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76,000 flock to county fair
A tough economy and gas over $3.50 a gallon can really squeeze a buck these days for a lot of folks.
That’s a fact that's not lost on Keith Johnson, the general manager of the Prince William County Fairgrounds.
So when he put on this year’s 59th annual county fair, he made sure to start the nine-day festival with half-price tickets and later included $1 admission the following Wednesday.
With 27,000 of the fair’s 76,000 attendees showing up on those two days alone, apparently the low-budget days worked as planned.
“The challenges are, will people come out? You try to give them something that interests the family,” Johnson said.
It’s hard to beat free, and in two of the biggest competitions, families were able to witness bone-crushing entertainment without an extra cover charge.
Now in its second year, the Kyda Pro Wrestling event turned out a capacity crowd of more than 500 people inside the show barn.
Wrestlers, trained at the Kyda facility in Manassas, tangled with each other in a style similar to WWE stars while hurling G-rated insults with the toughest faces possible. A “high flyer” like Sanchezz received some of the biggest screams as he laid his opponent Uriah Condit across a table, scaled a 15-foot ladder and lunged at his 6-foot, 192-pound foe, smashing both of them through the table to end the Friday showcase.
“The crowd was what we call a ‘hot crowd,’” explained Kyda owner and promoter Jimmy Z. “That’s when they’re totally into everything that’s happening.”
Boos, cheers; it didn’t matter to the wrestlers what reaction they received from the audience, just as long as it was something.
“You want them to do something as opposed to sitting on their hands,” said Jimmy Z. “There’s no better feeling than when you come out and you have 200 people spitting on you.”
Another free event with about 10 times the crowd of the wrestling show was the perennial Demolition Derby, put on by R&R Productions.
Mike Cooke and Tony Colby took the top two honors for six- and eight-cylinder cars. Rodney Dangerfield and Hoss Russell rounded out the Nos. 1 and 2 spots in the four-cylinder event.
“[It is a] community event,” Johnson said of the annual fair. “The community still supports the fair.”
Next year’s fair will take place Aug. 14 - 27.
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