Vendors of the Day - Friday

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Get Tooned and Tattooed is a vendor that shows the public a taste of alternative and artistic skills as it specializes in air brush tattoos, Henna tattoos and caricatures. The booth is located right outside the Grandstand on the Independent Midway.
Husband and wife, Dave and Jennifer Wigen are from Minnetonka, Minn., and have been running their business for 22 years in total. While they travel all over the country, this is their 15th year coming back to the S.D. State Fair.
Dave is the tattoo artist and Jennifer is the caricaturist, they explained the air brush tattoos last a couple of days, the Henna tattoos will last around two to three weeks, but the caricatures will last a lifetime.
The best sellers at Get Tooned and Tattooed has been the Henna tattoos, which Dave explained had really taken off the past five years, but mostly all of what they offer is popular amongst the crowds. Jennifer enjoys the people coming to have a caricature drawn, and now offers business people to have pictures on their cell phones. They both wanted to thank all the returning customers they have from over the years. Dave also performs as magician "Nick Sharpe," at the fair and has done so for several years.
The couple explained how much they enjoy the S.D. State Fair, how wonderful the staff have been, the amount of effort that has been put in throughout the years, and seeing how much the fair has grown.

Shorty’s Hot Dogs has been a South Dakota State Fair tradition for nine decades now, since it first opened in 1927.
“This is our 52nd year after our grandfather died and left it to us,” said one of Shorty’s grandsons, Dan Kuhn.
Located next to the Hippodrome, Shorty’s continues to be a family affair. Siblings Dan, Phil, Charlie, Mikki, Daisy and Tom and their families come back to Huron for each State Fair, as did their parents before they passed away last year.
Their specialty items are hot dogs, hamburgers and breakfast. “Ballpark franks and all beef burgers,” Phil said.
“Last year we sold a lot of Mad Burgers,” Dan said. Mad Burgers? Like some of history’s most famous inventions, it could be said that it came to life accidentally.

“I was messing around with the grill and smashed up four deep fried cheese curds and put them on a cheeseburger, and then I put another cheeseburger on top of that. And I looked at my sister and said, ‘how about this? What do we name this?’”
They had just lost their parents, so they thought of the Janet Burger for their mother and Phil for their dad. You know, Mom and Dad. Mad. But then they had another thought. Dan and Mikki. Mad backwards.
In any case, “we sold a bunch of them last year,” Dan said.
This time, customers can sample the “Mount Gushmore.”
“It’s a triple decker with onion rings and barbecue sauce on each deck of the cheese with a pretzel right down the middle to hold it together,” Dan said. “We’ll see how it works.”