Get yourself a good, local brat

There's nothing new about a fair being loaded with food vendors.

But fair attendees get to choose from plenty of local flavor at the Kane County Fair.

Dave Kleren estimated that he would cook about a quarter of a ton of bratwurst from Randy Ream's Elburn Market before the end of the fair.

And these goods have a seal of approval from the people who know meat.

In February, their hot dogs won the Illinois Meat Processors Association's best hot dog, and in 1994 they won the National Meat Processors Association's award for best bratwurst.

Ream, 52, said the fair serves as a good way to get the word out.

"It's good exposure and good local exposure," he said. "A lot of people that you don't see in the county go there."

Kevin Rydberg hopes that exposure also benefits his All-American BBQ stand at the Sugar Grove Fun Zone at Route 47 and Jericho Road.

In his first year of the fair, he said he has served 350 pounds of his specialty, pulled pork.

"It's been pretty busy," he said.

And with his fingers crossed, he said he hopes the weather holds for the next couple of days so he and his crew can reach what they hope will be a final tally of about 700 pounds.

20,000 people!

Event organizers can't say enough about the first few days of the Kane County Fair.

With weather in the 90s on each of the first three days, fair spokesman Floyd Brown said he thought the fair might have broken a record in opening day attendance.

He said 19,875 people attended the fair on Wednesday.

"The fair is going really well," he said. "(The weather) has been a blessing."

Even if the weather did make a turn for the worse, Brown said the new 44,000-square-foot building that houses the fair's headquarters would give some fairgoers a chance to wait it out.

"In the past, if the weather got bad, people would go home," he said. "Because it's a large building, it offers more protection from the elements."

What's in a face?

Michael Shiroda of Palatine began drawing caricatures on accident.

He had never done it for money until an art professor at Rock Valley Community College asked him to do so at a party.

"It was college and a paying job is a paying job," he said.

Shiroda, 34, is at the Kane County Fair for the first time, and judging from the lines and the crowds that gather around him as he works, he's been pretty successful so far.

"He does a real good job," said Gary Collins, whose 5-year-old daughter Josie had her caricature drawn by Shiroda on Friday. "It's nothing I have ever seen. It looks real good."

Collins, who lives in Poolville, Texas, was visiting his mother in Aurora.

Shiroda will continue at the fair the rest of the weekend and then will be at the DuPage County Fair next week.