The numbers for the fair are in. It was a success.
The Southeast state fair was sunny, and well attended. Director Amanda Randles crunched the numbers.
Randles: “Our highest attendance numbers before this year was 2018, we are leaning in that direction, we are almost back to pre pandemic numbers.“
Randles says some food vendors reported record revenues. The booths received payments for over 6500 entrances over four days, with Saturday being the most attended day with close to 2300 bracelets sold. Randles says this does not include volunteers, vendors and performers who were not charged, and may represent up to 400 people.
Randles: “Generally speaking I think it was a solid year and we are getting back to where we used to be. Go Haines, we couldn’t do it without this community.”
Randles is hard pressed to think of something that didn’t go well. Not too hard though.
Randles: “The squirt gun thing has just become sort of a tradition around here.”
She says there is a filling station set up behind the barn, so the battles can happen out of the way, not in the middle of the crowd.
Randles: “Whether we like it or not, it just happens. And it was so hot this year, I was down for it. But we did get reports from some of the kids saying some of the other kids were filling up their squirt guns with toilet water. And so that was potentially one of our bigger issues of the whole fair was ok you guys, stop filling up your squirt guns with toilet water.”
Water guns. Let’s hope they mist.
