Summer, summer, so long (part 1)

Last year I told you about an end of summer carnival. I guess by "you" I mean the four people who were reading me, most of whom I knew personally. I don't blame you for not being here yet, Blogreader. There are a lot of blogs.

I inadvertently jumped the gun a little, posting about the event a day or two before the equinox, or on what I am now calling the "prequinox," because it makes it sound like maybe I did it on purpose.

This year the same carnival came through, and I made sure to nip down there to make up for the cell phone images from last year's post. I have to say, though, that some of the images from the phone came out beautiful in ways I have not been able to replicate with the nicer camera.

I went alone, milling through the people first in the morning and then again at night. In the morning, they were still setting up, and although many of the games and rides were going already, they had not captured that air of breathless fun that a good carnival should possess. My best guess is that this is because there weren't enough packs of children running around yet. That and the barkers at the games were less eager to verbally pull folks off of their path to try and bilk them a dollar at a time of money in exchange for stuffed animals and such.






It was a lazy affair in the morning. The bearded man in the final shot above kept letting that guy and gal throw darts at his balloons more or less for free, possibly out of boredom. It was while standing there taking shots of this trio that a woman came along to upbraid me, claiming that I was simply not allowed to just wander in and take pictures of the games. I could easily have argued with her, as I was standing on a public street at a public event, but I decided to simply leave and return after an interval.

When I told him I had been chased away, my friend Craig suggested it might have something to do with the fact that carnival games are notorious for being rigged, and that they didn't want evidence of this recorded. And the games are rigged, of course, just not, I don't think, in ways that can be easily documented with a camera. They are more subtle than that. The prizes, for instance, generally cost less than the fee for the game.

My return trip to the carnival after the sun had set will be the subject of Part 2, which I should have up in a few hours.