Ever since I can remember, I have associated the Grand Central Parkway with LaGuardia, the US Open, the Mets, potholes, and all this random stuff from the World’s Fair. Everyone my parent’s age remembers the World’s Fair and they all seem to have had a blast.
I guess that I never really cared enough to look into it until now. It was always a big globe and lookout decks on the side of the highway for me. Why haven’t I ever thought of it? I mean, that’s a lot of infrastructure for a fair, no? I mean, the Eiffel Tower and the Seattle Space Needle were built for these fairs!
The first thing that comes to mind is that it was an old school, pre-technology idea to unite the world and wouldn’t have any relevance today because we can just Google Earth travel to China. Not so much…It actually still exists and seems to be going strong. While it doesn’t appear to be happening on an annual basis, the last one (2012) was in South Korea and the next one will be in Italy in 2015. After that, Kazakhstan (2017) and Dubai (2020) have dibs.
If you’re wondering when the fair is coming back to U.S. soil, Minnesota is in the process of a bid development submission to the Bureau of International Expositions to host an endorsed World’s Fair event in the United States.
While it may not be as big as it was and they may not (or will they?) build iconic structures, the World’s Fair is definitely still alive.
It’s been alive in New York since 1964 where you can still visit the beautiful parks and remnants of all the hard work of a great New York memory.
@newyorkeventsco