State Fair cleanup: It’s like mopping up after half a million party guests
PUEBLO • It’s midnight, closing time at Colorado State Fair.
“Lights out, let’s shut it down,” graveyard shift patrol officer Jack Hobby says from ground zero of the sparkling midway.
The ride music stops. Flashing lights darken. Game barkers make final pleas to stragglers strolling to the gates.
The festive mood ends when the funnel cakes stop frying. Out come the push brooms, shovels and jugs of stain killers. Over the 11-day fair run, it’s like cleaning up after a half-million party guests
After the crowds leave clutching stuffed prizes in sticky cotton-candy fingers, an eclectic nocturnal culture emerges on the 100-acre fairground.
Under the velvety starlit sky, cows doze, carnies unwind and chain-gang prisoners mop up.
About 30 Pueblo County Detention Center inmates in black-and-white striped uniforms comb the streets picking up litter. They clean horse stalls. They do whatever they’re told.
On a recent night, they swept sawdust off the events center floor, transforming it from an animal showing arena with pens and bleachers to the next venue, a concert hall with chair seating.
The overnight cleanup shift is the only glimpse of the fair they get, and they volunteer for the privilege.
“It beats the alternative, being locked up,” says a man serving six months.
“It’s nice and peaceful,” says another inmate. “It’s a way to come to the fair and not spend no money.”
It also saves the state a lot of labor costs, says Allen Medina, a Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office sergeant who takes a vacation from work to supervise the graveyard security shift.
His force of about 10 workers watch over the fairgrounds, a city in itself. They patrol the deserted streets of tents lined with booths of knockoff designer purses, toe rings, crafts, henna tattoos, hot tubs, home improvement products and mechanical bulls.
Vendors aren’t allowed to stay overnight with their wares. Some try. “We caught two by them snoring,” Medina says.
His crews tend to the animals entrusted in their care by owners, who aren’t allowed to visit their barnyard pets after hours.
In the livestock barn, Rick Dillard keeps a hand on a coffee mug and a keen eye on the jackpot grand champions, including a steer fetching $52,000 and a $17,000 hog.
It’s a different kind of penned up captives than on his regular job as a prison accountant.
“The pigs basically sleep. The sheep make a little noise. That one goat over there is pretty wild, he kicked his sign. He’s the entertainment,” Dillard says. “The steers stand up a couple times during the night then lay back down.”
Matthew Woods, 20, a fair maintenance worker, stays on his feet, cleaning urinals in rest rooms throughout the fairgrounds. “I like not having to deal with people,” he says, “especially those who make these messes on the walls and stalls.”
Like a well-oiled machine, the cleanup continues as darkness turns to dawn.
But not everybody is working. Closing time is quitting time for the 150 carnival workers. Time to break out the charcoal grills, pop the tabs on beer and unfold lawn chairs in the tight spaces between trailers.
Most are housed in the “bunkhouse,” a trailer compound in the shadows of the rides now dark and silent. They sleep five or six to a trailer, which have side doors that open to tiny individual slots with a bed and duffle space.
“This year, they’ve been good, with fewer incidents than in past years. No fights, thank goodness,” says Medina, who patrols the bunkhouse. “They’re like a big family, they take care of each other.”
It’s the only home for Billy Parker, 56, who spent 32 years off the grid on the carnival circuit.
Parker runs the Fireball, a huge looped ride that spins open-caged riders about 70 miles an hour.
“Every time I load that up I’ve got 20 people that I’m responsible for their lives,” he says. “I try to relax after dealing with the kids and teenager and the parents. I come home, drink a few beers. I might see daylight.”
It will be here soon enough.
The nighttime calm will give way to another day of music, laughter, screams and the sizzle of funnel cakes. Rides will catapult into action. The clean grounds will be over run by a stampede of kids spilling snow cones and dropping corn dogs stick in their haste to experience everything at once.
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Call the writer at 636-0253.
DETAILS:When: 10 a.m. to midnight, Through Sept. 7Where: Colorado State Fairgrounds, 1001 Beluah Ave., PuebloTickets: $5 weekday admission, $8 weekend admission (Friday, Saturday, Sunday)
Click here for the official Web site.
Young Yang, left, from China, Hao Han Wun of Taiwan and Thuy Lam, who moved to Houston from Vietnam last year, clean up Chan’s Chicken on a Stick as the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo, Colo., closes Tuesday night, earlier Wednesday, Sept. 1-2, 2009. (Chri Photo by CHRISTIAN MURDOCK, THE GAZETTE
Pueblo County Jail inmates transform the Events Center from a livestock sales to a concert hall at the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo, Colo., Tuesday night, earlier Wednesday, Sept. 1-2, 2009. (Christian Murdock, The Gazette) Photo by CHRISTIAN MURDOCK, THE GAZETTE
David Aguilar, left, and Dozell Yarbrough empty the trash cans along Main Street at the Colorado State Fair in Pueblo, Colo., Tuesday night, Sept. 1, 2009. The pair work from noon to midnight picking up trash. (Christian Murdock, The Gazette) Photo by CHRISTIAN MURDOCK, THE GAZETTE