"They do live up to the hype. Get the corn, don't argue. Even when you're on a date."

"They give toothpicks to help with the stuck corn. Very helpful because that would have bothered me the rest of the evening."



We just got back from a road trip that took us to New York City, where seemingly the most ordinary thing is a thing. I was amused by the corn-on-the-cob chomping on the sidewalks of NoLita. We're back home now — in the Midwest, where festivals premised on corn-on-the-cob are a summer tradition.

The quote in this post's title comes from a Yelp! review of the restaurant in my photograph, and I see there is a Yelp! review for the Sun Prairie (Wisconsin) Sweet Corn Festival:

Once upon a time in a land not so far away there was my beloved Sweet Corn Festival. I'd go there with my family and for a couple of bucks receive a cardboard tote filled with 12 steamin' hot ears of the finest sweet corn. We'd then take it to the shucking tables, and then onto the buttering station where the pretty young girls made friendly conversation as they rolled the awesome deliciousness that is your corn in sweet cream butter. After that we'd take those ears of corn to the salting tree and salt em' up. Finally sitting in the grass, in the shade of a great oak tree we ate our corn with much glee and chased it down with ice cold sodas. It was like a little slice of heaven right here in the Midwest. 

But not anymore my friends. It's like they say, all good things must come to an end, or in this case become so over commercialized that you want to rip your own head off.

What was once a simple festival full of corn, and other goodies to eat, has now become an over-commercialized, crowded, loud, obnoxious and EXPENSIVE event designed to suck your wallet dry and destroy your soul. 

It's five dollars just  to park in a grassy field! Then there are the carnival rides, vendor booths, and people everywhere trying to sell you shit that is completely unrelated to the glorious corn. 

Even the corn itself has gone up in price so much that you cringe. 6 DOLLARS A TOTE for ten ears of corn. You read it right, 6 fucking dollars...

Oh, now, now. That's 6 fucking dollars for 10 ears of corn and all the sweet cream butter pretty young girls can slather on. If it's still done the way it was done 30 years ago, the one time I went to the festival, it's entertaining to watch the girls rub the butter on with their plastic-gloved hands.

Fear not, the corn is still as good as it ever was, but you get the honor of paying more for less, and then you get to eat it while standing or sitting in a packed crowd of other disappointed Midwesterners who themselves are still trying to cling to the awesome memories of yesteryear. 

I can't believe I'm even saying this, but by the time we got through the midway, the people trying to sell you shit, the screaming kids, and hordes and hordes of hot, sweaty, disenchanted Midwesterners, the corn just wasn't worth it and I was hurrying back to my car.

Pining for the Golden Age of corn on the cob, bitching about crowds in the Midwest... why would you go to a corn festival if you didn't want a crowd experience? Grill or boil your corn at home if all you want is the corn.

But I wonder... what is the sought-after corn experience that leads to festivals and fetishizing? Corn seems to mean something to people, to stir some deep longing. I can't imagine standing on the sidewalk eating corn on the cob while random strangers walk by. At the Midwestern corn festival, you've got your public corn-eating event surrounded by human others who have all come to eat corn in public. That's weird in its own way. I would be all: Why are we all here, eating corn together in a corn-eating event? In NYC, the corn-eaters took their corn-pleasure in the midst of un-corn-related passersby who, as they progressed to their next destination, took vague note of the fact that on this 20-foot sector of sidewalk everybody is eating corn.