices are definitely out of control. Over the years the Fair management as squeezed the vendors so hard that they have been forced to jack the prices of their goods accordingly just to stay in business. I mean come on--$3 for a soft serve ice cream cone?! Hardly any food items are under 5 bucks any more either, most being like 6.50 or more. 3 bucks for a small bottle of water? Isn't that pathetic?

Oh well, it's still one of the best places in the world for one of my favorite pastimes: Planting my ass on a bench and looking at the people that walk by.