Minnesota State Fair Sure Has Changed

Yep, it's Fair Time again in St. Paul, and thousands of folks will drop big bucks for a day of fun and culinary adventure. My wife and I went to the fair last year, for the first time in many years. After parking and paying admission, we were already out $32 and hadn't even done anything yet. Dave Strandberg talks about the walloping your wallet takes on his blog on this site. What shocked me as much as the expense of everything, were the changes.

I loved the fair when I was a kid; espcially the Midway. The Midway is now quite small and politically correct. No more Club Lido with the "exotic" dancing girls, no exhibits of rats from the sewers of France that were said to be the size of horses, fewer spook houses and....no more freak shows! I guess I shouldn't be suprised about the freak show's demise in these hyper-sensitive times, but that was always one of my favorite parts of the fair.  Some were real, some were fake, but it was fun.

We did go to the sideshow last year, but it was a letdown. "Bat Girl" turned out to be a woman with bat wings that looked like they were made from black Glad Bags. "Spiderwoman" was a stuffed cloth spider body on a box with a woman sticking her head through a hole and several other gimmicks. It didn't help that the same 3 or 4 people were portraying these "mistakes of nature". That pop-eyed guy wasn't even there. No Lizard Man, Lobster Boy, Rubber Man, etc. Just cheap tricks and worn out props. I still kinda liked it, though