The Carnival is Here
I don’t know what they’re calling it, or why it is here, but for the last few days I’ve been hearing an awful lot of music and screaming coming from the mall down the hill. The traveling carnival that came through last year is back again. Simi Valley mall-goers can now finish their hard day of shopping by throwing darts at balloons and being flung upside down through the air in the parking lot! Coming home from work during the golden hour before sunset I saw it as a fun chance for photography. So I dropped my work backpack, grabbed my camera, and walked down to the mall. I walked around, took a few daylight shots, then got a coffee to kill 30 minutes and let the sun go down; I figured that a lot of well-lit spinning things might make interesting subjects.
Strangely enough, to this day, every time I see one of those “Zipper” rides I can’t help but remember riding one a ridiculous number of times one year at the VA State Fair with this girl I really liked; we’re talking like 15 years ago or something. It is strange how well some associations get lodged in my brain while other more important and more recent ones are forgotten.
I wonder how many people travel around from city to city with carnivals like this all year? They have quite a fleet of RVs traveling with them, which I assume is to house the people staffing it.