Fair forgoes familiarity

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Entertainment Writer

The four-weekend 50th State Fair returns to the Aloha Stadium beginning Thursday with a $1 preview night featuring a buck admission, buck hot dogs and buck rides. Advertiser library photo • June 1977

The diving donkey-and-cowgirl combo won't be at this year's 50th State Fair but a trio of other attractions are sure to be just as popular: a Bengal tiger show, a freaky sideshow and stomach-dropping ride called The Drop Zone. Advertiser library photo

The Hi Flyer ride is a blur of lights when it spins. Fun Pass wristbands are available for a single-day fair admission and unlimited rides. Advertiser library photo • May 1991 The 50th State Fair Opens Thursday for "$1 Preview Night," 6 p.m.-midnight Thereafter, 6 p.m.-midnight, Fridays and June 10; noon to midnight, Saturdays, Sundays and Memorial Day (May 31). Fair closes June 20. $3 adults (ages 12 and over); $2 (ages 4-11); free (ages 3 and under) Aloha Stadium parking lot 682-5767 Also: Fun Pass wristbands good for single day 50th State Fair entry and unlimited rides (except The Drop Zone) available online at www.ticketmaster.com, or by calling (877) 750-4400. Other 50th State Fair attractions: 808 Teen Zone Dance Party — Presented by KXME-FM and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, 7 to 10 p.m., May 28 and June 18, $2. KCCN-FM 100 Overdrive Live Concert — Featuring Ho'onua, B.E.T., Keahiwai, The Next Generation, 7 to 10 p.m., June 5, $5. Appearances by Kellogg's Tony the Tiger, 1 to 3 p.m., May 29; Garfield, 1 to 3 p.m., June 19, 20. Military Appreciation Day — Free entry and $5 Drop Zone rides for active duty and retired military personnel and their dependents with valid military ID, noon to midnight, Memorial Day (May 31). Pepsi Days — 50 cents entry with empty Pepsi can, noon to 6 p.m., June 6, 13, 20.

The 50th State Fair returns to its usual Aloha Stadium parking-lot home on Thursday with a lineup of guest attractions more strangely diverse than the annual food-and-ride-and-game fest has offered in some time.

And that's even counting last year's Great Ape Encounter & Chimpanzee Show, 2002's Mapapa Acrobats from Kenya, and that diving donkey and cowgirl pairing in the photo on the right.

Well, maybe not as strange as the diving donkey and cowgirl. But diverse? You betcha.

The four-weekend shebang kicks off Thursday with a $1 Preview Night featuring buck admission, buck hot dogs, buck 16-ounce Pepsi and buck E.K. Fernandez midway rides from 6 p.m. to midnight. You're on your own for those freakishly-difficult-to-win-a-giant-Pikachu game booths, though.

Oh, and those strangely diverse guest attractions we mentioned earlier? The diving donkey-and-cowgirl combo have sadly moved on to wherever diving donkey-and-cowgirl combos move on to when they retire. But a few things you might want to know about the trio of main attractions the 50th State Fair did sign up follows.

Adriatic Animal Attractions Bengal Tigers Show. It's estimated there are 200 or so white Bengal tigers left in the world, descendants of a single male captured in India in 1951. Even more of an endangered species than the 3,500 or so Bengals surviving in the wild, all Bengal whites are kept in captivity. Adriatic's show arrives with nine Bengals of four hues "playing" games of leapfrog, tug-of-war and roll-over with trainer Andy Spoyler in a gated pen surrounded by audience seats. Performing alongside Adriatic's standard (orange with black stripes) and white (brown-striped) Bengals will be a rare golden tabby (gold with cinnamon/red stripes) and even rarer snow white Bengal (white with barely visible stripes).

Adriatic's adult snow-white Bengal is one of only 20 alive. Along for the ride are Lazarus and Kampur, baby snow whites (No. 19 and No. 20 in the world, respectively) born last December. When not on the road for their maximum three 30-minute shows a day, Adriatic's Bengals live, breed and train at northern Florida's Marcan Tiger Preserve, run by 30-year tiger veterinarian Josip Marcan. Adriatic's fair shows also educate audiences about how the tigers behave in the wild and fight for survival.

Show times are 3, 7 and 10 p.m., starting May 28. All shows are free. You'll also be able to view Adriatic's tigers between shows.

John Strong's World of Wonders Sideshow. For better or worse (mostly depending on what side of the "politically correct" line one stands on), sideshows are making a comeback on the nation's carnival and fair circuit.

Once a staple of both events, the traveling "freak show" — typically featuring giants, bearded ladies, the grotesquely overweight, hermaphrodites and folks with too-many or too-few limbs — grew more and more rare at the turn of the 1960s.

Interestingly, advancements in corrective surgery, treatments and mechanical equipment that allowed people born with deformities to lead normal lives brought the shows closer to the edge of extinction, rather than any kind of nationwide rise in political correctness.

So in an era when "dare-you-to-do-this" reality shows like "Fear Factor" are crazy popular with television audiences and being PC is, uh, cool, it's hardly surprising to find current sideshows showcasing extreme physical abilities and not extreme physical deformities.

Strong's 50th State Fair performance crew includes spider girl/headless girl Patricia Meek, human blockhead/bed-of-nails sleeper/ladder of swords climber Steve Baker and rubber girl/snake girl Larain Page.

Strong himself swallows swords and eats fire.

Shows run continuously throughout the day. Entry is $2 (except on $1 Preview Night when admission, you guessed it, is a buck). Color us intrigued by the fact that you'll only get to see "snake girl" for another $1.

The Drop Zone. Having your butt free-fall 13 stories at maximum speed of 69 feet a second hold any interest to you? We thought so. The Drop Zone takes 12 seated-and-locked-in-a-gondola souls at a time slowly up a 120-foot high vertical steel tower, stops for a bit, and then without warning lets gravity take 'em back down. In a matter of seconds, pneumatic acceleration takes the gondola to .5 negative G-force (blood rushes to your head) before magnetic braking decelerates it at up to 5.5 Gs (blood rushes to your feet).

Cost to ride The Drop Zone: $10. Cost to ride The Drop Zone on Memorial Day: $5.

Comfort for other Drop Zone riders, thanks to your decision not to visit the fair's food booths beforehand: Priceless.

Reach Derek Paiva at dpaiva@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8005.