Good evening, everyone:

Perhaps the biggest box-office flop of the summer was the 250 ^th -on-the-Mall-America-State-Fair in July. Sparse attendance . . . an embarrassingly sub-par Ferris Wheel . . . Potemkin Village-like construction masked up as monuments . . . boycotts/non-participation from nearly half the states . . . exorbitantly priced and difficult to locate, food . . . a stage that destroyed the Mall ’s grass . . . non-existent heat preparations. But otherwise, impressive, I guess.

It made me long for the real deal. Seems like it had a similar effect on at least one writer at Travel and Leisure Magazine .

Stacey Leasca wrote a piece in late July entitled “These Are the 5 Best State Fairs in the U.S. —and No. 1 Had Nearly 2 Million Attendees in 2025. ”Although it didn ’t in any way reference the dumpster fire on the mall, the contrast with truly extraordinary state fairs made that unnecessary.

Indeed, soulless programming and shameless superficiality have no place when you can witness the sculpting of life-sized facsimiles of the Queen of the Lakes from 90-pound blocks of butter . . . or visit barns with eighty-seven varieties of rabbits . . . or admire the finest quilters in Southwest Minnesota . . . or stroll a real midway filled with rides that threaten your lunch and schlocky games that drain your wallet in pursuit of a stuffed bear . . . or try to digest fried asparagus on a stick . . . and on and on.

And I suspect that it goes without saying that the very finest example of State Fair excellence is the Minnesota State Fair. Full disclaimer: attending that fair was a civic ritual our family observed every late-August for some 30 years.

The story is based on a survey from an outfit called Ace.com, a consumer survey analytics company; they created a list of the nation ’s major state fairs and scored each across social media hits, visitor review ratings, and affordability of different activity types.   Minnesota ranked high across each of these metrics, but stood out for its 4.7 review rating – the highest among the group. It also had an astronomical visitor profile, with nearly 2 million visits last year. In the words of Ace: “Minnesota isn't just attracting the biggest crowds; it's also the fair people are talking about the most and enjoying the most once they're there. ”

Minnesota ’s Midway is entirely overwhelming: some sixty coasters, drop towers, tilt-a-whirls, Dumbo infant rides, and other invitations to nausea, all interspersed with food stalls and win-a-stuffed-dinosaur games.

But its quirkiness – I suppose like many state fairs – lies in its reflection of – and nostalgia for – Minnesota ’s agrarian traditions.

You enter through Machinery Hill , a sprawling expanse of massive farm equipment, tractors, and machinery straight out of Mad Max: Fury Road:

Every year, the fair introduces new things to fry, skewer with a stick , and eat: Spam, pickles, and whatever this is:

There is evidently absolutely no limit to what can be knitted, woven, grown to unimaginable size, or simply displayed beautifully:

The livestock barns are filled with baby everythings – a magnet for kids:

And a surprising number of national acts end up playing the grandstand – scheduled for this year: Bonnie Raitt, Rod Stewart, Herman and the Hermits (yes, really), and TLC and Salt-N-Pepa with En Vogue:

Scary to think that that was a formative part of my upbringing.

Oh, by the way, the next four fairs-of-excellence were, in order: Iowa, Florida, North Carolina, and Washington (state).

Rip

‍