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Archive for the ‘fair’ Category

Traveler: Amusements of America & BBQ on a Stick at Coastal Carolina Fair

Posted in Events, fair, Food, Travel, tagged Amusements of America, Coastal Carolina Fair, deep-fried barbecue on a stick, Derek Porter, fair food, food on a stick, Hanna Raskin, South Carolina on November 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Amusements of America at the Coastal Carolina Fair in Ladson, South Carolina. October 30-November 9, 2014. Photo via Coastal Carolina Fair Facebook

Fair season is in full swing in the Southeast with the 11-day Coastal Carolina Fair in South Carolina’s Charleston County wrapping up this weekend. Amusements of America has played the fair for over 50 years and this year’s midway boasts 65 rides including such thrillers as the Crazy Mouse, Banzai, Space Roller and Tornado.

Check out the new fair foods reviewed by Hanna Raskin, food critic for the Post & Courier, who liked the deep-fried barbecue on a stick enough to consider ordering it for an off-fairgrounds lunch. Concessionaire Derek Porter’s Eastern Carolina whole hog barbecue is saturated with vinegar, a flavor that stands out in the Coastal Carolina Fair’s sea of sugar and salt, Raskin writes. “The barbecue is encased in sweet hushpuppy batter, which fries up impressively free of grease.”

Also on the new foods menu at the fair–Netterfield’s Frosted Flake chicken tenders-on-a-stick and Prowant’s Specialties’ deep-fried Sugar Daddy and pumpkin funnel cake with cream cheese icing.

Next week, A of A heads to the November 11-16 Okefenokee Fair in Waycross, Georgia.

Photo via Coastal Carolina Fair Facebook

Traveler: Kirkcaldy Links Market, Europe’s Largest Street Fair

Posted in Amusement ride, fair, Travel, video, tagged funfair, Kirkaldy Links Market, Scotland, Showmen's Guild of Scotland, street fair on April 17, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Taylors of Edinburgh Funfair at Kirkaldy Links Market, Europe’s Longest Street Fair

“For most of us it’s the start of the season,” says a showman in this 1983 video of Scotland’s Kirkcaldy Links Market, Europe’s largest street fair. This year’s fair opened on Wednesday and runs through April 21st. The nearly mile-long midway along the Esplanade in Kirkcaldy, Fife, has over 130 rides as well as sideshows, games and food stalls.

A trader’s market has been held annually on the Links of Abbotshall since 1304. Some of the showmen, estimated to number over 1,000, have played the fair for generations. If a spot opens up, the Showmen’s Guild of Scotland assigns the location.

Westchester County Fair Mementos

Posted in fair, history, tagged Bicycle merry-go-round, Conklin Shows, fair, Library of Congress, photograph, Westchester, Westchester County Fair, Yonkers on August 10, 2009| 2 Comments »

Parking permits from the last years of the Westchester County Fair. Photo © Tricia Vita/me-myself-i via flickr

The ride trailers parked behind Nathan’s in Coney Island came out of storage and still have the 1996-2002 parking permits for the Westchester County Fair. It’s a sad reminder of a fair that was cancelled in 2003 due to the construction of video lottery terminals at the Yonkers Raceway. Today the Raceway’s Empire Casino has 5,300 video slot machines which operate year round. The fading parking permits made me feel nostalgic for the county fair that never came back. I’m not the only one. The fair has a Facebook fan page with 3,712 fans and a recent discussion thread “who wants the fair back?”

Conklin Shows played the Westchester County Fair for as far back as I can remember. It was one of Amusement Business’s top 50 fairs. An AB article about the fair’s cancellation noted Conklin “posted a record $1.5 million gross for the 2002 fair, which came in at No. 38, up four spots, in AB’s 2002 list of top fairs.” Yet I could find only a few ride photos on flickr, here and here. Perhaps because the demise of the fair predates the rise of flickr! Does anyone have any memories or photos of the fair they’d like to share?

The president of Yonkers Raceway, who happens to be the same person who brought in the video gambling, is credited with starting the Westchester County Fair & Exposition in 1981. It was billed as “the first complete county fair in the New York metropolitan area in more than 30 years.”

George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress)

According to the Yonkers Historical Society, an earlier incarnation of the Westchester County Fair existed in 1888 on 50 acres at Tarrytown Road and Hillside Avenue…

“Here was a rack track—one of the best half–mile tracks in the country—bordered by a grandstand holding 3,000. Besides displays of cattle, pigs, needlework, fruits and vegetables, great tents held cowboy shows, bicycle races and baby shops; balloon ascensions were among the special events. The fair was climaxed by the Westchester County Ball, held at the Verein hall at Chicken Island. Six special trains brought the merry–makers to Yonkers.”

No mention of amusement rides, but I recall some wonderful old photos of a Bicycle Merry-Go-Round, sideshows and games in the Library of Congress Photo Archive.