The fair, like the Carlsbad Caverns, the Little Bighorn battle site and the Newfane (Vt.) Inn, is worth a visit if you happen to be in the neighborhood. The locals who live within easy distance of Flushing Meadow by subway, train or highway keep going back there and to date have actually outnumbered tourists at the turnstiles. In any case, it takes at least several trips to sample the top attractions. Some of them are even worth the long wait in line.
PAVILIONS
SPAIN has gone to immense trouble and expense to impress, delight and profit. With great paintings, hot-eyed flamenco dancers, two exceptional restaurants (see below) and a cunning convolution of courtyards and corridors, Spain's entry is Numero Uno.
JAPAN displays ancient arts and modern crafts, consumer products ranging from TV sets and cameras to microscopes and automobiles. All this is assembled in a complex of buildings circling a many-leveled courtyard, featuring samurai duelers, Kabuki (and other) dancers, judo wrestlers.
VATICAN. The Pieta, bathed in blue light, is a major attraction, though somewhat diminished by the cold setting and a crowd-hustling moving sidewalk. Cognoscenti who have already seen Michelangelo's masterpiece glowing like old ivory in the natural light of St. Peter's might be wise to remember it that way.
BELGIAN VILLAGE advertised itself for months as being "worth waiting for." Open at last, it has proved something of a disappointment, since its charming, smaller-than-life evocation of an ancient Flemish town is still not complete. It may be worth waiting for a while longer.
JOHNSON'S WAX is cleaning up with a highly polished, noncommercial film, To Be Alive!, which has drawn extravagant praise from cinema buffs and deserves every bit of it.
GENERAL ELECTRIC has built itself an enormous drum. The outer rim houses six theaters that revolve around a series of stages showing American home life (appliance division) at 20-year intervals from the turn of the century to the present. Moving, talking, life-size dummies inhabit the sets, which unintentionally plug nonprogress by going from a scene that recalls the cozy charms of the icebox, wood stove, gaslight era to one that all too plainly spells out the sterile joys and chilly conveniences of a modern electric home that has little taste and no charm at all.
IBM, on the other hand, makes you glad that you live in 1964. Its wondrously way-out building is nothing more than a monstrous egg perched atop a modern steel structure. The ingenious People Wall lifts you hydraulically to the egg's underbelly, where huge bomb-bay doors open and let you in.
COCA-COLA has a walk-through exhibition that lets you wander down a street in Hong Kong, past the Taj Mahal, up into the Alps, through a Cambodian rain forest and onto the deck of a cruise ship off Rio. On the way out is a delightful display of antique Coke bottles and advertisements.
PEPSI-COLA'S UNICEF exhibit features an indoor boat ride through a wonderland of Disney dolls, representing children of every country and culture, all wildly singing and dancing to a mad little tune called It's a Small World. This particular ride is a must for all children, also charms many adults.
PROTESTANT AND ORTHODOX CENTER has the controversial film, Parable, which shows the crucifixion of a clown in white face.
The controversy seems to be between those who feel the film is art and those who think it's sacrilege. Most people probably know already which side they're likely to be on. If not, there's one way to find out.
GENERAL MOTORS' Futurama suffers in comparison with its famed 1939 exhibit. The reason perhaps is that the future has come upon us so hard and so fast that the once-incredible magic of what's next now seems all too believable. And Futurama '64 is annoyingly hard to see, with its one-glance-and-you're-past dioramic layout--a sad comedown from Futurama '39's magnificent panoramic display.
FORD re-creates the past with immense prehistoric monsters (bodies by Disney) that clash in battle and sound like dueling trailer trucks. Presumably Ford mechanics sneak in at night to hammer out the dents on the dinosaurs. There is also a colony of cartoon-caricatured cavemen all looking like early ancestors of the boy on the cover of Mad Magazine.
ILLINOIS has built a handsome native-brick structure to house a Lincoln library and a display of Lincoln manuscripts, both excellent. The stark simplicity of the building was probably dictated less by taste than by the economic necessity of paying for its vastly more costly star boarder, a mechanical Lincoln. Steel-boned, electronic-nerved Abe moves and talks, but he can only manage about half the 36 expressions Barbra Streisand brags about in that song from Funny Girl.
INDIA. Water cascades down the exterior of the glass pavilion, a quote from Gandhi is carved in pink marble, and sari-clad girls welcome the visitor to view such Indian art objects as the palace doors of Rajasthan, Hindu temple hangings, Buddha sculptures and miniature paintings.
NEW YORK CITY won't let you walk on it, but you can ride around and look at a complete scale model of the five boroughs (the Empire State Building is 15 in. tall).
The modelmakers frantically try to keep up with the real-life builders, tearing out tiny rows of brownstones to slap in new office blocks.
CHILDREN & TEEN-AGERS
U.S. RUBBER has a Ferris wheel ride inside a six-story-tall rubber tire. There are bucket seats and a view from the top. Only three times around, though, and then you get parked.
HALL OF SCIENCE states its age limit bluntly with an entrance only 5 ft. high. The youngsters can prospect for uranium, work electrical generators by pedaling bicycles, play pinball with neutrons and uranium atoms, and measure their own weight in atoms.
TIVOLI GARDENS PLAYGROUND is the fair's most delightful haven for very small children. Created by some of Denmark's best artists and architects, it has canals to sail boats on, a long, twisty slide that ends up in a sandbox, a Viking ship to climb over, a maze with magic mirrors, holes to stick small heads through, and other diversions.
It is also a blessed place to stash the younger members of the family with kindly attendants while you fortify yourself with Danish beer at the bar or food at the nearby restaurant.
MINNESOTA has a paddle-yourself canoe ride, as well as a fishing hole where you can match wits with some wary trout that have learned a thing or two since they came East.
MOBIL. Would-be drivers park themselves behind a steering wheel, peer through their "windshield"--a 21-in. TV screen--onto a highway, soon find themselves skidding around hairpin curves, past oncoming trains and, chances are, smack into the truck ahead. Who survives best gets the highest score.
RESTAURANTS
FESTIVAL OF GAS has a Restaurant As sociates (Four Seasons, Forum) restaurant that features such American dishes as beef blazed with bourbon and country-baked ham. $6-$12. *
SPANISH PAVILION'S two restaurants are Toledo, which serves excellently cooked, superbly served French and Spanish food ($5-$25), and Granada, which has an all-Spanish menu and slightly lower prices.
NEW ENGLAND PAVILION has a colonial restaurant called The Millstone, which serves such local specialties as johnny-cakes with maple syrup, clam chowder, breaded lobster, blueberry slump and apple grunt. If you order the slump or the grunt without the fruit, they hand you the check. $5-$9.
MOULTRAY'S POLYNESIAN, for those who like their eggs rolled and everything else bamboo-speared. $3-$12.
MEXICAN PAVILION has a restaurant called Focolare with handsome decor and fine Mexican food, if you like the after burner effect. $4-$15.
DANISH PAVILION'S restaurant sets a grand cold table that groans under a con geries of herring, lobster, tiny shoe-button shrimp, superb smoked salmon, cold meats, sausages, pates and cheeses, all crying out for good Danish beer. $6.50.
SWEDISH PAVILION also has a cold board, but you serve yourself. $6.
INDONESIAN PAVILION, for the adventurous, serves up fine native dishes, feasting the eyes meanwhile with Sumatran and Balinese dancers. $7.75.
LE CHALET. From a little fresh-air balcony in the Swiss pavilion, you can watch aerial gondolas, sip cool rose wine, sample cheese fondues. $4.50-$9.
Many visitors lack stomach, time or money for such astronomic gastronomies. Decent snacks at reasonable prices can be had in the International Plaza at many small bars, stands and cafes in the various individual international pavilions, or in some of the restaurants run by beer com panies. And delectable Belgian waffles, sold at stands in the Belgian Village, the International Plaza and elsewhere, are a 99-c- must. If you're really counting pennies, though, take exact change. The waffling Belgians have been declining to give back the 1-c- on the dollar, pleading a coin shortage.
* Dinner prices per person.
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