June 08, 2007
View From Lodi, CA: A Sure Sign Of Summer: The San
Joaquin County Fair Opens
By Joe Guzzardi
The
San Joaquin County Fair, one of northern
California’s premier events since it first began in
1860, opens on June 14th and goes through
June 24th.
Every summer, when out-of-state friends come to visit
me in June, I take them to the San Joaquin County Fair.
I want them to see what California is really about.
Most Easterners, when they think of California,
imagine Hollywood and San Francisco. Little do they
know that those two cities have nothing to do with the
real California. A day at the Fair proves my point
without me having to say a word.
Among the programs that most impress my tinhorn
friends are the ones aimed at educating young
prospective farmers.
The
Ag Education program offers hands-on learning about
the water cycle, hydroponics and worm composting. Trust
me, once you get into composting, you’ll never look at
your garbage the same way.
For the
Future Farmers of America (FFA)—motto: “Learning
to Do, Doing to Learn, Earning to Live, Living to
Serve”— and
4-H members, the Fair hosts a Junior Livestock
Auction where students present their projects that
demonstrate scientific agricultural practices and sound
business management. The objective is to obtain fair
market prices for their end product. The challenge for
today’s farmers, as the students learn, is to make a
profit.
The Fair, which normally draws about 200,000 people,
always puts on a great event with something for
everyone.
Every night free concerts featuring name entertainers
are presented on the main stage. Among the most notable
this year are
Frankie Valli, whose career with the Four Seasons,
is relived in the Broadway smash hit, “Jersey
Boys,” and the classic rock and roll band
REO Speedwagon.
Despite the festive atmosphere that always surrounds
the Fair, this year it faces a serious challenge. Horse
racing, which celebrates it Diamond Jubilee in Stockton
in 2007 and is one of the Fair’s biggest draws and its
greatest source of income, is under pressure from the
California Horse Racing Board and the
Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association to up
its attendance or lose racing altogether.
Typically, fair patrons wager between $300,000 and
$500,000 over the ten-day period. That generates about
$1 million of the Fair’s $4.5 million budget.
But the racing board is looking for more, although it
has not specified how much more. One of the reasons
that racing has not done as well in the past as hoped
for, said Fair director Mitch Slater, is because of
overlapping—that is, more than one California venue at a
time offering racing.
This year, for the first time since 1988, races at
the Fair will not compete with Bay Meadows or Golden
Gate. And Slater thinks this gives the Fair a good shot
at getting the increased attendance that the Racing
Board insists upon.
As an added attraction, the Fair is trying to lure
the all-time record winning jockey
Russell Baze to Stockton as a further inducement to
racing fans.
Should the Fair not measure up to the racing board’s
expectations, the consequences could be grim. If the
Fair loses racing, the track might have to be sold or
leased. And the Fair might have to relocate and/or
change its dates. All of this will be the subject of a
discussion at a July board of director’s retreat.
As someone who has regularly attended the Fair since
I moved to
Lodi in 1986 and who has participated in the
“Foods and Confections” exhibits—with, I will
add immodestly, a good deal of success—I would hate to
see any wholesale changes in the Fair as we have come to
know and love it.
Get out and support the San Joaquin County Fair.
Whether or not you know anything about horses, stop in
to watch a few races.
What could be better than sitting in the fresh air
and watching the world’s most magnificent animals speed
around the track?
Joe Guzzardi [email
him], an instructor in English
at the Lodi Adult School, has been writing a weekly
column since 1988. It currently appears in the
Lodi News-Sentinel.
