Fair’s fair: After the fun comes the big cleanup

Though crowds of fairgoers have eaten their last funnel cakes for the year and taken their last spins on the Ferris wheel, the Los Angeles County Fair didn’t end for everyone Sunday night.

Sky Shivers will spend today ensuring that some 600 animals -- including porcupines, cows, rabbits, chickens and even a monkey -- safely make it home. Tony Fiori will oversee cranes and crews dismantling 70 carnival rides including the Crazy Coaster, Hydro Slide and G-Force. And Jeff Tucci will help guide hundreds of vendors as they pack up their portable kitchens onto trucks and trailers.

And they don’t have much time. Continuing their annual trek from city to city, many of the carnies help open a fair Wednesday in Fresno.

And another event, the Off Road Expo, is coming to the Pomona Fairplex this weekend. Not only do all the exhibits and animals have to be gone, but the grounds have to be “spick-and-span,” said Tucci, the Fairplex’s vice president of hospitality.

“It’s an amazing undertaking,” said Dale Coleman, vice president of sales and marketing for the Fairplex.

“And there’s not really time to take a breath.”

One of the biggest tasks is at the Big Red Barn. Shivers said most of the animals will be returned to their homes on farms, ranches and Cal Poly Pomona. And some will be sold to families who asked during the fair’s run about buying pet ponies, goats, chickens and turkeys.

For Shivers, who has worked with livestock his entire life and has run FairView Farms for several years, the days following the fair’s end are somewhat routine. But not everybody working at the farm has that same level of experience.

“We call it earning their merit badges, if they have caught a runaway pig, or been knocked down by an irate cow, rassled by a sheep or pecked by a turkey,” he said.

At the carnival, Fiori, director of media marketing for Ray Cammack Shows, said the dismantled rides and games fill 300 trucks. The 160-foot-high Ferris wheel alone takes 18 trucks to move. Each ride has a foreman, a supervisor and a crew who are trained in assembling and disassembling, he said.

“There is no background in carnival engineering,” he said. “What their background is in is experience.”

Elsewhere on the fairgrounds, Exhibits Manager Kathy Wadham said she would have to melt the snow used in the Winter Wonderland and tear down the House of Trash, a display of the amount of waste used by a family of four in one year. She planned to save the materials for next year.

The artwork and crafts would be returned. And the competition pies? After the judges taste a slice, a preservative is used to keep the rest looking fresh and delicious.

But they wouldn’t taste so delicious now, she said.

“You probably wouldn’t want to eat them,” Wadham said.

Brian Highsmith, 30, runs a stand with giant pythons -- one is 190 pounds and another weighs 240 -- that fairgoers pay to see. At the end of each fair, Highsmith said, he cleans the cage, drains the water, locks up the van and drives off with the snakes.

“I’ve got to be careful and not get in a wreck,” he said.

“If the snakes get out, it’s not a one-person job to get them back in.”

David Alvarez, a Los Angeles police detective who came to the fair, said he couldn’t even imagine the work involved in tearing it down every year. “I’m sure it’s going to be around the clock,” he said.

Alvarez said that he and his wife realized Saturday that the fair was coming to an end and they didn’t want to miss it.

Their sons loved the animals and they loved the food, his wife, Patricia, said.

Dave Fox and Diane Morrison of Glendale hadn’t been to the fair in decades.

But Sunday, they said they set aside their chores.

For lunch, Fox ate a deep-fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich and Morrison had deep-fried vegetables.

“I’m watching my cholesterol,” she joked.

“This has all the classic fair things,” Fox said.

“A giant steer? Where else do you see a giant steer?”

They were glad to catch the fair’s last day but said they probably wouldn’t return for a while. Coming every year, Morrison said, “would clog your arteries.”

Yesenia Negrete, who works at Juicy’s food stand, said Sunday that she anticipated a busy night as most of the staff planned to pull an all-nighter packing up the food, wood and massive barbecue.

“Our goal is to get everything done in 24 -- or maybe 48 -- hours,” she said.

But on Sunday at lunchtime, the staff at Juicy’s was much more focused on the job at hand -- flipping hamburgers and barbecuing giant turkey legs for the line of customers.

--

anna.gorman@latimes.com