Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

The Tanana Valley State Fair will incorporate a smoke-free day into this summer’s festivities.

“That’s by popular request,” said Randi Carnahan, the fair’s general manager.

Carnahan, who took over the manager position a year ago, said during last year’s fair she was regularly approached by nonsmokers who wanted to avoid second-hand smoke.

And this winter, she was approached with similar requests while at the grocery store. And “everywhere else.”

So the staff decided to try a smoking ban for one day to see how it worked out, she said.

The smoke-free day will fall on the nine-day fair’s last day — Aug. 9, a Saturday.

The move toward a nonsmoking day for the event puts the Tanana Valley fair in line with a practice employed until last year by the Alaska State Fair, held in Palmer. State fair marketing director Dean Phipps said his organization partnered with the Alaska Tobacco Control Alliance to organize a nonsmoking day, where smoking was only allowed in two designated areas.

Last year the partnership ended but the spirit did not, he said, and now “there’s no smoking in (buildings) including the traditional area where smoking was a die-hard right.”

Tanana Valley fair organizers also announced the theme logo for the 2008 event Wednesday: “Pirates of the Carrots and Beans,” a play on the name of the popular Johnny Depp movies.

Carnahan said the staff chose the theme despite having other prospects that have been discussed for years.

“We just thought it was so great, we decided to not sit on it,” she said.

Wednesday’s announcement came more than two months earlier than usual, a decision Carnahan said would give groups more time to incorporate the theme into their products and merchandising campaigns.

Attendance at last year’s Tanana Valley State Fair was reported to be 125,000.

Contact staff writer Chris Eshleman at 459-7582.