Cloverdale’s Citrus Fair buoyed by bright weather

The Cloverdale Citrus Fair, one of California’s oldest fairs, is expected to match its record attendance over this Presidents Day weekend, buoyed by spring like, crowd-friendly weather.

The folksy, four-day fair with a decided small-town feel kicked off Friday, with its modest, time-tested attractions - carnival rides, magic acts, music, cabaret, arts and crafts.

“It’s probably the biggest thing in Cloverdale for the whole year,” said longtime resident and retired grocery merchant Norm Pardini, 67. “You see guys that only come up once or twice a year. It’s kind of a big reunion in town.”

When the Citrus Fair parade kicks off this morning at 11 o’clock “this town will be buzzing” he said of the throngs that will line both sides of the street downtown before they stream into the nearby fairgrounds.

Citrus Fair Executive Director Bonnie Wlodarczyk expects attendance will match last year’s 16,000 fairgoers, made possible by sunny skies, as opposed to past rainy Februaries that have thinned crowds.

Now in its 124th year, the fair stretches back to when Cloverdale was known as the Orange Belt of Sonoma County, something the Citrus Fair helped promote when it started in 1892.

Occasional killing frosts are blamed for the demise of the commercial market, but the fair still carries on the citrus tradition with exhibits meticulously adorned with oranges.

This year’s pirate theme inspired a large wooden ship with flashing cannons, framed by scores of oranges, along with other citrus and garden displays replete with skeletons, cutlasses and treasure chests brimming with gold doubloons.

“It takes forever,” Amanda Mittelstadt, 24, said of the painstaking effort and weeks of work that go into the bunting and fabric on some of the exhibits entered by service clubs and groups like 4-H.

The “Pirates of the Fair’ibbean” theme even is on display throughout downtown with Jolly Roger flags on the light poles and an eyepatch placed strategically over the large head of an art sculpture.

On Friday at noon, the fair opened its doors with a ribbon cutting by last year’s Cloverdale Citrus Fair Queen, Jotera Conway, in one of her last ceremonial acts.

She will be succeeded by one of four, 17-year-old Cloverdale High School seniors vying for the crown in the 2016 Citrus Fair Queen Pageant.

Cloverdale schools were on holiday. Eighth-graders Kelsie Lee Kaher and Lane Hughes said most of their friends were at the fair.

“It’s fun, the rides and the food,” said Kelsie Lee as her friend waited to get a Henna hand tattoo.

They had on unlimited carnival ride bands that are available for $27 daily.

The Citrus Fair is not only a place where most of the town’s 8,600 population is likely to show up, but “everybody knows everybody, or knows of each other,” said Danny Neustadt, who was there with his fourth-grade son John, 9.

“You can’t sit down at the fair in Santa Rosa and feel comfortable,” he said. “Here your kids are able to run around.”

Neat, small, compact and kid-friendly are just some of the ways fairgoers describe the Citrus Fair.

In Circus Imagination, kids dressed up as lions, tigers and bears, then rolled over and did humorous tricks for a boy dressed as a lion tamer, all at the direction of the adult ringmaster.

Of course, there are real animal exhibits: poultry, pygmy goat, guinea pig and rabbit shows, and a petting zoo.

There is also a hall filled with prize-winning entries in quilting, needlework, knitting and crocheting.

There are school projects, baking and home-canning contests, floral art and recycled musical instruments, like a banjo made from an electric frying pan or a slide guitar made with a cigar box.

And, of course, there is fair food - corn dogs, cotton candy, funnel cakes and mini donuts.

For more extreme culinary adventures, there is a “mac-and-cheese-stuffed bacon burger,” lobster french fries, peanut butter and jelly fries and a Cap’n Crunch chicken sandwich, which comes drizzled with sweet sriracha sauce.

Fair Board member Gene Marcinkawski said “we have a lot of fun at the fair.” He described Cloverdale as a “best kept secret,” what Sonoma used to be before it grew.

“Everyone knows each other. You can’t drive down the street with your hands on the wheel. You’re always waving at someone,” he said.

And it’s likely one of those people is involved with the Citrus Fair.

“Hundreds of people volunteer to make this fair happen. It’s a real community effort,” fair publicist Charlie Barboni said.

You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 521-5214 or clark.mason@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter@clarkmas.