LOGAN SQUARE — While most county fairs ended their annual runs on Labor Day, a new one is just getting started. On Saturday and Sunday, the inaugural Armitage County Fair will take a citified approach to the beloved age-old tradition.

Taking place on closed-to-traffic Armitage Avenue between California Avenue and Humboldt Boulevard, the weekend event will start at noon and run until 10 p.m. on Saturday and 9 p.m. on Sunday.

The fair will feature two stages with 16 bands performing. A self-care tent will offer free services from nearby wellness businesses. Some 30 craft vendors will be in attendance. For kids, there’s a petting zoo. And like any self-respecting fair, county or otherwise, there’ll be plenty of food and drink on hand.

For activities, the Armitage County Fair leans into classic county fair contests and then puts a playful, sometimes Chicago-centric spin on them.

There’s a giardiniera-eating competition as well as one for the best dog dressed as a farm animal. Our governor gets some love with the JB Pritzker lookalike contest for babies.

There’s a talent show where expertise isn’t required and talent is in the eye of the beholder. Pie-eating finds a place also, but here it’s for kids 3 and under. (Parents of wanna-be contestants are encouraged to sign up online.) Renowned local comedian Maggie Winters will be hosting the contests on both days.

Middle Brow Bungalow owner Pete Ternes initiated the idea for the event along with the Logan Square Chamber of Commerce, where he is treasurer. Since 2019, Ternes had been organizing a small annual block party on Mozart Street next to his all-day brew pub on Armitage Avenue.

“There’s nothing more important, especially in this age of social media and robots, than for people to come together,” he said.

Doing a bigger festival had always been a goal of Ternes — and, it turns out, for the chamber too.

“We got board approval in May and then we kicked off planning and began working on it,” Ternes said. “Most street festivals have a year or more to get everything in place and we are trying to pull it off in three months. It’s been a whirlwind.”

For the food vendors, Ternes mostly stuck close to home, reaching out to nearby restaurants like Osteria Langhe, Giant, Lonesome Rose, Offset BBQ, Parson’s, Table Donkey Stick, Bar Parisette and Gretl. Bucktown’s Le Bouchon is also onboard, along with The Fish Guy. Pretty Cool Ice Cream will be bringing a selection of ice cream bars.

On the beverage side, there will be beers from Middle Brow, including limited-edition tappings, plus yet-to-be-released wines. Marz Community Brewing Co. will bring THC drinks and Chicago’s Apologue will have a specialty cocktail cooler.

To help curate the bands, Ternes worked with musician Sima Cunningham and Mike Reed, co-founder of Pitchfork Music Festival and more recently the creator of Sound & Gravity music festival.

“Our directive at the beginning started with the idea of a county fair but we didn’t just want country music,” said Ternes. “The idea wasn’t just to mimic what you’d hear at the Illinois State Fair but be representative of the broader Chicago music community.”

Armitage County Fair’s two headlining bands are La Luz and Sun Ra Arkestra. Additional artists include Hazel City, Al Scorch, The Sidepieces and Cabeza de Chivo. Fourteen of the 16 bands are local and half of them have played at Middle Brow over the last few years.

Helping with the fair’s organizing and planning is Cameron Lacy, owner of Armitage business Intuit Healing. Like Ternes, she had been looking for a way highlight this stretch of Armitage, which was especially hard hit during a recent water pipe repair project that kept half of the street closed at a time and eliminated street parking for a year and a half.

“That crushed a lot of businesses on Armitage, including ours,” said Ternes.

Lacy’s main involvement in the fair has been organizing the Take Care Tent.

“There’s a ton of amazing alternative therapy and self-care spaces on Armitage, and they want to be involved and invest in this street and the community just as much as anybody else,” said Lacy, and that includes hers. “This festival is a testament of how much all these small businesses are coming together to lift each other up.”

The free services include yoga, Pilates, massage therapy, sound baths, facials and pottery classes. Lacy’s favorite is the “ask your therapist panel.” The four therapists on the panel specialize in couples and sex therapies, OCD and EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing).

“The goal of the tent is to offer free community services for everybody that comes,” said Lacy. “We want to expose people to different ways of taking care of themselves.”

Ternes hopes folks can give a $10 donation to help fund this year’s Armitage County Fair and future ones.

“This is a fundraiser for the chamber ultimately and the more money it gets, the more work it can do to help businesses in the neighborhood,” he said. “It’s really about making something cool for the neighborhood.”

More information about the event — as well as the full lineup — is available on the Armitage County Fair website.

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