Showroom Scenes and Club Information at San Jose

At the Santa Clara Fairgounds in San Jose , there were two whole days of rabbit and cavy shows last weekend.    Here is the cover of the show catalog.  There are a bit of confusions as what this club is, a fair club? a regular all breed club?  Who are the people working in this club?  Is that a part of CRCS?   I'd like to offer an explanation.

The full name of this club located in San Jose is called "Santa Clara County Rabbit and Cavy Shows", acronym SCCRCS.  It is an ARBA chartered all breed club.   The major workers are the Santa Clara County Fair management with helps from several experienced rabbit judges and breeders.  To name a few: Randy Shumaker, Griffin Harrah and Betty Chu.   There will be more volunteers over time now that the shows are flowing regularly.  We are expecting show weekends twice a year, one in the spring and one in the fall. 

In the 1980s, the Santa Clara County Fair was one of the biggest fairs with animal/livestock exhibits, the fair ran as long as 20 days.   Rabbits were cooped in for 10 days in open and 10 days in youth.   Rabbit clubs would rent the sheep barn to put on all breed shows.  One of the clubs that used this facility was the Rabbit Producers of Santa Clara Valley RPSCV that still exists today and holds annual shows at Hollister in December.   The California State Convention was held at one of the barns in 1988.  

In the 1990s the barns at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds were torn down due to an offer to build a Hard Rock Cafe.  It did not work out, there was no Hard Rock Cafe!   The land where the barns used to stand is currently occupied by shopping centers and a Holiday Inn Express.   

For more than 20 years there was no regular rabbit shows held at this location due to the loss of the livestock barn and sheep barn.    How did I know, well, I Betty Chu, visited the first rabbit show in 1981 then started showing for the first time at one of these barns in 1982!

In 2022, a show appeared!  What a huge surprise.  Here is a report of that first show:

Northern California Angora Guild: Santa Clara County Fairgrounds Welcome Open Rabbits after 20+ years (ncag.blogspot.com)

  We all should thank the great fair manager Salene Durate who has the forward thinking and willingness to reintroduce animals to the fair, and rabbit shows are one of her projects.  Randy Shumaker and California Rabbit and Cavy Shows (CRCS) helped tremendously to make it happen. 

The first SCCRCS shows in 2022 were held in the smaller building Fiesta Hall.  Since then, some of the shows were held in the Fiesta Hall and some at the huge Expo Hall.   To get an idea, the Fiesta Hall is 11,000 square feet, the Expo Hall is 45,000 square feet.   If you are familiar with numbers, Expo Hall is larger than one acre!  One acre is 43,560 square feet.   

The entries on Saturday are very good but the huge size of the venue makes it look sparse.

This is the wool corner with American Fuzzy Lop, English Angora, French Angora and Satin Angora.

A closer look at the wool breed corner.

There is definitely no fighting for space in this spacious showroom.

KW cages got its huge black trailer driven into the showroom.

The building is climate controlled, if you had noticed, the air conditioning came on in the afternoon on Saturday.