The Unfair

It was admittedly fun to get hypnotized on stage by Terry Stokes at the California State Fair last Tuesday. It's pretty amazing to be awake and asleep at the same time. Before the stage show, I visited all the exhibition halls around Cal Expo. Through the lens of the state fair I determined that California culture is largely a product of its residents being both awake and asleep at the same time, too.

That there's been a working monorail on the fairgrounds for thirty years but not a single rail line to the fairground itself is a testament to our sleepwalking into the present. There isn't a plan that I know of that envisions light rail service in the future, either. No, I have no choice but to drive my car there and fork out ten bills for the privilege of parking. Can't take the bus 'cause RT doesn't run bus service beyond 11 PM and I'd have to take two to get home, with one that runs only on the hour. We would have had to leave at 8 PM to get home.

I know that if beer were a reasonable $3.50 - $4.75 I would have patronized the many stands. Through direct retaliation I embargoed their beverages. I also went home [mostly] hungry to avoid the $11 dollar gyro plate. Eleven fucking dollars? Eight dollar beer? Please. I was willing to drop forty+ bucks that night but was so pissed at their overt gouging I enjoyed not spending my money even more. Yes, I enjoyed not spending it even more.

Foodless and beerless, I waddled through the industrial arts expo which used to be one of my favorite stops along with the farm and forest exhibits. The industrial arts displays showed just how far we've fallen from the heady days of real industry and quality workmanship. All the woodworking displays showed no attention to detail, no hand craftsmanship. The tables built by high school students were joined with pocket screws, their surfaces marred by machines. They will graduate to become producers of mass without quality...if our existing cabinet shops won't have already moved to Cambodia or Burma.

The student architectural drawings also revealed an amazing deference to the private realm. Not a single public or multi-use rendition was displayed; their dreams and ideas bore renditions of private oceanside homes or houses on stilts on the cliffs. A generation of youth destined to build cheap cabinetry to fill all those 6,000 sq ft modernist monoliths that will stand in relation to nothing but for themselves. They are sleepwalking into their futures.

Fair attendance was down, presumably due to the economy, and I spent very little because of the fair's economy and my own economic embargo of it. Every year GM prominently displays a selection of fine cars and SUVs near the entrance; I wondered how many would be sold now that the clunker offer is off the table, and I wondered why anyone with a brain would even bother, waiting of course for the next federal, state, or local automotive subsidization program to rear.

It was amazing to be both awake and asleep this year at the California State Fair.