By Mark David Blum, Esq.

So, it finally started. I went to the fairgrounds and put my sweet feet down on the spittle slicked tarmac and meandered about. The 2008 Great New York State Fair has broken ground and is gluing, taping, and stapling itself together while we sleep.

First, I must give a kudos to Dan-the-Man for putting an agricultural display to welcome visitors. Yepper, you too can have a picture of your face taken in place of various critters. No doubt this welcome is far more ‘State Fair-ish’ than Yolanda Vega. Visitors are finally greeted with what is sposed to be the real experience.

My money says that the movement of the wine courts to three separate spots will be chaos to control. Unless there are no more restriction movements, holding the winos in the their cages is going to be rougher than it looks on paper.

Last year I was pleased to see that the Fair has removed Fucillo and the 2 dozen spa companies from overwhelming the center court. Today, I am sad to report … the cars and the spas are back. When I was getting my 2008 NYS Fair Pin, I witnessed tractor trailers moving the wrong vehicles into the center court. It looks like another huuuuuuge mess.

So how does a nobody like me get into the fairgrounds in the days leading up to the Fair? It is simple: Ask a cop. Whenever I get stopped while trying to get my truck inside the fairgrounds, some donut chompin in a uniform stops me and asks where I am going, At first I laugh as though the last place I want to be is walking around in all that sputum. Then the cop asks where I am going to park. I tell him I have several hundred thousand dollars in cash to deliver to a vendor. He asks the name and I give him the name of a vendor who has been gone from the Fair for four years now. Acting like he and Cpt Matt are old buddies, I am welcomed into the grounds.

Let us hope and pray for a Fair unlike any other. Let us be the ones they talk about for generations.