balaams_ass blog

Gum Ball Bandits

The Great New York State Fair is happening. Visiting is a wonderful experience that for me would be an every four or five year event however for my wife it is an every year event so of course it is for me too. There is almost too much to do there. Go out and rent the movie State Fair and you'll have no real clue what the Great New York State Fair is like but at least you'll be entertained for a few hours. My favorite thing at the fair is Dippin Dots which has been the official Ice Cream of the future for the last 15 years or so. A frozen confection that delights my tongue and contributes to the expansion of my waistline.

A really neat feature of the fair happens before you get to the fair. It's called parking. The officials do a great job trying to help normally intelligent people park. All to no avail. If you drive west down route 690 to the fair grounds parking you'll see at least 4 of those temporary, huge "you'd better read this or else" type signs. You know the ones I mean, the words are made up of yellow lights at night and yellow dots during the day. They are on trailers that are propped up on cider blocks with the wheels taken off so no one steals the sign or the wheels. If you're still in the dark here's doctored picture of one.



Anyway as you can see in the respresentation above these signs proudly announce "USE 2 LANES". Nobody does..... Everyone heading to the fair assumes these signs are not put there for them even though they only exist during the fair and like lemmings headed for the cliff they all move to the very right lane and back up traffic for miles. Myself being slightly above average intelligence drive up the unused left lane and park and get my Dippin Dots long before those in the right lane even realize they're inching forward for no reason and all the while wondering why they didn't go to the bathroom before they left.

We took a few pictures of oddities at the fair. Here's a gum ball machine in the busiest building at the fair, the Center of Progress Building. Note the sign on the machine ?



Maybe a rash of gumball theft ? I like the RED ones the best and have been known to put a quarter in and while spinning the handle chant "c'mon red one, c'mon red one, c'mon red one."

ba

posted by balaams_ass @ 2:33 PM