The Only Way The State Fair Of Texas Can Truly Improve Is With The Support Of Its Most Staunch Supporters, But We Aren’t So Sure They’re Willing To Help.

Unlike seemingly every other media outlet in Dallas and, to a degree, the whole goddamn state, we here at Central Track aren’t exactly enamored with the State Fair of Texas. Why? Because, for starters, we’re not kids any more, and we’re no longer oblivious to the ways of the world. But also for a litany of other reasons, which we’ll happily run down for you here, one per day, over the entire course of the fair’s 2019 run, adding to the list we ran throughout the fair’s 2017 run.

Here we are again. The final day of another season of the State Fair of Texas.

Two years ago, when we started this series, you probably found yourself either loving or hating our list of reasons for why the fair sucks. A lot of you probably found yourselves loving to hate it, too.

Still, here we are at entry No. 48 — and, yes, the state fair still sucks. After ending the first run in this series by coming to the conclusion that the State Fair of Texas refuses to change, we’re wrapping up the second run by concluding that the fans of the fair that refuse to change — and are thus deserving of blame due to their their blind acceptance — allow the fair to avoid even attempting to be better.

With every reason we’ve given you — be it the fair’s lack of transparency, the firing of the man who voiced Big Tex (simply because he wanted to use the recognition of his role to bolster a cancer benefit, mind you), or its treatment of animals — we’ve seen the countless comments, tags and mentions from devoted fair fans with unyielding allegiance to its traditions.

We’ve heard it all:

“Why are these so negative?”

“We don’t care if you don’t like it.”

And, our personal favorite, despite the laziness of it: “Who hurt you?”

Now, we’ve read all of the comments and heard all of the feedback and even offered up some suggestions to help make it better.

Are we really that off-base to suggest better headliners for the fair’s music series than 98 Degrees and Daughtry? No, we aren’t; we suggested an-all Texan lineup. We also suggested placing more emphasis on DART ridership in an effort to avoid the already-congested Dallas traffic. And still, throughout it all, we were met with the same quick defenders who likely didn’t read our articles long enough to see our earnest suggestions.

But guess what? We don’t actually want the fair to suck! It’s supposed to be a great representative of the state as a whole. We just love Texas enough to know that its state fair isn’t living up to its potential — and, instead of showering it with love, we’re pointing out the ways it can and should improve.

After all, with attendance already down, is there really any reason why everyone is so opposed to changing things up?

It’s easy to mislabel our critical assessments as negativity for the sake of being negative, but perhaps fans of the fair need to have a long conversation with themselves and reconsider how the fair operates. Doesn’t everyone win that way?

When you love something, you have to give it honest love. Maybe all 47 of the previous reasons fell on people who suffer from selective hearing, but, we are willing to bet there are also at least of few of you who realized the fair indeed has several areas of opportunity.

Still think we’re negative? Well, we’re positive about this: If you separate your proud Texan mentality from your unrelenting fan-hood of the state fair, you might be able to see the point we’ve been trying to make all along — that we simply wish the State Fair of Texas was on the level of the great state it’s supposed to represent.

Cover photo via Wikicommons.

More Reasons Why The State Fair Of Texas Sucks:

  1. Its history is super racist!
  2. It’s a major drain on Dallas police!
  3. It’s bad for your health!
  4. It’s so damn expensive!
  5. It’s not the economic driver it says it is!
  6. It’s a super shitty neighbor!
  7. It’s an altar to false idols!
  8. It makes Fair Park useless!
  9. It wastes city funds on out-of-towners!
  10. It exploits cute animals!
  11. Its executives take home too much money!
  12. Everything on the midway is a ripoff.
  13. It has willfully ignored its obligations and allowed Fair Park to fall into disrepair!
  14. It refuses to be transparent about the way it spends public funds.
  15. It can’t handle Fair Park’s long-term needs.
  16. Its lauded scholarship program is a joke compared to those of other, similar events.
  17. It uses fear tactics in its negotiations with the city.
  18. It goes out of its way to shield its crowds from the poor black neighborhood that surrounds Fair Park.
  19. Its low-level employees get burned by its executives’ bad business decisions.
  20. Its ticket-based economy is designed to squeeze even more cash out of attendees.
  21. It cares way too much about parking lots that go unused most of the year.
  22. It’s petty as fuck.
  23. It celebrates humanity’s fucked up relationship with livestock.
  24. It refuses to change.
  25. It can be easily debated.
  26. Its concert bookings could be heated up a few degrees.
  27. It’s tearing the Fletcher family apart!
  28. It’s spent a least $1 million to keep its books out of the public eye. What’s it hiding?
  29. It fired a beloved employee, claiming his request to attend a charity event was a contract violation.
  30. It has become a literal joke.
  31. Who’s buying what they’re selling?
  32. Its racist roots are still being unearthed by national scholars.
  33. It’s in bed with its would-be critics.
  34. It thinks you’re super dumb.
  35. It caters to Dallas’ elite in ways you’ve never even heard of because you’re such a plebe.
  36. No, seriously, its racist past is super troubling.
  37. Its attendance is in decline — to the point where other state fairs that last half as long draw bigger annual attendance figures.
  38. It caters too much to TX/OU weekend.
  39. Even its booze is gimmicky.
  40. It’s predictable.
  41. It uses its powerful friends to rush the city into meeting its demands.
  42. It’s a scourge on Dallas traffic.
  43. It uses gifts to buy City Council’s love and support.
  44. Big Tex was an inside job.
  45. Its exotic animal exhibit remains problematic despite repeated issues.
  46. Its gross fried-food obsession forces otherwise respectable area restaurants to stoop to its level.
  47. It Indoctrinates our youth.
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