Red River Exhibition

[plonq]

We went to the fair on Friday night. This time around I decided to forego the rides and simply went along to enjoy the atmosphere. As you can tell from many of the pictures the crowds were fairly small, but the midway was far from vacant. We spent about 6 hours, leaving just around midnight as things were starting to wind down. These events seem to have a life and mind of their own. When we first arrived, it was an enticing, if gaudy bordello of delicious smells, bright colours and cheery music. The smell of mini doughnuts, corn dogs and cotton candy and other sugary treats permeated every corner of the midway like a tawdry cologne. By the end of the night the fair let us know that it was time for us to leave. The cheery music was now just a dissonant cacophony that hurt the ears. One's eyes were no longer drawn to the bright colours, but to the places where the colour was missing; a light that was burnt out here, or a bank of lights there that were flashing in the wrong sequence. The smell of the fair had become an unpleasant mix of hot metal, rancid corn dogs and vomit.

We were all funned out and it was time to go. Fortunately I got pictures.

A hungry llama gladly relieves atara of a proffered cone. I doubt that any of these animals are starving, but you would hardly know it from the song and dance they give you when you show up bearing food. What llama wants, llama gets.

pierrekrahn gives us a sense of scale for this vehicle. According to the Pierre-O-Meter, it's pretty friggin' large.

Once again pierrekrahn shows that he is not shy in front of a camera. Here he's giving us his impression of Captain Canola crossed with Kali. If this canola looks unusually muscular to you it's because he's been genetically modified by those crafty folk at Monstanto.

Some more GM canola zaniness, brought to you by dronon and bloofoxtales.

pierrekrahn loves this ride a little too much.

Just watching this ride made my stomach do nasty things. I can't remember what this one was called - Fireball, or some pretentious name like that. If I was naming rides, I'd call this one something like, "The Spinny Vomitron."

I'm torn over which is more hideous - the bad religious art with such titles as "Madonna and Child on Black Velvet", or the scary stuff they employ at carnivals. Words escape me for how bad this art is - and this is just a typical example. I'd like to say that it lost something in the photograph, but it's actually improved for the loss of detail.

I would comment on dronon's manic expression, but I suspect I get the same evil gleam every time I get behind the wheel of a car. Of all the rides I missed, this is the one for which I most envy them. I really like bumper cars.

You could feel the energy levels starting to drop as the midnight hour approached. It became common to see almost as many people sitting as walking.

These little lemonade stands were pretty ubiquitous. Here you can see pierrekrahn and dronon partaking of its wares to offset some of the dehydration that was setting in on us all. The lemonade was not cheap, but it was pretty good. Oddly enough, the best lemonade I got at the fair was from one of the corn dog vendors. Best I've had in years.