Horse Racing is back at the Alameda County Fairgrounds every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday through mid December. I went out to the Pleasanton Fairgrounds, last weekend, for the second day of the Fall Schedule Horse Racing. I know that for some people, horse racing, like boxing, is an outdated sport, and I don’t know how bad it is on the horses. However, it’s fun to watch, especially if you win, which, more often than not, I don’t. There’s always something depressing to me walking around the empty fairgrounds when there’s no fair going on. It’s like one of those spooky Twilight Zone shows where everybody in a whole town mysteriously disappears. Plus, there’s nothing like an empty fairground to give you an overpowering craving for a corn dog. I walked around the fairground in between races to match up some of the pictures I took last summer during the 2024 Alameda County Fair. (Thumbnail images)
Passing the empty Livestock Pavilion on the way in:
Looking toward Heritage Park from the entrance to the Racing Grandstand:
Looking in the opposite direction of the previous picture toward what used to be the main area of the Fair. The smell of chicken tacos on a flour tortilla, or roasted turkey legs was alarmingly absent.
Ah, the Midway; “Vomit Valley”. I even miss that, and I hardly spend any time there.
Looking past the kid’s area toward the Racing Grandstand: After the horse racing area, this has to be where they take in the most money during the run of the Fair.
No 4-H Club in the Livestock Pavilion:
Those two things in the background are rides I never plan to go on when the Fair’s back, but they’re fun to watch.
San Francisco Film Locations Then & Now 
By modern standards, it is odd that horse racing was ever as popular as it was. Even when it was popular, it should have seemed odd that it was as very popular as it was. I can not count all the facilities for such races that were around the Bay Area, at a time when the population was much less than it is now. Bay Meadows was the only racetrack that I can remember. The track in San Jose was abandoned as long ago as I can remember. Tanforan Mall is almost as old as I am. I remember the history of such racetracks more as internment camps for those of Japanese descent during World War II than as racetracks. Was horse racing already becoming less popular by that time?
That’s an interesting question, Tony. There was also Golden Gate Fields in Albany. The closure of that racetrack this year is what moved the horse races out to Pleasanton this fall. They still pack them in at Churchill Downs, Kentucky, every May, as well.