It's filled with fat people eating unashamedly, the only place in the wild this happens.
It's the only place in Minnesota, which lacks real public transportation, where all social classes and ethnicities and geographies mix freely.
There are lots of pigs and goats. There are also lots of cows and horses and sheep, but I find those dumb, and two of them are so big they're scary. Pigs and goats, however, are smart and you can tell they have a sense of humor, so it's nice to mingle with them.
If you want to see it, you have to walk.
It's the only mass event left that isn't openly orchestrated and exploitative. Baseball games used to be like that, back around the time the Dodgers left Brooklyn.
It allows everyone to be a low-life, to wallow unashamedly in tastelessness and ugliness, and then to find joy in the wallowing.
It's way too hot and there's no way to air-condition it, so that for a few hours we have to give up our insane desire to master the planet.
New York, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston, and all the other hip places don't have anything like it, which provides a rare opportunity to count your blessings.
Everyone can eat like a fat person and do so unashamedly.
The people watching and the animals penned up inside the barns aren't all that different, you're right. They just use a bigger fence for the people.
ReplyDeleteIMO, the fair and its scary foods do exploit the worst in Minnesotans. They bring out that provincialism that leads us to believe we're any different (or better) than our neighbors to the west, east and south.
To the north, of course, is Canada. We ARE better than those yahoos. Except when it comes to health care and just about everything else.