STATE FAIR: Best Of Awards - Top Lot, Top Slop and Top Flop

Best Place to Park: Snowball Parking at Gerard and York roads.

It's not often you are rewarded for simply picking a parking space. In fact, at the State Fair, you may find yourself feeling punished at the end of the day, depending on where you chose to park.

Sure there are tons of alternative parking areas, with hand painted signs and orange flag waving folks battling for the opportunity to rent you a space for 6 or 8 dollars, but do yourself a favor and head to the corner of Gerard and York roads where a bright blue Snowball stand sits, with picnic tables out front.

For $5, you can have a parking space for the day as well as one free snowball of any flavor, redeemable both on arrival or when you return at the end of the day.  There are plenty of spots available and no "blocked" parking, which means you can get in and out in mere seconds. 

Be sure to drop a tip into the "Starving Bros" coffee can, as a thank you to the teenagers manning the best impromptu parking the fair has to offer. The walk to the front gate takes about five minutes, but you'll have your sticky, icy cup-of-summertime to slurp while you decide whether to hit the Ferris wheel or pig races first. 

Best way to clog your arteries: The Doughnut Burger at Little Richard's Family Café

Eating takes on a whole new meaning when it's done within the gates of the State Fair.

The guilt that accompanies eating certain fair fare is disregarded completely on the basis of its grease/sugar to nutritional value ratio. 

This is where saturated fat celebrates it's moment in the sun, and no single item does this better than Little Richard's Doughnut burger. An illustrated sign nearby offers a handy equation for trying to wrap your brain around the concept: Dancing doughnut + smiling burger patty with cheese = New! DoughnutBurger!

It is exactly the sum of its parts. And yes, it's delicious. A standard Fair-type burger patty is grilled, topped with a thick slice of melting American cheese (and lettuce and tomato if you want to go and ruin a good thing with vegetables) before being sandwiched between two (two!) glazed doughnuts, which are also grilled for a quick second to melt the glaze just so.

Then you consider what you're about to do to your cholesterol levels, look around to make sure no one is watching, and devour it.

In under a minute you'll be licking burger juice and sticky glaze from your fingers to rid yourself of the evidence. It's so wrong, so perfect, and besides, you think, reasoning with yourself, you can burn off that second doughnut just walking around the fair. 

Best Anticlimactic Fair Event: A Ride on the "Vertigo"

Deciding which ride should kick-off your Fair experience is one of the summer's tougher choices.

Perhaps the rollercoaster is too quick of a start, and you want to save the Ferris wheel for later in the day when your feet are tired and you need a time-out. Somewhere between the two, there is "VERTIGO" a grown-up version of the iconic swings, but with seating for two and a flashier presence.

Loud rock music blares at a deafening level, the neon orange and green colors glow in the early afternoon sun, and the lights are flashing off and on as if spelling out excitement in Morse code.  

The cost is five tickets a head, the equivalent of $5, and the line seemed to stay pretty short throughout the day, which is appealing in itself. But sadly, the reason for the lack of line is that the ride itself only lasts about forty-five seconds from start to finish, and half of that is spent sitting idly about half-way up the mast before and after the actual "swinging."

While the view from the top is nice-enough, it's easily trumped by the original swings, and the ride is just long enough to make you wish you had spent the time waiting in line for a ride on the original.