The Riverside Press-Enterprise
Centennial: Fair looks back and looks forward with new May debut
Usually when you hear “100” and “Los Angeles County Fair” in the same sentence, it’s about how hot it is.
On opening day in 2019, the mercury hit 110 degrees. That’s almost hot enough to fry a turkey leg, and definitely hot enough to burn a human leg.
This year, the fair is hitting 100 in a pleasant way. Founded in 1922, it’s 100 years old. Happy birthday!
But this isn’t your greatgrandfather’s fair. After 99 years in September, the fair has shifted to May. It opens Thursday, with a high of 86 predicted, and ends May 30, when your guess is as good as mine.
Why the switch? Climate change. As fairgoers can attest, it’s real.
September temperatures have been scorching in recent years. In 2019, the average daily temperature for the first three weeks of the fair was 93 degrees. And for an event that takes place almost entirely outdoors on asphalt, that’s bad.
People began showing up in late afternoon and evening hours to escape the early afternoon heat. That shouldn’t be an issue in May — unless the fair brings hot weather with it.
Hours will be 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. rather than changing depending on the day, as before. “Easy for people to remember,” says Renee Hernandez, the fair’s spokeswoman. And due to the weather, old attendance patterns may reassert themselves.
“Now that it’s in May, we’re thinking we’ll see more people coming during the day. Noon to 3 we saw light crowds. We think we’ll be consistently busy throughout the day,” Hernandez says.
The hope is to meet or exceed 2019 attendance of 1.1 million visitors.
It’ll run 17 days in all, Thursday to Sunday for four weeks, plus Memorial Day as a bonus at the end. Mother’s Day at the fair? It’s real.
In recent years the fair reduced its seven-day schedule to five days. This year it’s four days. That’s only one day more than 3 Day Suit Broker. Blame the pandemic. “We knew we were doing a four-day instead of a five-day because we’re easing back into the fair after two years of being closed,” Hernandez tells me during a tour Monday. “We have a much smaller staff than we had pre-pandemic.”
Permanent full-time staff shrunk from 130 to 45, augmented of course by seasonal hires for the fair. Everyone is juggling multiple roles and responsibilities. (I hope the fair will have actual jugglers, too.)
A lot of the fair was still in the concept stage Monday morning, with set-up in full swing, but it’ll all be ready to go by Thursday. In other words, I heard about the fair but had to use my imagination for much of it.
The Flower and Garden Pavilion was largely ready. Not the namesake flowers and gardens, but their settings.
As I walked in, I was greeted by a billboard-like “Welcome” display fashioned from oranges, lemons and limes. Its centerpiece is the classic fair mascot, Thummer the pig. Wow!
Now that, my friends, is the L.A. County Fair we know and love.
The rest of the building pays homage to fairs of decades past. There are homages to past Flower and Garden themes of Mexico, China and Venice. Italy, not California, or otherwise the homage would include tech workers walking past homeless people.
Nods to various fair highlights from the past century include the “modern living” home exhibit of the 1950s and the Giant Slide.
A cutaway of a redwood trunk uses string and the tree’s rings to pinpoint notable moments in the fair’s history, such as the debuts of the Model Garden Railroad, the National Hot Rod Association Museum and the monorail.
“It represents 100 years of what happened at the fair,” says Marcus Pollitz, the exhibit’s designer.
Speaking of the anniversary, the fair theme is “Back to Our Roots,” which will play out in ways large and small.
Vintage snapshots submitted by fairgoers will be projected in a loop inside the Millard Sheets Art Center. Two long-absent food stands will be back: Piggly Wiggly and Australian Battered Potatoes.
(By coincidence, a couple of hours after my tour a Pomona librarian volunteered that she misses Piggly Wiggly, and I could share the breaking news that it would be back. I like making librarians happy.)
Animals raised by youngsters in 4-H and Future Farmers of America programs will be back for the first time in 15 years. Cal Poly Pomona will also provide animals for viewing and for a petting zoo. In recent years animals were brought in by a touring exhibit company.
“Since it’s our centennial, we thought it was important to reconnect with ag,” Hernandez says. “Our mission will be, how do we keep that going in a 21st century world?”
In another callback, the band War will kick off the concert series on Thursday along with El Chicano. I don’t know how many times War has played the fair, but it must be close to 10 out of 100 years.
There will be new stuff too, like Nextfestla, in which up and coming bands and DJS will perform. It’s a kind of antidote to the Boomer nostalgia acts that fill a lot of the grandstand dates.
A lowrider car show will take place during the run of the fair. Weekends will see a poetry slam put together by Pomona’s poet laureate, David Judah Oliver. (This is my chance to ask him if anything rhymes with “Pomona.”)
And the Millard Sheets Art Center will celebrate the centennial in part by spotlighting some of the diversity the fair has lacked in its first century.
Speaking of which, every weekend will celebrate a different culture, in order: Latin American Heritage (this weekend), African American Heritage (May 14-15), Asian American Pacific Islander Weekend (May 21-22), and finally, Proud Weekend (May 2829) for our LGBTQ friends.
Look for a few dispatches from me during the run of the fair — as well as a personal appearance (more on that soon). As a yearly visitor since 1998, I’m happy the Fair is back physically after two years away.
After a period of drift, is the fair back spiritually? Too soon to say, but early signs are encouraging.