Arizona State Fairgrounds, Phoenix
22nd September, 2023

Much like the Renaissance Fair, the Arizona State Fair is something which we feel like doing only about once every five years. And by the end of the day, we have usually remembered exactly why we are such rare visitors. But it’s still an experience, and as such, deserves to be documented. It is certainly part of Arizona history, the State Fair dating back to well before there even was a state. It began in 1884, as the Arizona Territorial Fair, and has taken place on its current location since 1905, which is positively the dawn of time historically, by the state’s standards. There have been various interruptions since for wars, pandemics (both Spanish Flu and COVID-19) and economic depression, but the event is now a fixture in the calendar for October.

What the fair entails has mutated over time, however. Its formal title includes the word “Exposition”, and this was originally a more significant element, as were the agricultural exhibits. The latter are still a factor, with things like quilting competitions, but you have to look quite hard for these. The great bulk of visitors these days are not there to learn about the latest innovations in farming, or to compete in the production of jams and jellies. They are there to enjoy the entertainment, ride the rides and eat ridiculously unhealthy food. Last year, close to 1.4 million people came through its gates during the 23 days it was open. That’s an awful lot of candy floss and violently disorienting carnival rides.

Our attendance this year was misguided. A comedian friend told us he was headlining the fair. The reality was a bit different: he was headlining a performance in the back yard of a friend’s house near the fair. We had bought tickets to it by this point, so will be submitting a strongly-worded email with a request for reimbursement. Still, it having been the requisite five years or so since our last visit, we decided we might as well use them. Our attendance were in line with the three areas outlined above, so let’s break down what was on offer in each of them.

The entertainment

The fair has on occasion had good concerts, with headliners playing at the Arizona Veteran Memorial Coliseum, a 15,000 seat venue in the grounds. General Admission to these shows was included in your ticket, and there have been some decent acts. We’ve seen the B-52’s, while the Pet Shop Boys played there in 2006. But this year, the only name we recognized on the schedule was Violent Femmes. We are clearly old and out of touch with kids and their music. They did have a good schedule of tribute bands on the smaller stages, which is a genre we’ve been getting into of late [resulting from our Abba-fandom] Tonight’s was a reasonably convincing AC/DC tribute called Riff Raff. Faux versions of Queen, The Rolling Stones and Michael Jackson will be appearing later in the season.

During my first trip, back around 2002, I remember they had some rather more questionable exhibits, of the old-school carnival nature. I guess the alleged “World’s Biggest Horse” was at least in keeping with the agricultural origins, and it was undeniably a large unit. The excruciatingly obese guy sitting on a chair in the middle of a tent, while you walked round him, seemed a bit dubious even for those days. Chris thought she had discovered a throwback to those days, but was disappointed to find out that “quarter midget racing” actually involves automobiles. We also discovered that Monster Trucks are painfully loud, even when sitting some distance outside the arena in which they are whizzing around.

The rides

There are three categories of rides at the fair, which can be divided up, based on Chris’s reaction to them.

• Nope.
• Hell, nope.
• Fuck me sideways with a rusty cheese-grater nope.

Again, this may be a result of our advancing years, but it seems like the closer I get to death, the less willing I am to engage in behaviour which could accelerate the process of meeting it. A sense of my imminent demise and being reminded about the tenuousness of my mortality, is no longer my idea of “fun”. It’s too close to the feeling I experience when I wake up in the morning. This applies doubly so to temporary constructions which were likely assembled by people called Billy-Bob and Jose, whose technical qualifications are uncertain, shall we say. Though at least these were not manually powered by Mexicans, as was a Ferris Wheel actually experienced by Chris in Rocky Point.

But I was still reminded of the James Webb Space Telescope, which had 344 single points of failure. Some of these looked like they were basically one gigantic point of failure, and apparently sponsored by the Final Destination franchise. I’ll just leave this diabolical mechanical device here – though a GIF can’t quite do it justice, since you are unable to hear the screams of those being tortured. Oh, yeah, and paying for the privilege too. Doing the math, about $7.50 per person per near-death experience. Nah, I’m good. I have better things on which to spend my pocket money. Which brings us nicely to…

The food

Yeah, this is why we come. And, yet, this is also why we always leave disappointed. Because a lot of the food here is the kind which seems awesome in theory, but underwhelms in practice. Now, I am Scottish, a nation which has never found a foodstuff, which could not be improved by coating in batter and frying it. Need I say more than “deep-fried Mars bar”? The state fair goes along similar lines, treating in this way cheesecake, Twinkies and any small children left unclaimed at the end of the previous night. I went for the deep-fried Oreos, complete with powdered sugar and chocolate syrup (above). But it wasn’t the confection made in heaven I was expecting. There was just too much batter, which didn’t taste of anything much, during the long march between the sugar and the Oreo at the centre.

Slightly more successful, as far as I was concerned, were the efforts to do interesting things with bacon. Mind you, you can’t go wrong with bacon, can you? [Well, hardly ever] I enjoyed the bacon-wrapped sausage, though opinion was sharply divided on the Bacon Bombs, which were pieces of cheese wrapped in bacon and then fried. I liked them. On biting into one of these greasy morsels though, Chris pulled a face which, on the ride scale outlined above, probably came in slightly above “Hell, nope.” But like everything else at the fair, where even a domestic beer would set you back $12, it was considerably overpriced. I did not have a comfortable night thereafter either. The combination of foodstuffs, united only by their complete lack of nutritional value, rattled around my digestive tract like the ball return at a bowling alley.

We eventually left around 2 1/2 hours after arriving, so I guess we got decent value out of the $15 admission tickets. Though by the time you add on the cost of parking., food and drink, we had spent over a hundred bucks, even without going on any rides, and been left with nothing but indigestion to show for it. If I don’t see another deep-fried Oreo for… oh, five years or so, I think I’m fine with that.