As great as the New York State Fair is, you can’t have everything, especially in this troubled year.

Vendors and workers are laboring furiously to get ready, hoping that crowds will swarm the grounds when the gates open on Friday. Some of your favorite features will be ready for the spotlight, but some won’t. Below is a list of some hits and misses as it now stands.

By now, you probably know that some of the event’s most popular food stands will not be open. Those include Baker Chicken, Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, Haddock’s Paddock, Danny D’s, Gianelli and Tully’s. There will, however, be plenty of places to feed your Fair food obsession, among them P-Z-O’s, Basilio, Pizze Fritte, King David’s, Strong Hearts, Butcher Boys, Horan, JJ’s and a few new places.

All of the major buildings that surround Chevy Court Square will be open with some modifications. The Horticulture Building’s maple stand and other exhibits will return, though the kosher food stand will not.

Center of Progress will host vendors, though fewer and more widely-spaced. The sand sculpture has moved to the Expo Center.

You can view the butter sculpture and buy milk in the Dairy Building.

While the Art and Home Center will be open, the Empire Theatre will stay dark. The demonstration kitchen and the model trains will also be absent, though the model circus will be on display. The fine arts exhibit moves to the first floor. Vaccination shots will be available in the Martha Eddy Room.

In terms of other buildings, the Youth Building will be closed as 4-H is not participating in the 2021 State Fair. The Agriculture Museum, the Carriage Museum and the Grange Building will be locked up as they are small buildings with limited ventilation. Since they have limited access, checking vaccination status at entrances could have worked, but the Fair didn’t make that choice. The wool center will also be closed.

Over 50 national acts will perform concerts, two most days on each the Chevy Park (New York Experience) stage and at Chevy Court.

The Exposition Center will open to host the sand sculpture, a mural creation and a military aircraft exhibit.

Juggler extraordinaire Hilby and one-man band Bandoloni will perform, though not for all days of the Fair.

Most farm animals will be represented, with horse shows in the Coliseum, cows in the dairy barn (though not the first few days), goats, llamas and beef cattle. Missing are pigs, rabbits and sheep.

There will be a full slate of traditional dances in the historic Iroquois Village. The Talent Showcase stage will host some Latino Festival performances, but no talent competitions.

The classic train exhibit will host visitors trackside and Hawk Creek Wildlife Center will teach us about their regal birds of prey in the State Parks area. Circus Hollywood will entertain daily under the big top.

While it won’t quite live up to the revered traditions of past Fairs, there are plenty of reasons to go out for the return of the New York State Fair.

There’s a large body of water at either end of the New York State Fair and some very creative planning had both of them getting use by this year’s Fair patrons.

The venerable reflecting pool in front of the Horticulture Building looks pretty, but has been mostly wasted space in recent years.

This year paddleboard yoga classes were held on the pond with an instructor leading small classes of health enthusiasts though a workout routine. It may have seemed like an outlandish idea for an festival famed for food, livestock, concerts and a massive midway, but people came out to try it. And early-arriving visitors came over to watch the rare spectacle.

Down at the opposite end of the grounds, the man-made Experience Pond–sometimes called a lagoon–became a venue for rowing a skiff brought in by the coalition of agencies that annually presents maritime exhibits and activities just off Broadway at water’s edge.

It’s a picturesque locale for staying afloat while gently paddling the waterway, getting a restful and unusual perspective from which to view the stage, stables, midway and Expo Center.

The 2019 New York State Fair provided a great balance of entertainment from the traditional and historic dance performances of the Iroquois to the relaxing pace of family fishing on the Experience pond.

Both activities were free to enjoy.

Your admission price discount for Saturday’s New York State Fair is in your closet or dresser drawer.

Just dress in Syracuse University Orange clothing and you get in for just a dollar.

For most local folks, chances are good that you have something to wear that will qualify.

If you don’t have official SU apparel, just put on an orange-colored shirt or cap and that will probably work.

If you’re really a Cornell, Colgate or (gasp) Duke fan, no one will know.

Before heading out to the Fair on Saturday, log in to change.org and sign the petition imploring the greedy bureaucrats who run the university to back off demands that local business Lock 1 Distilling stop using the name Cuse Juice. This community is certainly supportive of SU, so for once they should return the favor.