Love You, Golden State: It's the California State Fair

This multi-day celebration of California agriculture, wine, animals, ingenuity, art, and everythingness is ready to shine, Sactown-style.

WHAT WERE YOU DOING... in 1854? Wait, scratch that. What do you wish you were doing? If you were able to zip back to the San Francisco of that era, which was still very much feeling the reverberations of the Gold Rush, you just might find yourself at the California State Fair. It's an event that's now synonymous with Sacramento, which became the fair's permanent home, and it hardly feels like a quintessential summer night in the Golden State without at least one spin on its towering Ferris wheel. If a visit to the Cal Expo has long been on your forever-and-ever Julytime bucket list, best buck up and make your Sactown plans soon, for the 2019 California State Fair is ready to flip the switch on those ol' midway lights. The fast-approaching dates are...

JULY 12-28, 2019, and the gotta-see-thats are as numerous as feathers on a blue ribbon-winning chicken. Some of the draws of this year's out-sized extravaganza? TLC, Martina McBride, and several other favorites and tribute acts are on the Toyota Concert Series roster, if rocking out at the fair is your must-do. There's a fresh, just-debuting Food Festival Pass, which gives you lots of interesting, fair-fabulous tastes for twenty eight bucks (hello there, Grizzly Mac Attack). And the competitions will be plentiful, with California Canning and Baking, Junior Livestock, and the Corn Dog Eating Contest on the long, long list. As for the midway? That'll be calliope-ing up our lives daily, while there are discounts to enjoy, like two-buck rides on Tuesdays, courtesy of Wells Fargo.

SO YOU MISSED THE 1854 BASH? Time to make up for lost time, if you can't time-travel back to the first-ever California State Fair. Be at Cal Expo, in 2019, beginning on July 12, for two whimsical weeks of attraction-bright, quilt-beautiful, rabbit-cute, ice-cream-melty, concert-cool fun. 

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