Goin' to the Fair
County fairs have wrapped up for the most part around the region. They are a great opportunity for the community to come together, to highlight achievements and provide windows into one another’s lives. The fair has an element of torture for some. I don’t mean the anticipation of its approach or the anxiety that some fungus will spoil a prize pumpkin. I mean an annually renewed realization that one has been irreversibly ear-wormed. A 2008 article in the Northern Express explains how an advertisement for the Northwest Michigan Fair spread like wildfire (‘went viral,’ in newspeak) in the late 1980s. The very creative television advertisement included a jingle that was also frequently, for years, rebroadcast over FM radio. The fair, once held right in the heart of Traverse City, was relocated 5 miles south of town in the early 1970s. The relocation and growth of other summer events in the area led to flagging fair attendance and troubled finances. Rick Coates, then a newly hired fair ma