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PLEASANTON — For Ivy Loveall, fourth time was the charm to have a butterfly sit on her nose.
Loveall stood nervously as a monarch butterfly idled just below her nose, making her look as if she suddenly grew an orange-yellow moustache. The six-year-old girl from Pleasanton merely nodded to questions, unable to open her mouth for fear she may scare the butterfly away.
Nearby, Renita Peniagua, 45, had her hair and face coated in butterflies.
“You can feel their legs all over but it’s still very light,” said Peniagua of Newark. “It’s a bit tickly.”
Loveall and Peniagua were one of the dozen of children and adult inside the new butterfly exhibit at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton, which opened its doors on Friday at the Alameda County Fairgrounds.
The exhibit, run by Castro Valley-based Skyriver Butterflies, exhibited 15 U.S.-based butterfly species, some of which are based in the Bay Area.
“We’re in the Silicon Valley high-tech world but before we used to be able to go to fields with our butterfly nets and catch hundreds,” said Skyriver Butterflies caretaker John Dailey. “Unfortunately, that is increasingly not the case across the country. I hope the next generation would be able to experience this.”
The Alameda County Fair, open every summer since 1912, kicked off with a cattle parade through the streets of Pleasanton on Friday. The fair is scheduled to run every day and night until July 8.
New rides, foods and showcases — like the butterfly exhibit — will be making its first appearance this year. While debutants like the butterfly exhibit try to capture what the Bay Area used to look like, others are more high-tech, like a “Skyride” gondola which floats above the fair to connect pedestrians from one end to another.
A new ride is the “Turbo”, a slingshot-esque ride which lifts one end up to as high as 120 feet in the air and drops to the bottom either backward or forward as fast as 70 miles per hour.
For Ethan Covarrubias, he described riding the Turbo as feeling like he was falling off the sky.
“I’m not afraid of heights but I felt a bit scared (on Turbo),” said Covarrubias, a 17-year-old from Redlands.
Foods like nitrogen-infused cereal balls — where cold smoke comes at the mouth after biting it — and Fruity Pebbles-fried shrimp on a stick made its debut.
The fair’s Vice President of Business Development Angel Moore says the fair wanted to keep alive old traditions — like its famed rodeo, pig races and horse racing — but tie new technologies commonly found in the Bay Area.
“Maybe before you and your kids would come to the fair to build a pinewood derby car,” said Moore. “Now you can design that on a 3D printer here.”
The fair is expecting up to 750,000 attendees this year with hopes the weather will cooperate. Last year, the fair recorded more than 460,000 attendees despite several days of triple-digit temperatures.
Almost every night of the festival, the fair will have different musical guests. On the first night on Friday, rock band Blue Oyster Cult headlined the concert. The next night, R&B singer and rapper Sean Kingston — who broke through the charts with the 2007 single “Beautiful Girls” — was scheduled to perform.
Other singers and bands like country singer Clay Walker (June 20), the 1990s hit band Smashmouth (June 22) and rapper Sir Mix-A-Lot (June 24) are slated to perform next week.
The fair is open every day from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. but will close at 6 p.m. — gates will close at 3 p.m. — on Independence Day for public safety reasons, according to the fair. Admission prices are between $10 to $15. For details, visit: alamedacountyfair.com.