S.J. County Fair hurt by high heat
STOCKTON — Sunday was all about the heat on the final day of 2017’s San Joaquin County Fair — and the heat won.
That’s not a reference to Stockton’s American Hockey League franchise, by the way. The National Weather Service officially listed the city’s high temperature for Sunday as 109 degrees around 3:15 p.m.
Fair officials cited that extreme heat — exactly one week after a freak thunderstorm with measurable rain and hail rattled north Stockton — for keeping potential fairgoers away in droves until later in the evening.
A walk around the sprawling fairgrounds at midafternoon revealed an empty Midway, no one stepping up to the Ripon Quarterback Club saloon for a cold one, and not a child around interested in splashing down the waterslide.
“In any business, things impact your business. You take your lumps and move on,” Fair CEO Kelly Olds said Sunday, noting that the weather is just one of those things no one can control.
Olds took over the reins of the beleaguered county fair a little more than three years ago and has worked tirelessly to turn things around. Unfortunately this year, Mother Nature had the upper hand.
His largely volunteer staff did what they could for the few folks who ventured out Sunday, passing out water and directing them to places where they could sit down and cool off.
And, while attendance was off substantially for the fair’s five-day run, Olds said there was “good response” to the music acts and some other features.
“We had 2,500 people in the stands for the tractor pull. The SuperFly Skydiving Simulator (a first-time attraction) proved to be real popular, and the AgFest and auction went really well. In fact, some are predicting the overall auction price exceeded last year’s take, and that was a record,” Olds said.
Despite his optimism, Olds said there is some talk among fair officials about cutting back to four days next year and opening later in the day on Thursday and Friday.
Harry Mason, owner of Oroville-based Midway of Fun that operated the fair’s carnival and ride attractions, said this year’s run started out promising, then took a turn for the worse.
On opening day Wednesday, his business was up 30 percent over 2016. Thursday, it was up 4 percent. It was flat on Friday and by Saturday, it was down by 26 percent. And it wasn’t looking promising for Sunday.
“It’s slow. When it get hot like this, it might as well be raining,” the veteran carnival operator said. “There’s nothing we can do about it. It’s depressing.”
Overall, however, Mason is optimistic about his business, saying it’s been trending up in the past five years since people realize their limited discretionary money can go a long way.
“$15 for 30 rides — that’s a bargain that doesn’t bust the bank,” he said.
Some of the vendors who paid fees to set up booths in the exhibit halls were anything but optimistic about the fair’s future — or at least their role in it.
Lisa-Marie Caverzagie, 38, of Escalon, who has owned Bullets & Bling for five years and been making a pretty decent income attending festivals since 2015, said her experience with this year’s fair “is embarrassing. I’m barely making my booth rent — maybe $100 over my rent. Corporations can take a write-off, but I can’t afford this.”
This was Caverzagie’s first time as a vendor at this fair. The last time she attended the San Joaquin County Fair was 20 years ago, she said, “and it was just awesome.” She made it clear she won’t be returning anytime soon.
She didn’t blame fair officials for the hot weather, but she did hold them accountable for the poor ventilation and lack of air conditioning in her exhibit hall, the perceived lack of marketing, communications and poor signage to let fairgoers know where vendors are, and their location well away from the more popular entertainment stages and carnival rides.