FAIR GAME : County Expositions, While Still Featuring Pie-Eating and Girdle-Lacing Contests, Are Becoming More Commercial

Tucked away in a corner of the sprawling central exhibition hall at the Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona is a quiet testimony to the origins of this annual celebration of agriculture and merry-making: four tiny booths painstakingly decorated in true homespun fashion by local Grange clubs.

This year, the San Dimas Grange--why this affluent eastern county suburb still has a Grange remains a mystery--has chosen to depict a winter camp scene, complete with an ice skater, sleigh and open-air fire. It’s a shrine to the nation’s rural roots and the pleasures of a simpler time.

Although the booths are tiny and easily overlooked, the four Grange displays stand out amid the hoopla of the nearby fudge-making exhibit, wine-tasting pavilion and other commercial clutter. They are among the last traces of what the Los Angeles County Fair--the largest fair in California and the sixth largest of the 3,238 held each year throughout the nation--used to be.

“It’s become pretty commercialized,” muses Howard Wagner, a retired school maintenance supervisor who has worked in the San Dimas Grange booth in each of the past 30 years. “When I started here, Orange Julius was the only booth in the hall that sold something. All the rest were exhibiting, mostly citrus.”

To compare this year’s fair, which closes Oct. 1, to those of three decades ago is mixing apples and oranges. The current event, whose theme is “America’s County Fair,” is big business.

And it’s getting even bigger.

Last year, the Los Angeles County Fair generated revenue of about $19.1 million, the equivalent of more than $1 million for each of the 18 days that the fair was open.

Helps Pay the Bills

And that’s just when the fair was running at full speed. Increasingly, Fairplex, as the 487-acre complex in the hills along the eastern edge of Pomona is now named, is home to a variety of special events and consumer shows during the remaining 11 1/2 months of the year.

“It doesn’t make sense for facilities of this size to sit idle and wait for fair time every year,” says Ralph Hinds, chief executive of the county fair association. “We need the other uses to help pay the bills.”

Mirroring a nationwide trend to exploit the full money-making potential of these huge complexes, last year the fairgrounds generated nearly $2.3 million in rental fees for hosting 127 events. Among them were the National Hot Rod Assn.’s Winternationals, the Winston World Finals of Drag Racing, the Mission Circuit Dog Show, the L.A. Home & Garden Show, the Western States Toy & Hobby Show and the Great Entrepreneur & Franchise Show.

There’s even more going on at Fairplex. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department uses the main parking lot--which holds a sizable portion of the complex’s 45,197 paved parking spots--for high-speed driving instruction. Technicians for Hot Rod, Car & Driver and Motor Trend magazines use the parking lot for their annual evaluations of new cars, and Mazda and Toyota engineers use it for test drives.

And even more is on the way early next year when the new, $13-million equestrian complex, designed to be the largest west of Kentucky, is completed.

The fairgrounds saw its first non-fair use during World War II, initially as a detention center for Japanese-Americans who were eventually relocated to Wyoming, and later as home to troops in the U.S. 4th Army.

The big push into year-around use began in 1982 with the $4-million renovation of the 105,000-square-foot central exhibition hall, the largest single-span building west of the Mississippi. In the ensuing years, much more has been done, including the addition of a 184-space recreational vehicle park and convenience store on the fairgrounds and a massive re-landscaping and face-lifting for the plazas encircling the central exhibition complex just inside Gate 1.

Draws Huge Crowds

Despite the increasing emphasis on year-around use of Fairplex, to most Southern Californians, the fairgrounds mean only one thing: the fair.

The Los Angeles County Fair traces its roots to a commercial and industrial show held along the Southern Pacific siding in downtown Pomona in 1921. The show proved so popular that a group of local businessmen launched a grander version the following year and called it the county fair. It has been held annually ever since, except from 1942 through 1947 due to World War II.

Last year, the fair attracted nearly 1.4 million visitors, almost equaling the record set in 1985. There were nearly 1,400 commercial booths that generated total sales of $9.3 million, including 200 or so food and beverage stands that enjoyed record sales of nearly $2.4 million.

Although no scientific study of the subject has been done, fair experts throughout the nation agree that livestock and animal exhibits are the most popular attractions at county and state fairs these days.

“There’s no other place to take kids to show them farming activities and pieces of rural life,” says Lewis Miller, executive vice president of the International Assn. of Fairs & Expositions in Springfield, Mo.

Every year, exhibits range from semi-precious gems to working bee hives to the traditional assortment of jams and jellies. Of course there is the expected complement of clowns, circus acts and fireworks. Thoroughbred racing, complete with pari-mutuel betting, runs throughout the fair.

And then there are the 900 or so contests, among the features that have gained the Los Angeles County Fair a national reputation for innovation. They include the usual competitions in pie making, cake decorating and sheep shearing, and several off-beat contests, such as girdle lacing and making home-brewed beer.

It’s these contests, exhibits and wackiness, argues Stephen Chambers, executive director of the Western Fairs Assn. in Sacramento, that capture the essence of what fairs are all about.

“It’s true that fairs have become more businesslike, and they will continue to become even more like businesses,” Chambers says. “But in the end, fairs are not about business. We’re here to celebrate everyday life and the ordinary accomplishments of people. Theme parks are businesses. We’re about people.”