The Great Bazaar is Now Under Way

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 104, 23 July 1927, Page 21

The Great Bazaar is Now Under Way

Attractions at Winter Show AUCKLAND S Great Fair, now fairly into its stride, has shown an attraction that eclipses all previous records. The history of winter shows discloses none which does more to falsify the often-voiced sentiment of bored showgoers, “One of them is just like another.”

'C’VERY artifio* to attract the inter est is brought into play.

Every mechanical wonder to hold the gaze is there. Blazing with light last evening and animated with a concourse of spectators the scene prompted one to wonder how many realised that what was there to delight the eye was the tangible representaion of the trade and industry of only 80 years. Like the brilliant bazaars of some re-created Eastern city, the aisles lead among the hundreds of stalls each showing wares to attract by some special new utility or arresting novelty. If one evades the sellers of beflagged canes one must be equally wary of the alluring but unsubstantial candy floss. But there are few who will be able to withstand “Chocolate Alley” and its many pitfalls. Who seeing the baleful green-eyed bristling terror proclaimed to be Captain Cook of the Waitakeres could resist the temptation to pay a small coin to have his judgments on human nature verified. To the actual show one hurries meditating on the stringency of the times.

Sixpence will admit to a ride on any of the star racehorses in the world on the merry-go-round, where the visitor floats inanely up and down to the ancient strains of Beautiful Ohio from a steam orchestrophone. Another martial blast on the steam orchestra and the show-goer moves off to save sixpence. That sixpence goes with many more over the "Rolls, bowls or pitches,” the scally bats, the All Blacks, or in purchasing shies for a train of small town dummy celebrities who ceaselessly march from a bar door round the corner and out the bar door again. Yesterday the throngs at the show promised well and last evening it was found that receipts had gone up £27 5s on the corresponding day last year The amount taken was £322 ss.