Stan Geiger

Fair Numbers Blow

When I was a young lad, the Tulsa State Fair was an annual event that people looked forward to and got excited about. But now it seems the powers that be have managed to render it FUBAR.

KOTV is reporting the fair drew a little over 800,000 visitors this year. That’s down, they say, 9 percent in a year-over-year comparison. But it’s down a lot more than that if you go back further in time. I can certainly recall reports of the fair drawing well over a million visitors during its run.

Why?

Bell’s Amusement Park’s ouster is part of the problem. Bell’s added to the experience; it provided things the fair’s midway didn’t. Zingo would be at the top of the list. A traveling road show can’t come into town with a gigantic roller coaster.

Money is another element. I saw a KOTV report in which messages from viewers were shown. One of them mentioned $10 for a turkey leg and $6 for a soda pop. I didn’t hit the fair this year, so I don’t know. But I really hope those numbers were exaggerated just a bit.

I do know what I spent on my last visit to the fair in 2007. I went alone and did very little. I parked for free. Free parking, according to one news report I saw this year, is in short supply these days. I paid for admission. I ate a corndog and some fried gator on a stick. I drank four or five Oklahoma water beers. Aside from that, I spent a couple of hours talking to Lori Fullbright at KOTV’s booth. That part of the trip was free. I dropped about $40---not counting the gas money for the commute.

I set myself to wondering what might have been this year. I mean what if I had a wife and, say, three kids, I had to pay for parking, pay to admit five, pay to buy some of that fabulous fair food for five, pay for five to ride rides and/or play games? Good Lord, I could have easily dropped $500 for a couple of hours of entertainment before I even knew what hit me. That’s just silly.

My sister and brother-in-law were in town over the weekend. My brother-in-law met up with an old friend he has known since high school. This fellow has lived here his entire life and has been a yearly visitor to the fair. He went this year. He says he has no plans of ever returning. He said it sucked.

One of the things he referenced was the lack of a midway. He said things were just splattered around. He didn’t seem to like the concept.

I noticed a distinct lack of local media interest this year. In years past, when the fair was in town it dominated the local TV news. There were live reports nightly. In some instances, stations would do entire newscasts from the fair. This year, I saw little in the way of fair reporting. I don’t know about all stations, but KOTV didn’t even bother to put up a booth.

In the rare instance when I saw a live fair report, I saw no crowd in the background. I saw a few people wandering around, but no crowd. One of the things that used to leave me spent after a visit to the fair was fighting the crowd. Dude, you had to play the role of running back, ducking and dodging up one side and down the other, in the old days.

Millions in tax money have gone into the fairgrounds in recent years. Everything has been renovated or rebuilt. And yet the main event the fairgrounds hosts on an annual basis is going down the crapper because it becomes more expensive and less entertaining with each passing year.

Is there a lesson to be learned here?

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