The Things we Build

To all of you who are a part of the Three Barons Fair:

I think it’s sometimes easy for us to focus on just the part of the fair we participate in directly. We can sometimes overlook the overall picture of what it is we build together. If you’ll allow me an indulgence, I’d like to share my perspective of the fair from the standpoint of your site manager.

The Three Barons Fair hosts 15 venues with seven stages, over 50 vendors, and has a cast that exceeds 400.

When taken together, the time spent on-site building, striking, rehearsing, and performing exceeds 25,000 people/hours. At that point, it’s more useful to start talking person/days (1,041), or even person/years (2.9). This is the time on-site; we spend countless more hours in the offseason, preparing, planning, and rehearsing.

When making site decisions, I assume between 10-12 thousand patrons over the two weekends. Each day, our patrons would fill the Wendy Williamson Auditorium 4 times over. On any given day of fair, Hillshire is the 12th largest population center in Alaska.

We don’t reach these sorts of numbers on a fluke, we’ve built them over time. Our patrons come back year-on-year, routinely choosing us over everything else Alaska has to offer on the first glorious weekends of summer.

What we’ve built together is magnificent, and we do it on a site without running water, in structures that need to be taken down and stored between fairs. I’m honored to be a part.

Thank you all for your hard work.