We were looking for something to do this weekend, so on a whim my wife and I decided to visit the First Annual Pacific Northwest Mushroom Festival. Oh boy was it was lame. Lame lame lame lame lame. The had an antique fair, and an educational pavilion, and a bounce house and kettle korn and... hey... wait a minute... where's the mushrooms?
The mushrooms were almost an afterthought. They had a stage with a (lame) cooking demonstration, a place where you could buy (oh so exotic crimini and shitake) mushrooms, and a couple of booths in the educational pavilion dealing with mushrooms. And oh yeah... "The Humungous Mushroom Feast"... five booths serving up tastes of (ok to mediocre) mushroom-themed food. If you looked at a map of the grounds the actual mushroom-related space amounted to a small fraction of the whole. They keep that sort of quality up and they're not going to have a Second Annual fair.
Unfortunately, that's about what I've come to expect from regional fairs. When we were living in Rochester they had the Lilac Festival and the Park Ave. Festival and so on, all of which were primarily excuses to sell people gutter guards and magnetic bracelets. The ostensible reason for the fair is generally nowhere to be seen, which is just sad if the fair is free, and somewhat irritating if you have to pay for admission (as was the case with the mushroom festival).
