Exchange Club of Albany ready to ‘make memories’ with return of fair

ALBANY — While the world around it is going virtual, events like the annual Exchange Club Fair in Albany remain in the realm of the here and now. As James E. Strates Shows Promotions man Marty Biniasz puts it: “Call us the anti-virtual experience.”

Officials with the Exchange Club of Albany are counting on southwest Georgians looking to return to the very real experience of the fair Oct. 25-30 when the popular attraction returns to the Exchange Club Fairgrounds after a two-year, COVID-forced hiatus.

“People want the real experience of the fair: the lights, the smell of Italian sausage cooking, the feel of the rush of the wind on the rides,” Biniasz, who was in town this week promoting the return of the fair, said. “I think you can almost double down on the fact that the fair is not virtual. It’s a very real experience.”

Biniasz and members of the Exchange Club, including Gary Knight, Skip Nichols, Claude Harrell and Terry Brumbley, made the rounds Monday, talking with city officials and local media about the return of the fair. The representatives of the group that brings the fair to southwest Georgia said they’ve felt a lot of excitement generating in the community about the event that has become one of the largest attractions in the region over its six-day run.

“Everything we’ve heard has been nothing but extremely positive,” Knight said. “People are going to our (social media pages); people are talking about the demolition derby; and there are those people who always pay their $10 to get inside, go in and buy their fill of ‘fair food,’ then go home.

“This is the premiere family-friendly event in our community, and the response we’re seeing is that people are excited about the opportunity to get out and do something again. Yes, the economy has taken a downturn, but we get the feeling our community is ready to get out and support this event that has been a part of their lives for generations.”

Exchangite Brumbley, the web guru for the club, offers a bit of stat-geek speak to back up Knight’s claims.

“Put it this way,” Brumbley said. “Our fair website has been live since Sunday a week ago. Through Friday, we’d had 4,100 hits. In 2019 at the same time, we’d had 44 hits.”

Participation by the Strates Shows, which is in its 99th year — just shy of 70 of those as partners with the Exchange Club’s fair — is something Biniasz says the company takes seriously.

“We love the relationships we’ve built with people and organizations like the Exchange Club here in Albany,” he said. “We’re in the fourth generation of Strates — Jimmy, John and Jay Strates are running things now — so we have leadership that has grown up with the fair.

“We have a unique approach to the carnival industry. We don’t just blow into town and then blow out when it’s time to move to the next town. We develop lasting relationships in the communities we come into. We’re old-school that way.”

While the threat of COVID forced cancellation of the 2020 fair, Nichols said there was a different issue last year as fair time approached.

“The Exchange Club started out with 47 members who worked the first fair,” Nichols, the fair manager and vice president of the club, said. “As the fair grew, spectatorwise, over the years, it took more and more members to handle everything. Now, you see just about every member we have out here with an orange shirt on, working to make this a successful event. (“And no one gets a dime,” Knight chimes in.)

“We probably could have had the fair last year because COVID was down at that time. But we just didn’t have the manpower.”

Biniasz, who worked with the Erie County Fair in Buffalo, N.Y. — an event that typically drew some 1.2 million people over the 12 days of its run there — before joining the Strates Shows, said he’s noticed a “pent-up demand” for a return of the fair in the places he’s visited.

“The industry definitely took a hit over the last two years,” he said. “We got back up and running last year after missing all of the previous year, but it was only a 60-70% return. Everyone wasn’t ready last year, but now there seems to be a pent-up demand. We want to capture that wave.”

The Strates promotion man said that while the faltering economy has had something of an impact on the fair across the nation, the company has not had a problem attracting employees necessary to assure that the show goes on.

“Strates Shows was a pioneer in bringing in qualified employees from across the border,” he said. “They work during the season, go home in the winter and are back next spring, ready to work. We’re always looking for more employees, but we’ve been lucky to retain our labor force.

“There’s an expression in the carnival business that goes back to the days they used to spread sawdust on the midway to soak up the mud: It’s said someone who’s attracted to fair life has ‘sawdust in his shoes.’ We have a lot of that.”

Knight offers a reminder that, while the fair is the Exchange Club’s largest fundraiser, it is not a “money-making event.”

“We have to pay the bills out here on this property,” he said. “But every other dime we make goes to one of our community projects. The fair is our community service.”

Check out the latest information about the Exchange Club Fair at exchangeclubofalbany.org.

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