Sunday’s column: Salem Fair a people-watcher’s paradise
Shot by Dan Thursday night at the Salem Fair
A few years back I invited a well-heeled friend and his children to join me and my kids at the Salem Fair. His face twisted into a scowl.
“Have you seen the people there?” he asked hesitantly.
Such elitist attitudes toward the 24-year-old Roanoke Valley institution are unfortunate but not uncommon, and have been spreading in recent years.
The basic complaint goes like this: It seems as if every strange-looking bumpkin within 150 miles shows up at the Salem Fair.
Mostly they come out at night, like vampires, except many are missing incisors (or other teeth).
They sport beastly tattoos, bizarre piercings and brightly dyed mohawks. Some men wear camouflage garb, even though hunting season is long past. Some women are clothed in tube tops or halters about eight sizes too small.
They are so unusual looking they might even kicked out of the world-famous Texas Tavern, which serves everybody.
Mind you, this is what snobs like my friend say. Not me.
I believe the elitists are missing out on the best people-watching experience the Roanoke Valley has to offer.
Because — let’s face it — the fair is a wonderful and wacky menagerie of humanity, more eye-popping than the paintings in the Taubman Museum of Art, and far more interesting than the slumbering animals at the Mill Mountain Zoo.
Shot by Paul G., Thursday night at the Salem Fair
No question, plenty of normal-appearing people will be among the 250,000 to 300,000 souls who will pass through the fair’s gates between now and next Sunday.
But you also see those folks walking downtown, or dining at Famous Anthony’s, or shopping at Valley View Mall. Because they’re ordinary, they fade into the summer’s background like a green leaf on a 100-foot oak.
The others stand out like streetwalkers in a Christian bookstore. And there’s a high concentration of them at the Salem Fair.
Wednesday morning, I visited the fair organizers to suggest they highlight this aspect in their promotional advertising. For years that has mostly focused on carnival rides, blue-ribbon jams and cakes, a petting zoo, racing pigs and the Abe Lincoln-act by U.S. Rep. Morgan Griffith.
“I think you’re missing a prime marketing opportunity,” I told Carey Harveycutter, lord of the Salem Civic Center and the fair. With him was John Saunders, his assistant. The fair was their idea, back around 1986.
Now, I didn’t hint a bit about what they were missing. But Harveycutter is no fool. He’s probably the smartest and most effective municipal civil servant in North America.
“Are you talking about the people who come to the fair?” he asked.
“That’s it!” I exclaimed.
Shot by Paul G. Thursday night at the Salem Fair
“They are a microcosm,” he replied with the diplomacy of an ambassador to China.
The Salem Fair draws people from a 170-mile radius that includes southern West Virginia and northern North Carolina,Harveycutter explained. He knows this because of surveys every few years.
Unlike my snobby pal, Harveycutter said he respects the folks who show up.
“We have the affluent, and the non-affluent,” he said. To his credit, not once did he use terms such as “freak,” “yahoo,” “knuckle-dragger” or the phrase, “people who look like they’ve crawled out from under a rock.”
But he did recall the words of one long-time fair T-shirt and cap vendor, a fellow named Bob Pinson, who recently died.
“You all have a higher propensity of women who wear their underwear on the outside than anywhere else,” Pinson once confided to Harveycutter.
Saunders said he already has taken baby steps toward developing my people-watching idea.
For this year’s fair, he’s installed a 24-foot sitting bench just opposite the bathrooms. This will be prime viewing territory for sure.
Like everything else, the fair is constantly changing. Of course, greasy funnel cakes are a constant, and so is overpriced cotton candy, ice cream and soft drinks, and the rides.
But this year, there are fewer carny games than in the past, Harveycutter said. And there are no sideshow booths where you can pay 50 cents to see a bearded lady or the world’s tiniest woman.
Shot Saturday at the Salem Fair by I'm not sure who
The latter, Harveycutter noted sadly, retired from the road because her husband got shot in Jamaica.
Anyway, in the subculture of carnivals, “sideshows are all but dead,” he declared.
Which is understandable, at least for the Salem Fair.
Who needs a sideshow with all the fascinating-looking people walking around who you can gawk at for free?
See you on the midway. I’ll have my eyes peeled.
July 3, 2011 - 6:00 AM
Your column made me smile, Dan. I would think however, that the sights you see at the Salem fair are no different than you would see at any southern fair. Just call it local flavor.
Because — let’s face it — the fair is a wonderful and wacky menagerie of humanity, more eye-popping than the paintings in the Taubman Museum of Art, and far more interesting than the slumbering animals at the Mill Mountain Zoo.
Gee Dan, I thought you were trying to pump up attendance at the Taubmann and the Zoo!!
Dan is putting down “elitists” while making fun of the people at the Salem Fair. Poor rural people who don’t have a lot to spend on entertainment. There are the same people who flock to Walmart on weekend nights. Dan has stated he won’t go to Walmart.
Who is the eilitist?
This looks like a picnic compared to the mouth breathing and knuckle dragging contingent that turned out for S.C.O.T.S. at First Friday’s. Big Lick’s finest on parade and proudly flying their freak flags. Truely a site to behold.
Dan, I’ve seen you in your lycra bicycle outfit. People in glass houses….just saying.
I’m sorry I missed it, Steve C.
I think some people are proud to wave their freak flag. How boring if we were all the same and all looked and dressed in one fashion. People watching is something you can indulge in most anywhere. The DMV, the mall, parades, bars, and of course “the fair”.
http://www.peopleofwalmart.com/
Just like one mans trash is another mans treasure, tackiness to one is high fashion to another.
Dan, Debbie is right or at any Wal Mart throughout the south on almost any given day! Almost as bizarre as the GC buffet line.
No way could Salem Fair’s crowd compare to the crowd I experienced last Sunday in NYC. Now they worth watching!
http://mselenaeousrants.blogspot.com/2011/07/pride-parade-2011.html
Pretty sure there are bad dressers in any given part of the country.
Lots of tattooed and pierced people too.
Just like Sandi said, you can indulge in it anywhere.
Steve@4
Yes it was quite a collection, but that’s kind of the point of SCOTS show. I took it all in from the shade of grassy knoll located conveniently between the beverage stations. Sorry I missed you. My wife and I would have enjoyed meeting you in person.
For my money, a better people watching location has to be Carowinds on hot summer day. It’s quite a thing to behold, and with the recent trend skin art and body piercing, I think it would actually rate it as odd artistic experience. Seriously though, Carowinds is the only place I’ve ever been were I saw a ten year old get whooped for crying on roller coaster.
Most people (save for the 10 year old) seemed to be having a great time though. I got a slight brain freeze from too many dipping dots at one time, but I got over it.
Great pictures, Elena. I don’t know why people say New Yorkers are rude either. My experiences have been just the opposite.
I’m proud to say I haven’t watched the RHONY this season. Every other season I’ve always gotten sucked in to watching it. Not this time and I don’t miss it.
To see Simon at a Pride parade is no surprise.
Didn’t Carowinds used to be telegangelist Jim Bakker’s Christian-themed amusement park? Where he sold timeshares to dupes who watched PTL Club for reasons other than laughs? Those folks lost millions after Old Jim put the fear of God, and some other things, into Jessica Hahn.
His place was called Heritage USA, Dan. It didn’t morph int Carowinds.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritage_USA
“The Largest Annual Gathering of Trashy White People in the Mid-Atlantic States”. Now if you want to go to a World Class trash gathering, go to the WVa. State Fair. That one is disturbing…Salem is merely funny.
Thanks Debbie…I’m still suckered into watching them all…Don’t judge me! Haha!!!
No judging from me, Elena! I watched the Beverly Hills ones and probably will when they’re on again.
This is the first year I haven’t watched the NYHW. I just got tired of them and can’t stand LuAnn or Kelly.
OK, I’ve given it over a day, and not one of you leftwingers has had a single comment over Chick Chandler’s racist comment about the “annual gathering of trashy white people”. But boy, if I had said some MLK event was an “annual gathering of trashy black people” , people like Gdad, Dave H., and others would have been all over it.
The hypocrisy in this blog is just incredible.
Regional fairs like the one Salem holds are quite interesting. They are certainly not for everyone, and especially the more elitist of the ignorant. Yet they do hold value, if only for the visual entertainment. How many people sit in their homes and watch the horrible reality shows on TV? The numbers prove that, yet the same people pretend to be ‘above’ going to a local fair because of ‘the white trash’ that attend?
County fairs, or town fairs, or whatever you wish to call them, they are fun. Maybe not worth 12 hours of fun, but they are fun. As someone above pointed out, compare the Salem Fair to a parade in somewhere like NYC or San Francisco, and you’re talking single A baseball vs. the major leagues.