Fair season kicks off today in Southern California, where a carny is swinging a Ferris wheel into action at the Orange County Fair and shouts of “Winnah!Winnah!Winnah!” are luring patrons into the midway.

We’re in a state fair state of mind in the upfront section of Sunset’s August issue (on newsstands July 18), with modern updates of carnival classics. It got a few fair fans in our office reminiscing—here are four of our memories. We hope you’ll share yours in our Comments section: Click here, or scroll down.

Photo by Orange County Fair

To find a state or county fair near you, click here. And when you go, grab us an elephant ear—powdered sugar and honey, please.

Orange County Fair
Where: Just inland from Newport Beach, about halfway between L.A. and San Diego.
When: July 11 to August 3
This year’s theme: “Say cheese!”

By Erika Ehmsen, Sunset copy chief

My first trip to the Orange County Fair was to pick up a blue ribbon for my 4-H project. In synchronized swimming.

It hadn’t been my first choice. Strangely, for a girl who clutches her Epi pen at the slightest buzz of an insect, my top pick was beekeeping. But that project got canceled—some parents thought it was too dangerous for sixth-graders who, admittedly, could barely tend our class garden. (I bet Sunset’s Team Bee could have talked our folks into it.) So I almost missed out on county fair glory.

Fortunately, I guess you could say, this was Orange County, where there’s a pool on every patio. And one mom with an interest in choreography and a pool on her patio concocted what I’m sure must be the only human project in 4-H history, qualifying only in that we represented the club’s “Head, Heart, Hands, Health” moniker.

Photo by Orange County Fair

The team needed another member, and I was a swimmer, a fan of MGM musicals, and a huge dork. (When I wasn’t inventing dance “moves” to the Inspector Gadget theme song, I was splashing around in our pool. Like I said, huge dork.) So I embraced my dreams of Esther Williams majesty and flowery bathing caps and did a side dive into the pool.

The soundtrack for my team’s underwater spectacle? Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration,” perpetual grad-night theme and “Wedding Party, you’d better get your butts on the dance floor” bridal shout-out. While other 4-H’ers were learning to feed, groom, and scoop up after their projects, I was sporting a nose clip, a tan, and chlorine-green streaks in my hair (no flowery bathing caps after all).

So it was with my head held high that I marched into the O.C. Fair’s ranch yard, past loping retriever puppies in “Guide Dog in Training” capes and girls in spotless equestrian gear. Inside a small building holding even smaller projects was a lone TV with tinny speakers and fading color, and on it, a VHS tape was looping our routine, shakily filmed by a teammate’s proud dad. Pinned to the side of the TV was a blue ribbon, proof that we’d won.

Of course, we were the fair’s only synchronized swimming entry.

Since then, I’ve been to the California State Fair a few times, where I very nearly saw a cow give birth (she waited until I took a bathroom break from my vigil outside her pen), very much sprained my thumb riding a mechanical bull, and very definitely eaten way more food-on-a-stick than I should admit to.

But nothing compares to that first fair memory. Even now, more than 20 years after our 4-H oddity, I can’t hear the opening “ya-hoo!” of “Celebration” without having an urge to pinch my nose, flip my head back, and flutter-kick toward the bottom of a pool.

Ventura County Fair
Where: On the coast, north of L.A. and south of Santa Barbara
When: July 30 to August 10
This year’s theme: “Meet me at the fair”

By Peter Fish, Sunset editor-at-large

It’s the prettiest of county fairs, as far as geography goes. Let other county fairs be plunked down alongside flat farm fields (or their 21st-century replacement, the strip of outlet malls). For reasons I’ve never understood, the Ventura County Fair occupies a bulge of coast that swells out into the Pacific. Prime Southern California beachfront real estate inexplicably devoted, each August, to Whac-A-Mole, demonstrations of powerful blenders and relaxing lounge chairs, displays of blue ribbon chickens and lemon pies—Ventura County is lemon country, and the fair is big on lemon pies, which pose row upon shiny yellow row as if waiting for Wayne Thiebaud to paint them—and the centrifugal thrills of the Scrambler and the Zipper.

I love the Ventura County Fair, but the Zipper was one of the low points of my life. The Zipper consists of “free-flipping cars suspended on off-center axes that move around the sides of the boom via pulley system,” says Wikipedia. And “The ride is noted for exerting higher g-forces on its riders than most amusements.” Yes. Indeed.

What Wikipedia does not mention is that if you enter one of the Zipper cars with your friend Greg, who has just purchased a small balsa-wood glider kit for his son, and the ride starts up and hurls you up into space, in mid-free-flip the g-forces will cause Greg to drop the balsa-wood glider kit. The kit will then bounce around the inside of the car at high speed until it hits the other passenger (that would be me) hard in the face and knocks his glasses off so that they bounce around the car with the balsa-wood glider kit and then fly out of the car entirely.

At this point, you want the Zipper to stop, you want the Zipper to stop right now, you want to search for your glasses, which you imagine lying shattered but fixable somewhere near the Ferris wheel. But the Zipper does not stop, the Zipper will never stop, not until the Skoal-dipping tattooed dude who runs the thing decides it’s time for a break, and you do not see your glasses again.

And yet, I’m going this year. No Zipper, never. But I’m going to the fair this year.

Photo by Orange County Fair

San Mateo County Fair
Where: On the Peninsula, just south of San Francisco
When: August 8 to 17
This year’s theme: “Go for the gold!” (The Olympics start the same day the fair opens.)

By Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher

I unabashedly love the San Mateo County Fair. Not just because I once saw a lamb born there. But I did see a lamb born there. It was a big 4-H exhibit, the very pregnant ewe penned up as the centerpiece of the 4-H club's animals. I will never forget her picking up the placenta with her mouth and flinging it around the pen.

Now that I think about it, I may not have seen the actual, actual birth, but the placenta part, yes, I saw that.

The "facts of life" 4-H exhibits are one reason I love the fair. (Those kids raise sheep and calves and goats, and then, on the last day of the fair, those animals get auctioned off. To people who are going to eat them. And the kids are so normal and not at all traumatized by the event like I would be.)

For a few years, I worked at the local newspaper in San Mateo, The Times, so I did my share of fair stories. I rated the rides, pondering the differences between the Gravitron and the Gravity-Defying Round-Up. (Summary: "If heights aren't your thing, but you do enjoy nausea, the fair has two perfect rides for you.") I judged a memorial cheesecake contest, which was predictably rich but unpredictably touching; it was named for a longtime fair recipe-contest contestant who died of ovarian cancer. I've eaten fried Oreos (they're no fried Twinkies).

Photo by Orange County Fair

If this sounds dorky, it is. That's why I like the fair. It's dorky. People enter contests for the best jam. They enter contests for the best quilt, and the best miniature garden, and the most perfect squash. They go to see somewhat faded musical acts, like the Gin Blossoms. (They played at the San Mateo fair in 2003; they're playing Santa Cruz this year.)

And trust me, I'm no amateur fair-goer. I grew up in Texas, where we got a day off from school each October to go to the State Fair of Texas, which I thought at the time was the Greatest Fair Ever. (It does have Big Tex, a 52-foot-tall cowboy. Who is occasionally sculpted in butter.)

Maybe it's because we're so close to the Silicon Valley, but the San Mateo County Fair beats the Texas fair in dorkiness by a mile. And I like it, the earnestness of entering a contest to make the best potato salad and watching "Weird Al" Yankovic take the stage. (Oh, yes, I am going to see Weird Al. August 15. Mark your calendar.)

Sunset managing editor Alan Phinney, palming a giant apple at the Santa Cruz fair in 1987. That black netting? It's supposed to keep fair-goers from touching the winning produce ...

Santa Cruz County Fair
Where: On the Monterey Coast, south of San Francisco
When: September 9 to 14
This year’s theme: “Let the good times grow”

By Alan Phinney, Sunset managing editor

For a kid who grew up in suburban L.A., my first visit to a county fair was an out-of-body experience. I just kept thinking, Is this for real? But in a good way, of course.

I’d passed some dull childhood afternoon watching the movie State Fair on TV, and I’d read Charlotte’s Web, so I had a picture in my head of farm animals on display, blue ribbons, ring-toss games, etc. I figured it was a sweet and dated vision of ’50s America.

But in 1987 I discovered, to my delight and surprise, that those fair phenomena were alive and well and living in Watsonville, CA—site of the Santa Cruz County Fair.

Things I remember: row upon row of cows with voluminous udders, and pens full of fat pigs. I had no idea they were so hairy (in my mind, Wilbur was very smooth).

A blond 4-H girl, beaming alongside her prize-winning lamb (and paying no attention to the poster in the background about which parts taste best).

Long aisles of cakes and pies vying for prizes. The ribbons had been awarded days before, but all the entrants, partially eaten, were still proudly on display.

And, best of all, the freak produce, the biggest fruits and vegetables, the pride of the county: pumpkin-size apples, ottoman-size pumpkins, and a head of lettuce so outlandishly large, it looked like a smallish ostrich.