Some of us remember when the Los Angeles County Fair operated five days a week for anywhere from 18 days to 24 days. (And that month was September, not May — although there’s no going back.)
When the Pomona event returned in 2022 after the pandemic, the fair was four days a week and 17 days in all. The past three years, it dropped to 16 days.
This year’s fair, which runs May 7-31, is still four days a week. But it’s 17 days, not 16, and the first day is Thursday, rather than a Friday. That hasn’t happened in four years.
“It’s a day longer,” said Renee Hernandez, a fair spokesperson. “And six hours earlier.”
Six hours earlier? Beginning in 2023, the fair would host a private pre-opening reception for stakeholders on Friday afternoon, then open the gates at 5 p.m. Not this year.
“Instead of starting at 5 p.m. on opening day, we’re starting at 11 a.m.,” Hernandez explained. “The fair is open 11 to 11 every day, Thursday to Sunday, and Memorial Day.”
That’s closer to the fair’s classic schedule. In the 2000s, the fair ran Wednesday through Sunday for 18 days. An expansion to 24 days, to encompass five weekends, including Labor Day, came during the 2010s.
Opening for 17 days in May is trickier than you’d think. Hernandez explained some of the considerations.
The 2022 fair opened on Thursday, May 5, to coincide with Cinco de Mayo. Smart, right? The fair, however, doesn’t operate in a vacuum. Its carnival company, Ray Cammack Shows, came directly from Arizona’s Pima County Fair, which ended the previous Sunday.
The carnies must have ridden hell-bent for leather. (I’m referring to their outerwear and their skin.)
On opening day in Pomona, “there were still a couple of carnival rides that hadn’t been set up because of that time squeeze,” Hernandez recalled. “In 2023, we moved to opening on Friday instead of Thursday to give the carnival company an extra day.”
This year, with Cinco de Mayo on Tuesday, the fair didn’t stretch its schedule to include it. And the fair in Tucson ended April 26, giving Cammack a breather.
Those two circumstances, said Hernandez, “gave us the opportunity to go back to opening on a Thursday and having a 17-day fair once again.”
I’ll take it.
Hernandez spent an hour Monday morning showing me around the grounds and telling me about what’s new and what’s not. Look for some county fair coverage from me here in the coming weeks as time allows.
I’ve put myself on the fair beat annually since 1998. As a rural Midwesterner by birth, the downhome doings are always of interest to me. I, literally, wrote the book on the fair.
Which hardly makes me an expert. Several times Monday, Hernandez would point something out, I would ask if it’s new and she’d say, “It’s been here a few years.”
As our golf cart tour came to an end, we ran into fair consultant Lucas Rivera. (None of us were injured.) That’s when we all got into a conversation about the schedule.
“It’s great to have another day — and another full day,” Rivera declared with a smile. “Jump right into fun. ‘Let’s go have some fried turkey legs.’”
Many will say, “That sounds like a plan.”
Fair weather
There used to be a joke in late August when the already high temperature would suddenly rise 5 or 10 degrees: It must be time for the L.A. County Fair.
That joke doesn’t work in May. Milder weather is why the fair switched from late summer to spring. Monday and Tuesday were overcast and 63 degrees.
Yet I’ll note for the record that opening day is predicted to be sunny and 83.
Change in plans
Did I write here last week that I would be taking a few days off to go to Joshua Tree? As I typed those words, I was feeling a bit draggy and wondered if I was really going to make it. By the time of my planned departure two days later, a virus had knocked me out.
No way was I going to be hiking around a national park. I could barely walk around the block.
This week I’ll try again, but with a different destination: Palm Springs, site of the annual Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival on May 7-10. Until then, keep your germs to yourself, please.
Dave Mason, RIP
English singer-songwriter Dave Mason, who died April 19 at 79, performed at least twice in the Inland Empire. Mason headlined at San Bernardino’s Swing Auditorium on Jan. 24, 1975, if the internet is to be believed.
And he performed at Ontario Motor Speedway on March 18, 1978 as part of the California Jam 2 rock festival. Some 300,000 people heard him play, among other songs, his hits “Feelin’ Alright?” and “We Just Disagree.”
A rising Sun?
Arriving in San Bernardino by train one day in mid-April, I walked to lunch at a diner on E Street. On a table near the entry was a print edition of that morning’s Sun, left behind by a previous customer as a courtesy.
Having forgotten in my rush out the door to read it, I took it to my table, as if this were some previous decade. It was nostalgic.
After lunch, and before an appointment, I spent a half hour on my laptop at the Feldheym Library. As I packed up, a man at the next table had just sat down with, yes, the library’s copy of that morning’s Sun.
I congratulated him on his good taste. While the retiree used to subscribe for the youth sports, he still makes a point of keeping up with us.
“It may be a dinosaur,” he said, “but I do like reading the newspaper.”
Many do.
brIEfly
In Riverside last week, Mark and Paula Hanisee were eating at a longtime haunt of theirs, Casa Mota, where they were the only Anglos in the place. When Mark asked for the bill, he was stunned to learn that someone had paid it already — he suspects an older couple seated near them, and at whom they had smiled. “Such generosity in these dark times,” the Hanisees say by email, “struck us as a bright light for humanity.”
David Allen, a flickering bulb for humanity, writes Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, and follow davidallencolumnist on Facebook or Instagram, @davidallen909 on X or @davidallen909.bsky.social on Bluesky.