By noon Wednesday, the June gloom had burned off and a long line had already formed for midway ride tickets at the Del Mar Fairgrounds. More than a few were likely digesting corn dogs and funnel cakes as they queued for the Defender, a towering stretch of steel that flings its riders through the air on the ends of a massive crossbar like a windmill built to spin out daredevil screams.

Yes, the San Diego County Fair has arrived in all its perfectly excessive glory, this year urging the million or so people who will flock through its gates to “go retro,” embracing their natural nostalgia for decades past.

“We have something for everyone, things that are real and tangible, things that can make you nostalgic for bygone eras, things that make you dream about the future, things that are fried and healthy things, too,” said fairgrounds CEO Carlene Moore.

There were plenty of memories at the head of the line, waiting to get in Wednesday morning. In the very first rank, waiting patiently for the Marine Corps Band to play and for the traditional ribbon-cutting ceremony to finish, were David Servetter and Candace Cornell who drove down early from south Murrieta.

Riders get flipped upside down on the Windsurf on the opening day of the San Diego County Fair on Wednesday.

(K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

“Notice, we still call it the Del Mar Fair,” he said. “We’ve been coming long enough that we never really started calling it the San Diego County Fair.”

A retired elementary school teacher who worked in the Vista Unified School District, Servetter said he has been attending the fair since 1964. The fair’s collection of potentially useful merchandise, hawked by microphone-wearing salespeople, has been a draw.

“I’ve always just liked the gadgets, you know, the choppers and the dicers, but I’m also here for the music, the Jackstraws are playing,” Servetter said.

The attempts to trigger fond memories of simpler times extend to the food that flanks the fair’s main thoroughfare. Midway through this gustatory gauntlet sits The Spam Stand, occupying a prized corner booth surrounded by other vendors offering tacos and pizza and chicken on a stick.

Proclaiming “don’t knock it till you’ve fried it,” it’s a bold move for canned and spiced ham, the type of processed food that was a staple during and after World War II, but less so since then.

Proprietors Sean and Charity Rocha of Phoenix hedged their bets, offering boba tea in a bewildering assortment of flavors, and the colorful drinks seemed to be moving more quickly than the salty meat in the first few hours of this newly minted fair season.

But Sean Rocha said he knows that Spam will be a hit. After all, you don’t bring something like this to the San Diego County Fair, the largest single event on this nomadic food company’s calendar, without doing a little research first.

Entertainers Sparkle and The Reflector greet people on the opening day of the San Diego County Fair on Wednesday, June 12, 2024.

(K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

“We wanted to do something different. I mean, you can go around and see a lot of corn dogs, a lot of people serving burgers, the same stuff,” he said. “We wanted to do it here, but we didn’t want to do it here first, so we tried it out in some smaller places first to make sure we had it right.”

The key, he added, has been deep frying the Spam before putting it on slider buns with a slice of pineapple or slicing it into thing spears to be served inside the can whence it came.

“A lot of people pan fry it or air fry it, but not a lot deep fry it,” Rocha said. “We thought, ‘well, deep frying is a quick, easy way,’ so we threw it in there and cooked it for different amounts of time to find the right texture.

“We can get it where it’s crispy on the outside and hot and juicy on the inside, and I feel like that pulls even more of that salty flavor out which goes really well with some of the sweet and spicy sauces we do.”

Of course, some of the less-obvious, but tried-and-true fair traditions still draw on opening day.

Kathy Hoffmann of Rancho Santa Fe quickly found herself examining the collections in the fair’s exhibits hall, a location off the main path, tucked in beside the cacophony of the midway rides.

The San Diego County Fair opened on Wednesday.

(K.C. Alfred / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

Her eye was drawn to a collections of thimbles.

“People used to collect these, and my mom had a collection from all over the world,” she said. “You know, it was something small that you could bring back from traveling as opposed to, you know, a big piece of art or whatever.”

But true collections aficionados come looking for the quirky submissions. Sure, a person who submits the ticket stubs for every concert they have ever attended scratches that itch, but some do even better, such as this year’s collection of “science not SciFi” books on “UFOs & Human ETs.”

Some seem particularly provocative such as the large pile of worn socks, fanned just so under plexiglass, its tag indicating that this display is “25+ years of my family’s orphaned socks.”

“I just can’t believe they saved them all,” Hoffmann said, chuckling.

The San Diego County Fair runs through July 7. A daily itinerary is available at sdfair.com.