The Country Fair

I know, I know, this post is way out of date. So it goes.

A few weeks ago - or was it really last weekend? - I went with friend Matt to the Oregon Country Fair.

The Country Fair has been going on for years. Close to 40, I think. Despite that, and despite the fact that it's in Veneta, which is close to where my dad grew up - and where both my parents lived for a bit - they never said anything about the country fair while I was growing up. I'd never gone, and when Matt mentioned over lunch that he wasn't going this year because he couldn't find someone to go with, I half-assedly jumped at the chance. Matt, of course, had been for several years running.

Sunday morning came, we got tickets, we left, I drove. The fair normally runs Friday-Sunday, so we were going the last day. Even so, I expecting it to be busy....I just didn't know how big the CF is.

We got there maybe 30 minutes after they opened, and there were already hundreds, if not thousands, of cars there. That was weird, though given that it's significantly out of town and people come from all over the state, I should have known better. By the time we left, there were three large fields full of cars. I'd bet there was 100+ acres of car parking. (There was also tent camping on the property.)

Matt and I went in, and wow. Genius - the place was a veritable maze of trails lined with shops, eateries and various other stalls punctuated by small and large stages, plus some other random stuff thrown in. Matt and I walked for three hours and never retraced our steps (though we did cross our path once, maybe twice). And we hardly ever left the shade of the trees. It was an absolutely brilliant design, especially compared to most other fairs and carnivals.

According to the website, the location is almost 400 acres and takes year-round care. I believe it. The stalls were mostly wood and blended in well (some even appearing to be permanent or semi-permanent), and the whole thing had the feel of something slightly magical (and no, I was not inhaling anything). Matt decided to let me lead the way, and we wandered more or less aimlessly (I never got a map, though Matt's came in handy when we were looking in vain for the exit) for a bit. Pretty soon after we got there, I saw a musical theatre performance making fun of the idea of a revolution that's too serious and doesn't allow juggling (it featured, by the way, a juggler's remix of Gangsta's Paradise - classic!).

Let me tell you, I almost died right there. It's like someone actually produced culture with my values in mind. I could have listened to that show for the next three hours and not felt like I was missing anything, I was in such a state of bliss.

Instead, we kept wondering...and wondering....and wondering. We saw a few people we knew, though not many, and Matt got a burger (there was far more meat available than I'd expected). Other than that, we just walked around for slightly over three hours, occasionally stopping to listen to a few minutes of performance or the guy who talked about the War on Drugs, or the guy who was talking about clean energy. The stalls fell mostly into the following categories: eateries, with few to no chains and almost all local food (Nearly Normal's from Corvallis was there); shops selling hand-crafted, small items, or perhaps T-shirts (there was an iron-forged goods shop, which I am to this day amazed and delighted by); stages of varying sizes, shapes, and styles for all kinds of performances; and a few stalls with services like astrology, massage, etc. And, of course, there were people at just about every major intersection playing music.

So: location, fantastic. Stalls, pretty darn good, though too oriented towards selling for me. People?

Here's where it gets odd, or at least it got odd for me.

The people were a mix of people you'd stereotypically expect to find - old, white (almost all white, by the way...what's up with that?), grizzled, topless/nude (men and women), aging or aged hippe-types, etc., but there were also a lot of folks my age who I suspect wear designer clothes during the week...they just left them at home to blend in.

This is not, oddly enough, me trying to disparage those folks. I was happy, if confused, to see so many people my age, and of a type (there was far more dyed blonde hair there than I would have expected) I wouldn't normally associate with something my family would call HippieFest. I was just surprised to see them there, and wondered why they feel the need to wear designer clothes during the week (hey, it's an expression) but also felt compelled to change their presentation for this event.

I wore a blue T-shirt and dark tan cargo shorts, and holy shit was I out of place. I needed a piercing, or tatto, or something. The beard was not enough.

The other thing I noticed about the people was the fact that they all appeared to be zombies, with the exception of the parade that came through. It was led by what appeared to be a shirtless, grizzled, bearded, hat-wearing, wand-waving sorcerer/warlock looking guy who danced the way (he was fabulous). Oh, and a dragon.

But everyone else was a zombie. This was due to at least two factors, as far as I could tell:

1) It was Sunday, and after two hot days and two nights of hard partying, people were fucking exhausted. Can't blame 'em.

2) The trails between the trees and stalls were actually kind of narrow for how many people were there. I suspect they've cultivated the place for years to create the paths they have, so I find it more likely that the number of people is hitting capacity. Still, it led everyone to sort of shuffle along between the stall like a large pack of, well, zombies.

The other thing that's still rattling around in my head is something Matt mentioned a few times: He's heard lots of folks complaining about how much the CF has changed and become more capitalistic, more selling-oriented, in the last few years. I certainly saw a lot of stalls, but with no reference point, I can't really comment much on that aspect...I will say I suspect he's right. It's awfully hard to hold a counterculture event like that without getting some bleed from the mainstream. Oh, and the tickets were $21 apiece. Multiply that by the rough figure of 100,000 visitors (supposedly the CF becomes the second-largest city in Oregon over the weekend), and you've got $2 million. Subtract volunteers from the visitors, of which there were a lot, and you've still got a ton of money.

I wonder where it all goes?

Finally, my inner sociologist couldn't stop thinking about Renaissance Fairs. A stereotypical Ren Fair is one in which people from the local community and surrounding countryside come to town to show off their talents and sell their goods. Out of this tradition have come modern carnivals, I am sure (and plausibly even theme parks). It was interesting to see something resemble a classic Renaissance Fair so closely, from the amount of green space to the hand-made nature of many of the items (there was a lot of art there) to the amazing variety of performances (juggling, musical theatre, kid's theatre both for and by kids, spoken word, bands that used electric guitars and those that didn't, traditional theatre, etc etc). It simultaneously made me glad it existed and annoyed at things like the Strawberry Festival even more.

Overall, I had a good time. It was a good experience to have, even though I really struggled to take off my damn sociologist hat, and I think if I go next year I'd like to go with W and maybe go on Friday. I'm tired, so this post is ending here. Good night.