First Friday Fair Findings, From Frolicking Former Flack

Every year there’s an iconic item that’s free or cheap at the State Fair and it seems everyone you see on Dan Patch Avenue or Underwood Street has it.

It might be yard sticks or pig-ear hats or WCCO bags.

Last year, it was purple University of St. Thomas fabric bags. Big enough to hold all your fair loot and strong enough to carry home those ginzu knifes or the miracle blender or the wooden carving you just had to have. But those purple bags were available only in the mornings most days, because the good university, (full disclosure, it’s my alma mater) could afford to give out only 6,250 a day and most days they were gone long before noon.

So imagine the journalistic shock I experienced Thursday at 6 p.m., when people were flooding out of the Education Building with those same purple bags.

Inquiring minds want to know: Did they order more this year? With their big business school now enrolling budding CEOs on the Minneapolis campus, maybe they’d finally picked up on the law of supply and demand. Not exactly.

more inside

Mary Fisher, an assistant marketing guru at UST, said they’ve got the same number of bags as last year, but bowing to the huge morning demand, the new policy is rationing. One-quarter of the supply goes on the counter at 9 a.m., another quarter at noon, more at 3 p.m. and the last batch at 6 p.m.

She said it’s hard to turn away bag-wanters when she knows there’s plenty hidden away under the shelves, but fair is fair. So to speak.

The trick is to time your visit to the Ed. Bldg on Cosgrove Street to coincide with one of those bag times.
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Today at the fair is Governor’s Fire Prevention Day. The governor’s got lots of disaster issues on his mind these days.

After last night’s sold-out Brad Paisley show, the Grandstand hosts the Goo Goo Dolls, who I’ve heard of.

For all of Joe’s State Fair posts, click here