Good morning, it’s Wednesday, and opening day at the Great New York State Fair – a 13-day celebration (Aug. 20 through Sept. 1) that is one of the nation’s oldest and largest state fairs, with an annual attendance of more than 1 million people.
I am a big fair fan. I grew up with the Ulster County Fair, and distinctly remember spending many hours riding the swings, the mere sight of which makes me feel a little queasy as an adult, frankly. At that age, I also could stomach a lot more in the way of deep fried fair food than I am capable of consuming these days. Funnel cake is the bomb, IMHO, and I also like a good oversized turkey leg.
The fair of my youth with decidedly not pc. There were some attractions related to native people and supposed oddities that, in retrospect, were not only inappropriate but downright offensive. These so-called “freak” shows originated with the traditional traveling circus, which is also something you don’t see much of anymore.
Fairs were originally established in the 19th century for the purpose of promoting local agriculture, providing an opportunity for farmers to showcase their respective products and livestock and learn new techniques, while educating members of the general public about farm life.
The nation’s first-ever fair was held in September 1841 in Syracuse, according to the State Fair website. It featured speeches, animal exhibits and a plowing contest and attracted some 10,000 to 15,000 attendees.
The fair traveled around for a while, landing in Albany before moving on to Poughkeepsie, Rochester, Saratoga Springs, and elsewhere, before settling into its permanent home in Geddes outside Syracuse in the late 1890s. After a brief hiatus due to the war in the 1940s, the fair steadily grew in attendance, breaking the 1 million mark for the first time in 2001.
Over time, these events evolved into more mainstream entertainment events, with rides and attractions and food, etc., though, depending on the locale, the agricultural aspect often continues with competitions and exhibits for all manner of animals, vegetables, baked goods, and crafts.
While attending a far, I happen to enjoy checking out the wide array of animals – from chickens and bunnies to cows, pigs, horses and even the occasional alpaca or llama.
During my TV days, I broadcast live from the State Fair and the Erie County Fair on several occasions, and once got to bottle feed a newborn calf named Larry, which I very much enjoyed. I have never opted to sign up for the alerts that enable you to watch a live bovine birth, but if that’s what floats your boat, this is an option that is available at the State Fair (click the aforementioned link for more intel on that).
The food, as mentioned earlier, is a big draw at the fair, and every year the vendors compete to outdo last year’s offerings. There are 17 new vendors at the 2025 State Fair, according to Syracuse.com, which is one of the best local sources of up-to-date fair news. Thew new offerings include a “pizza cone,” BBQ, steamed dumplings, fried cheese curds, loaded tater tots, and lotus drinks, among other things. There are also several vendors seeking to cash in on the Dubai chocolate trend.
You can access the full – and exhaustive – list of food vendors and exhibitors here.
Aside from the food and the rides and the exhibits and the animals, another big fair draw is, of course, the butter sculpture. The first NYS Fair butter sculpture appeared in 1969 and depicted a cow jumping over the moon. This year’s sculpture has a Wizard of Oz theme in honor of Chittenango native L. Frank Baum.
If you’re wondering how on earth the tradition of sculpting larger-than-life figures out of otherwise edible material came to be, click here for a full accounting of the butter sculpture origin story.
The State Fair has not been without controversy. There was, for example, a dust-up over the cost of the traditional 7-ounce cup of moo juice at the Rainbow Dairy Bar. Both plain and chocolate milk have been offered there for a mere 25 cents since 1983, but ten years ago, the nonprofit that runs this operation said they would have to double the price to 50 cents due to rising costs.
Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo stepped in to save the day with state funds – something the current governor, Kathy Hochul, has pledged will continue as long as she is in office.
Last year, there was a false shooting report that caused an early closure at the fair. The 2020 fair was cancelled entirely due to the Covid crisis. A 2016 Kesha concert created some consternation over a few “F-bombs.” And, perhaps most significantly in modern times, the Office of the Inspector General in 2013 issued a scathing report on misconduct at the fair.
But all that is beind us, and we’re on to great things at the New York State Fair’s opening day. Sadly, though, the weather isn’t expected to cooperate, with rain and unseasonably cool temperatures topping out only in the mid-60s in the forecast. Here in Albany, it’s also going to be wet and on the cooler side, with temperatures struggling to break into the low 60s.
In the headlines…
Plans for a bilateral meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky are now “underway,” with “many options” being discussed, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.
Trump reportedly called Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Monday to win his support for Ukraine to join the European Union (EU), a conversation that came after discussions with European leaders who were at the White House.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio will lead a newly formed joint commission that will work on forging a security guarantees proposal for Ukraine, an administration official said.
Trump revoked the security clearances of 37 current and former national security officials, many of whom worked on Russia analysis or foreign threats to U.S. elections, according to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Trump has stripped security clearances throughout his administration, including from his best-known rivals like former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. But the actions announced yesterday were a deeper cut, pushing far into the national security establishment.
National Intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard released a memo naming the officials, which Mark Zaid, a lawyer who represents intelligence officers and who’s suing the Trump administration to have his security clearance restored, said might break the law.
The State Department has revoked more than 6,000 international student visas because of violations of US law and overstays and said the “vast majority” of the violations were assault, driving under the influence (DUI), burglary and “support for terrorism”.
Trump said that he has ordered his attorneys to conduct a review of Smithsonian museums, calling their portrayal of U.S. history too negative and focused too much on “how bad Slavery was.”
Trump said he would subject the museums to “the exact same process” his administration has conducted of universities, with the goal of making the Smithsonian less “woke.”
“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Federal officials shared a post on social media last weekend that wrongly accused a Connecticut state lawmaker of publishing detailed location information about deportation efforts by the ICE agency, triggering a torrent of harassment against him.
Former WBC middleweight champion Julio César Chávez Jr. was deported Monday to Mexico, where he is expected to face charges under Mexican law, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed.
Parts of the Outer Banks of NC were under warnings for tropical storm and storm surge conditions, and watches were issued north to Chincoteague, Va., as the East Coast of the US prepared for the outer bands of Hurricane Erin to pass by over the next few days.
Officials from Florida to Maine have urged people to stay out of the water, and some beaches have closed entirely – including in New York.
High waves are also in the forecast this week for parts of Long Island and New England. Beaches in Suffolk and Nassau Counties on Long Island could be hit with breaking waves as high as 11 to 15 feet on Thursday, the Weather Service said in an advisory.
Mayor Eric Adams said swimmers would be barred from all the city’s beaches today and Thursday. Multiple beaches were also closed for swimming in New Jersey, with Gov. Phil Murphy warning beachgoers to stay out of the surf.
Days after Edward R. Martin, a Trump-aligned activist, was tapped by the Justice Department to investigate the New York attorney general, Letitia James, he wrote a letter to her lawyer saying he would take it as an act of “good faith” if she were to resign.
The request is particularly unusual because it appears the Justice Department is trying to harness its criminal powers to accomplish one of Trump’s political goals.
Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres’ months-long mudslinging campaign against Gov. Kathy Hochul is officially over as he formally endorsed the incumbent Democrat for reelection.
“She’s not performative, she’s substantive. She’s focused on solving problems, and that’s the kind of leadership we need right now,” Torres wrote in a statement released shortly after announcing the endorsement on News 12.
Hochul brushed off concerns about the city’s handling of Legionnaires’ disease prevention efforts yesterday after a fifth New Yorker died in an outbreak gripping Harlem.
“I know the city’s all over this,” Hochul told reporters when asked about the outbreak. “If I didn’t think so, I’d let you know.”
New York City officials are condemning the deportation of a 7-year-old girl as lawmakers call on the federal government to return her and her family to New York after they were detained at immigration court last week.
Mayor Adams demanded that the federal government stop making arrests at New York City immigration courts, marking a break with Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration as the mayor runs a long-shot re-election campaign.
The city Law Department filed court papers in support of a lawsuit that seeks to halt the arrests by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement at 26 Federal Plaza, arguing that the blitzes are driving fear among the Big Apple’s roughly 3 million immigrants.
Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo told donors at a private fund-raiser in the Hamptons last weekend that he believed Trump would wade into the race for New York City mayor and help clear a path for his election, according to audio obtained by Politico.
Cuomo made the comments on Saturday as he sought to convince Trump-friendly donors that he was best positioned in the crowded field of candidates to defeat Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, his party’s leftist nominee.
New Yorkers are seemingly starting to sour on Mamdani, according to a new poll — that still showed the Democratic nominee holding onto his clear frontrunner status in the crowded mayoral field.
Mamdani — a democratic socialist Queens Assembly member — maintains his lead in a series of scenarios the poll tests, where different sets of candidates drop out.
Mamdani met privately with New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan yesterday to discuss a “broad range of issues”. The Democratic mayoral nominee had requested the sitdown with Dolan and the two chatted at the cardinal’s residence.
In the weeks since Mamdani’s New York City Democratic primary win on June 20, a slew of tech executives who do not have a primary residence in the city or state of New York have been panicking about the prospect of him becoming mayor.
A pro-Adams Super PAC is phoning tens of thousands of voters to tell them rival Cuomo is a “sore loser” and that only the mayor can beat Mamdani.
Empower NYC, a cryptocurrency industry-backed super PAC that’s boosting Adams’ reelection run, failed to disclose its spending to New York City campaign finance regulators for weeks, potentially opening it up to fines.
Showing Up for Racial Justice, a new super PAC, is funding phone bankers and canvassers to rally white working class communities behind Mamdani as a broad array of other independent spending groups involved in the mayor’s race coalesce against him.
The topic of memes briefly dominated online discourse around the race for New York City mayor after a self-proclaimed “memelord” claimed to be working with Cuomo and his social media team to redefine city politics through edgy memes.
Adams claimed that the city’s legions of rats are “really running scared’’ because of his efforts to thwart them — while a City Hall poster bizarrely touted him as the bald-headed “Mr. Clean.’’
Big Apple residents vented about the MTA’s latest planned fare hike during a public hearing yesterday, blasting the “greedy” transit agency while complaining about the state of the subway system.
Federal transportation officials threatened to withhold some funding from the MTA, claiming the agency’s leaders keep underplaying the safety risks New York City Transit workers face on the job.
Rainwater left untreated in cooling towers atop city-owned Harlem Hospital fueled the Big Apple’s deadliest Legionnaire’s disease outbreak in a decade, the Rev. Al Sharpton charged.
A state Department of Health worker from Galway who was charged last week with leaving threatening voicemail messages for the widow of murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson also allegedly threatened to shoot ICE agents in Saratoga Springs.
Clinton County Republican leaders say they hope to move past their recent clash with U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik in their hunt for a nominee to fill a soon-to-be-vacant North Country state Assembly seat.
The demolition of what many consider to be Albany’s biggest eyesore is underway. The first pieces of the Central Warehouse were torn from the nearly century-old building yesterday to kick off a leveling that’s expected to be completed in 2026.
Luciano Frattolin, the man accused of killing his daughter, 9-year-old Melina Galanis Frattolin, appeared in Essex County Court for a brief preliminary hearing yesterday, one month to the day after the alleged murder took place.
The Pine Hills Land Authority today will host the first of three community workshops to collect public input on the future of the former College of Saint Rose campus.
Bryan Leahey, a longtime youth sports volunteer-turned-Democratic alderman, said in January he would not seek reelection. Now, he won’t finish his second term on the Rensselaer Common Council either.
An attorney for the Saratoga Springs’ former commissioner of public works, Jason Golub, put the city on notice that it could face yet another federal civil rights lawsuit.
Recommended water consumption restrictions were lifted yesterday after repair crews isolated leaks in a 36-inch water main near the city’s treatment plant in Rotterdam.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
