Sometimes you have to leave town. Even if for one day. Even if “leaving town” requires only an hour’s drive and you’re technically only traveling through one county.
2015 has been a brutal year thus far. And June into July presented a fresh series of frustrations for me. I’ve been dreaming all month of having one single day of fun and relaxation, and tried desperately to organize a fun getaway this week. Vegas was out of the question for financial and logistic reasons. The Mets are playing San Diego…in New York, so that wasn’t going to happen. Luckily I found a friend with whom to get away to a mystical place south of Los Angeles, so together we grabbed some caffeine, braced ourselves for 405 traffic, and headed down to Costa Mesa. You know, for the annual Orange County Fair. Our plan was to fill our bellies with disgusting food, perhaps tackle my fear of carnival rides, pet a pig, and maybe even play one of those games where you shoot water into a balloon and the first person to pop theirs wins a stuffed Minion or something.
We arrived at the fair shortly after it opened and consulted our map (and iPhone app) to find the Chicken Charlie’s stand with the weirdest offerings. The weirdest of the bunch? A $125 deep-fried Twinkie topped with caviar. According to the sign, 100% of the proceeds go to charity! I didn’t see anyone order the Twinkie, but if I wasn’t so financially strapped at the moment I would have considered it. You know, for charity. Not just so I could blog about it. Since the fabled $100 hotdog turned out to be more myth than reality, I opted for something less decadent: a deep-fried peanut butter-filled pickle.
The pickle was a terrible decision. I’ve had deep-fried pickles plenty of times before (they’re delicious!), and I love peanut butter filled treats (they’re delicious!), but this iteration fell flat. Texturally it was very one-note (gross) and flavor-wise the sum of all its elements did not elevate the finished product. In all honesty it was a dumpster fire. I ate one and then peeled the yummy fried exterior off the other and threw the rest away. It was a $6.50 mistake, but at least now I know that pickles, peanut butter and fried batter might sound like a dream team, but they play together like the 2014 Lakers (see what I did there!?).
From there we walked to the craft beer garden, where the options ranged from St. Archer to Golden Road to Kona. Not a lot of excitement there. Then it was on to the petting zoo. I don’t really care for farm animals, but my sister is obsessed with pigs so I make it my business to find as many pigs as I can to photograph myself near them. That’s what little brothers are for, right?
We’ll call this little guy Billy Corgan Jr. because he was sad and bloated. That didn’t stop me from rubbing his cute little head and trying to brighten his day. At one point he looked up and kind of waddled towards me and sniffed my hand. I considered it to be the swine (that’s pig, right?) equivalent of a kiss. I cared not for the chickens, goats and deer (ew, deer? don’t they carry lyme disease?) in the petting zoo. Nor did I care that I was the oldest person in the petting zoo by a good twenty years. I made a b-line for Billy Corgan Jr. and made him my new best friend. For a while, at least…
After the petting zoo, we walked through the rest of the farm area of the fair. Lots of goats. Not a lot of other animals. Although we did take note of 3pm Pig Races on the schedule. We’d try to make it. If we weren’t eating or drinking someplace on the opposite side of the fair. Next up was the ferris wheel. It was a very large ferris wheel and it definitely didn’t freak me out. Especially when they stopped us near the apex of the wheel to load some new riders below. I probably did not reach out and grab the side of the…cart (?) when a cool breeze started us swaying high above the fairgrounds. An artist’s rendering of how I must have appeared while riding the ferris wheel.
Time for more food! I craved something savory after the subpar pickle so I headed to one of those BBQ stands for a tri-tip sandwich. Of course, one can’t eat a sandwich without a yummy side dish. In lieu of french fries, or mac and cheese, or coleslaw, I opted for fried avocado. Washed down with a bottle of water, because it was kind of hot out yesterday. Ask me about my v-neck tan. If we’re friends, ask me to show you my v-neck tan. Apparently when wearing a v-neck one must remember to use suntan lotion on the ENTIRE neck and chest area, not just the back of neck/shoulders parts of the neck.
The sandwich was delicious. The picture doesn’t quite do it justice, as it was incredibly juicy and messy and that photo looks a little dry. The fried avocado made a good side dish. I could have gone for more, but I wanted to save room for either a maple bacon donut or the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup donut, and then there was the fried coffee I wanted to try, and oh yeah also there was a donut topped with fried bananas and Fireball cinnamon whiskey. The water was refreshing.
Next came games! There was the one where you try to pop balloons with beanbags, and the one where you shoot the water gun to get your Minion to rise to the top of its pole, and the one where you toss a ball into a bucket and try to get it to stay in the bucket. I popped one balloon with a beanbag (good for a small stuffed bacon strip), I lost the water gun challenge (which was lame because the woman who beat me sat down right as we were about to start, and if she hadn’t sat down I totally would have won), and I lost the ball-in-bucket challenge. At some point we realized we missed the pig races, but we speed-walked back over to the farm area to see if we could maybe catch the last race. We didn’t. But they set up a photo booth where you could have your picture taken with one of the competing piglets for $10. I wasn’t about to spend $10 to take a photo with a pig when I’d taken one for free earlier, but the piglet was incredibly cute so I asked if I could just take a photo of the pig and be on my way. And the farmhands, they let me.
Look at how happy that little guy looks! Imagine holding that guy (or gal)? I’ll bet all your problems would just melt away and then you’d pick up tons of girls and then probably the pig would get too big to be cute anymore so you’d have to kill it and roast it but oh man wouldn’t that be delicious?
Ahem.
It was starting to get late. The traffic was going to be terrible heading back to LA, so I hatched a plan to leave the park (after one more tasty food item) and head over to Beachwood BBQ in Long Beach for some beers and maybe more food. On the way out of the fair we grabbed some deep fried coffee. Sadly it tasted like a cinnamon and chocolate donut with hardly any coffee flavor. I liked the whipped cream, though. Three little balls of fried coffee. It was fine. It was good, just not in a coffee way.
There should have been three balls on that stick but I ate one right away before I remembered to take a picture. Look at all that sugar. Look at all that whipped cream.
Beachwood was awesome, as I anticipated. They’ve been putting out some incredible beers, bottles of which always sell out immediately when they reach LA. They offered about fifteen beers on draught plus a handful of bottles for onsite consumption only, plus a few bottles you could buy and take home. As it was happy hour when we arrived, we ordered a the tater tot casserole. Porcini dusted tater tots cooked in duck fat, topped with smoked cheese curds and duck gravy, with duck confit on top. Why not, right? I also ordered a flight of their IPAs to help wash down all that duck and tots.
From left to right that’s Denver Jackhammer, Down Under Thunder, Hopanova, and Alpha Waves. All were good, maybe not on par with Thrillseeker, Citraholic or Melrose…but still quite tasty. I was also lucky enough to taste Un Atout, (Alt)ernate Reality, and Knucklehead Red. After the tots and the flight I ordered up a bottle of System Of A Stout, a bottle release that sold out almost immediately when it was released. The bottles were sold for onsite consumption only so we settled in for a bit (750ml bottles, 11.2% abv) and enjoyed an early evening on the patio in Long Beach with an intense coffee beer.
And then it was back home. There was no traffic at all getting from Long Beach to LA, so all in all we played things pretty perfectly as far as having a super fun and relaxing day. Once home I settled in and started to watch some anime called “Colorful” that I saw ranked as the best anime film ever made. I started to fall asleep halfway through the thing so I called it a night early. This morning was when I noticed the hilarious v-neck tan. No, I’m not posting a topless photo of myself on this website. Trust me, you don’t want to see me shirtless, either.
Pipedream – Venus Fly Trip [MP3]
