When I created this website just prior to the 2018 Minnesota State Fair, the concept seemed so certain as to almost be formulaic: at the end of each summer, the annual Great Minnesota Get-Together would happen like clockwork, and with each passing year there would be a cavalcade of new foods, attractions, exhibits, and entertainment to discuss. With so many choices to be made about one’s Fair experience, this site could help newcomers and experienced fairgoers navigate their options. What began as writing exercises turned into a full-fledged hobby and a helpful resource that was beginning to pick up steam. Big things were planned for Fairly Unbalanced, and my passion for the best 12 days of summer was growing to new levels.
Then, the world stopped.
The decision to cancel the 2020 Minnesota State Fair, only the sixth cancellation in history and the first in 74 years, halted what seemed like an unstoppable force. While the Fair is notable for its changes year to year, generation to generation, the tradition of it being held in some form has been a constant. Despite knowing of the previous cancellations, well before my time, they seemed like relics of the past, a primitive era where the Fair was popular but not nearly the money-making juggernaut it had become. However, as the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic proceeded and the scope of cancellations and adjustments to everyday life became known, speculation on the possibility of a Fair in 2020 went from cautiously optimistic to clearly doubtful, leading to the announcement of the cancellation formally on May 22nd, 2020.
For us Fair fanatics, it felt like a piece of our heart had gone missing, but it was unequivocally not only the correct decision, but the only decision. In the prepared statement published by the Minnesota State Fair regarding the cancellation, a quote was included from a Fair fan, stating that “if there’s no fair this year, it’s because they love us and want to see EVERYone next year.” As public health conditions improved and we collectively began to figure out how to bring back some elements of life safely, a series of drive-through Fair experiences were held, easing the blow of the disappearance of our end of summer tradition. When vaccines began to be distributed and numbers of cases eased, it was a ray of hope that 2021 would be different and 2020 was an aberration.
Then, our divide widened.
There is no way to state what has happened without pointing fingers, no way to tell the story of how our hope for a return to normalcy has diminished without casting blame on a specific subset of people. Public health and safety should never be made political and adherence to basic scientific principles should be standard, but there are nihilists in our society that believe otherwise. Their blatant disregard for themselves and their community, and indeed for the greater good of humanity entirely, has erased so much of the hope many of us were feeling for brighter days ahead.
This is not to say that we should return to our lives of total isolation experienced in the earliest days of this pandemic — ingenuity in so many fields over the last several months has led to a more sound way of doing everything we once loved, but SAFELY. People have returned to offices, schools, places of worship, restaurants, public events, sporting events, concerts, and so much more; each facet of our lives returning with adjustments to protect safety. The results are clear: where proper protocols are in place, we are succeeding at limiting the spread of this virus; where little or no care has been taken to protect people, the virus spreads and a clear liability is identified.
For organizers of many events, both local to the state of Minnesota and elsewhere, the answer for how to navigate this post-lockdown era is clear: require a full vaccination or a negative COVID test to attend. This restriction will limit the number asymptomatic individuals afflicted with this virus attending to manageable levels, making the risk of spread negligible. Whereas the Fairgrounds is a vast and varied locale that would make mask requirements unimaginable to enforce, restricting access to those vaccinated or with a negative test is the only reasonable way to protect the safety of the Fair and its attendees and employees.
While the Fair likes to tout itself as a place where people of all stripes can come and share something in common with each other, and they are correct to hold that claim as it is one of the most wonderful aspects of this yearly tradition, attendance to the Fairgrounds is not now and never has been an unimpeachable right, but a privilege. This has been evident by the realities of limitations to attendance based on financial, racial, physical ability, and other grounds, both historically and at present. To grant this privilege this year to only those who have taken active measures to protect themselves and others would be not only reasonable and in line with previous policies, but it is a moral responsibility for the Minnesota State Agricultural Society, the organizers of the Fair.
Regretfully, today the Minnesota State Agricultural Society has released to the public its Health Guidance for this year’s Fair, which contains no requirement for vaccinations, negative COVID tests, or even bare minimum requirements for masking. Through their inaction, the Fair organizers have buried their heads in the sand and attempted to wash their hands of any responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of visitors they will receive beginning next week, a shocking and tone-deaf move after their more careful and measured approach throughout 2020 and earlier this year. To be clear, attending this year’s Fair without the protection of a vaccine will put a person at incalculable risk of contracting the COVID virus; doing so with knowledge that other attendees are not required to have recently tested negative or be vaccinated themselves adds to this risk greatly. This purposeful decision to plead for attendees to “do the right thing” is unconscionable; how the Fair can expect the general public to look out for others when their own executives plainly did not is asinine.
Now, we have to make difficult choices.
This is hardly the first controversy to embroil the Minnesota State Fair, nor will it be the last. The reality of holding an event year after year, decade after decade, that encompasses so much of our state and the people within it means it has always and will always have new challenges to address. The unencumbered success of the Fair and continued growth was an example that, time and again, they were capable of making a metered decision that was as equitable as possible and worked toward progress and resolution.
What they will find with this year’s decision to disregard public health is that a significant portion of avid Fairgoers will sit this year out, choosing to “do the right thing” for themselves and others in response to the failure to do so at an organizational level by the Minnesota State Agricultural Society. The year-by-year growth they have enjoyed, leading them to record profits and capital improvements, will be stifled — likely just for one year, but perhaps for quite some time. A variety of pressures are acting upon the Fair, and the reality is that once you lose support of portions of the public, it is very difficult to regain those individuals. While I think the Fair has proven itself to be resilient, I fear that as a result of this decision we are at the dawn of a new era where the Fair no longer holds the prominence and near-universally beloved status it once enjoyed. They have shot themselves in the foot, and some will not stand by to watch them patch the wound.
On a personal level, I have been weighing this all heavily for several weeks. I am clearly disappointed that the appropriate measures are not being taken for the good of all visitors to the Fair. On the other hand, the Fair has become such a part of my personal identity, and has become something I have counted on for my own personal mental health. My passion for this event cannot be understated. I have attended every year of my life, including as a newborn at less than a month old in 1988, and counting the drive-through experience in 2020 that was as close as one could come in the most bizarre year yet. The idea of voluntarily sitting this year out causes me tremendous anguish, especially after the “missed” year we have just emerged from where so much of what I enjoy was stripped away entirely. During 2020, I boasted to others that once the Fair returned next year, I would attend all 12 days to “make up for lost time” and the more reasonable amount of days I attend in a typical year.
Had the right steps been taken in today’s announcement, I could whole-heartedly endorse anyone with the bravery to visit all 12 days of the Fair. For now, that level of commitment (and obsession) must be saved for a future year. I will be attending the 2021 Fair, but only because I have been fully vaccinated, and will nonetheless be wearing a mask at all times, indoors and outdoors, and receive COVID testing before and after my attendance. Because of all these measures I must take in lieu of sensible policies from the Fair, I will not attend as often as I do in a typical year.
Unfortunately, what this means for this website is that I cannot reasonably provide reviews of new Fair foods in 2021. To locate, order, photograph, taste, and write about the dozens of new offerings each year requires several all-day visits and a considerable amount of effort by one person, which is just not possible this year. To review some and not others seems unfair, and with limited time to enjoy the Fair this year I also do not want to devote a significant portion to the work required to maintain and create content for this website. Furthermore, in a period where so many businesses and individuals are struggling, criticizing their livelihood seems unnecessarily cruel at this time. I am also suspending content about the daily schedules and news stories that come up throughout the Fair, due to a lack of time and passion.
Soon, this will all be better.
This website is clearly not going away. While it has remained dormant for over a year as I was paralyzed of my ambition to write or even really think about a Minnesota State Fair that seemed impossibly far from its best days, I have now renewed the website’s hosting and domain name twice through the uncertainty. Last year, I made the decision to put the money behind this site knowing it would serve no purpose until at least 2021; this year, I put the money behind this site optimistic that this year’s Fair would be a triumphant return. Like so many things, we must be patient on that triumph, but I know that day is coming. When it does, Fairly Unbalanced will be more than ready to celebrate it and return to form.
If you choose to attend this year’s Fair, please heed all sensible advice and take all available precautions for yourself, your friends and family, and your fellow Minnesotans. This is a state of great civic pride, a place where we consider ourselves to be so much nicer to others than gristlier locales, and this is the most important time to prove that to be true. Despite my anger at the decisions made, I do not want to be proven right and see the Great Minnesota Get-Together become the Great Minnesota Super-Spreader. If this year’s Fair is a success, it will be because visitors came and enjoyed themselves and did not go home with any unwanted “souvenirs,” and the capability to make that happen now falls on us, the attendees. If you choose to sit this year out, I earnestly yearn for future years where we can all enjoy the 12 best days of summer safely.
Fairly Unbalanced 