I have taken almost a week off from my retail job to work at this fair for my buddy Tony and sell his stuff for him on the days he can’t be at the fair. Working for Tony is more fun and pays better than the retail job, so I work his booth for him when I can. Usually in Manhattan, usually in the winter. But this time it’s New Jersey in the summer. And this time it has not been fun and has not paid much better because the New Jersey State Fair Meadowlands sucks ass. From what I’ve heard, it didn’t used to suck ass. Or maybe it did, and it just never sucked quite as much as it does this year. Either way, 2023 has been bleak for the New Jersey State Fair Meadowlands. No one here knows why. People who work here every year keep saying it was so much better last year and the year before. For whatever reason, 2023 is the year all the people who were still going to fairs officially decided to explore other options.
Also, we’re not doing ourselves any favors. We’re selling winter clothes in July. Tony doesn’t have much to do during the summers, figured he’d book some fairs, set up some booths and see how it goes. It is going terribly. When customers walk up to the booth all confused, we tell them we traveled down from Canada and were expecting it to be much colder here in New Jersey. It’s a stupid joke, and people think we’re very stupid when we say it. In all seriousness, though, we actually are pretty fucking stupid for setting up a booth at the New Jersey State Fair Meadowlands, not just because it’s summer but because no one is here.
Kinda felt like I had to do it, though. I already owed Tony $200 because a couple weeks ago we were at a bar and found out Dave Chappelle was about to go onstage at the club downstairs. They were gonna charge us $200 each to get in. I didn’t have that much to spend, but Tony was pretty adamant about not missing out on this. He told me I could work off the money at the upcoming fair, the New Jersey State Fair Meadowlands, which is supposed to be a good one, he said. Then he bought our tickets and we went downstairs and watched Chappelle get fucked up and tell stories for well over an hour. So I had to get out of that hole the first day at the fair.
The fair is in the parking lot of the Giants stadium, and it was desolate that entire first afternoon that I worked the booth, a Saturday. It was around 80 degrees and humid. Luckily we had a little fan. And beer. And ice that the people at the funnel cake stand gave us for free. We started drinking around 3:30. Traffic finally picked up around 6. It started to look like the fair wouldn’t be a total bust. People were actually buying Sherpa pants and hats and bathrobes and fuzzy socks on a muggy summer night. Still not as much traffic as we’d hoped, but by far the best day of sales so far. Tony said we sold more that day than he and our buddy Chris had sold the first ten days of the fair combined.
We ran out of beer around 9 pm. We were still selling though and didn’t want to leave. The lady working the booth next to us—a big booth with a huge wall full of stuffed animals, one of those games where you can try to pop a little balloon that’s tied to the wall and win a 6-foot tall purple teddy bear—informed us that there was no alcohol at the fair at all, and we were a long ways away from a store where we could buy some. But she said she had a few Mike’s Hard Lemonades in her trailer that she could give us. Tony told her he’d pay her back. So the lemonades got us to closing time around 11.
We shut down the booth and got a cab back to the city. I probably should have gone straight home to bed. Instead we stayed out in the city until around 4. I got home a little after 5. I woke up in the early afternoon with an awful headache. I dragged myself out of bed, down to the Port Authority bus station. Back to New Jersey. Took the wrong bus, though. Got off at a stop that seemed reasonably close to the fair. But I guess big stadiums and their parking lots can really throw off your perspective, because when I walked into the hotel by the bus stop and asked the concierge the easiest way to walk to the stadium, she looked at me like I was an idiot.
So I took a Lyft to the stadium. The driver asked me how the fair was. I told her yesterday was my first day, and it had started out slow but turned out to be pretty fun for the last few hours. I hope she didn’t take that as a recommendation, because Sunday was rough and did not improve over the course of the day. I made two sales in four hours before Tony arrived that evening, and one of them was to the lady who gave us the Mike’s Hard Lemonades. I asked her if her trailer was here on the fairgrounds, she said yes. Her husband works here as well. She’d actually sold her restaurant recently and moved into a trailer so she could work some of these fairs on the east coast over the summer. She hasn’t done the east coast before but heard this fair is a guaranteed moneymaker. So she made her way down to the Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, NJ. Now she’s fucked. Gotta make it up at the next fair I guess.
Tony couldn’t afford to pay me to work the booth the next couple days because of how things were going with sales. But today he’s busy, so I’m back at the booth. Got here at 11. The fair usually doesn’t open til 2. I did not know why it was opening at 11 today. I just showed up and opened the booth. Turns out the rides are the only things open right now—not the games or the food stands or the rubber ducky race or any of that—because today is the day all the Orthodox Jewish day camp groups come in and have the rides to themselves for a few hours. The rides are the coolest part of the fair and pretty much all the kids wanna do anyway. On their way from Teacups to Zero Gravity they just kind of stare at me and this booth and all the winter clothing we figured we’d try to sell here at this fair. It is 88 degrees today in Lot G outside MetLife Stadium. A few kids linger around the booth and rummage through the mittens and socks. They are sweating and ask why I’m selling all this winter stuff. I tell them we came down from Canada and thought it would be colder. That’s another way of saying I came down from the Port Authority Bus Station and thought I’d be getting paid more. The cotton candy stand is closed. The funnel cake stand is closed. The “pop a balloon and win a 6-foot tall purple teddy bear” stand is closed. I’m the only booth that’s open, and I can’t sell shit. These kids have no money. Not that they’d spend it on reversible hoodies. They’re just thirsty and wanna know how much I’m selling that soda for. I tell them it’s not soda, and I can’t sell it to them. The kids walk away disappointed and get in line for Zero Gravity. There is no reason for me to be here right now, but by the time I’d close up the booth, navigate my way out of this hellscape of highways and parking lots and catch a bus back to the city, I’d have to head right back out here for when the fair fully opens at 6.
So I am just gonna sweat it out in this booth. I have a few beers left, but they’re getting warmer by the minute. I have no ice. The only ice is in the funnel cake stand, which won’t open for a few hours. I would have to break in. Not worth it. And I should save some beers anyway for the lady who gave us the Mike’s Hard. Don’t know if I’ll see her again, though. Tomorrow might be my last day working this fair, and for all I know she might’ve packed everything up in her trailer and left already. She said she’s gonna go work that fair in Pennsylvania, can’t remember what it’s called. I think Tony and I will be at that one, too. So maybe we will see her there. I’ve never been to Pennsylvania. Hope their state fairs are better than New Jersey’s. Don’t know why they would be.
Was Chappell worth it?