ENJOY THE RIDE
The PNE is a roller-coaster of fun, food and entertainment. Stomach-churning rides and crunchy cricket fries are among the star attractions when the fair opens on Saturday. See
The Pacific National Exhibition will go to the ends of the earth to discover new trends to unveil to the masses.
Sometimes it’s a ride like The Beast, an extreme pendulum that rips 12 storeys into the sky at 90 kilometres an hour, twirls, then sends riders hurtling 120 degrees in another direction.
Other times it’s a gnarly new food, like a burger filled with macaroni and cheese, or a giant pickle stuffed with a hotdog, covered in cornmeal and deep-fried.
This year’s hot item is the Shimmer Pillow — a small throw cushion, but what a throw cushion. The pillow comes in glittering sequin that is made from a special reversible fabric that allows you to change how it looks with the swipe of a finger. When a Dallas TV reporter did a story on a similar type of pillow last year, a YouTube clip of the pillow went viral.
The original mermaid pillow the TV guy did a story on cost US$150. But thanks to the wonder of knockoffs, the shimmer pillow at the PNE will cost $30 — and you get a second one for free.
The Shimmer Pillow is among 147 booths that will be setting up shop at the marketplace in the Forum building, the home of the slicers and dicers and miracle cleaning solutions.
Thirty-three of the exhibitors will be new, including the Bling Warehouse, Magic Magnets and the Shark Space Saver and Garage Door Organizer. There will be an LED Shoes booth selling runners with lights in the soles, and a Turbo Scrub Cleaner booth hawking a battery-operated scrubber that takes the elbow grease out of cleaning.
But fear not, fair fans, traditional favourites like the Pink Solution All Purpose Cleaner, The Thinnest Wallet and the Hand-Held Mini Squirrel Massager will be back. You’ll be able to check them out this Saturday when the PNE opens.
This year’s fair is the 103rd, and runs through Labour Day, Sept. 4. If the weather co-operates, it should attract about 750,000 people over 15 days (the PNE is closed on Mondays, save for Labour Day). It has a budget of $18 million, and hopes to turn a $7-million profit.
Luring people in year after year is a balancing act between old and new. The most popular ride at the fair remains the venerable wooden roller-coaster, but the fair goes to great lengths to find new rides that appeal to the young generation.
“On the roller-coaster, we ride about 500,000 people a year,” PNE spokeswoman Laura Ballance said. “But make no mistake, people want higher, faster, more extreme, and that’s what our new rides represent.”
Hence, you get rides like The Beast and Atmosfear, a double swing that takes riders 20 storeys high and then spins them around at 70 kilometres an hour.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, the PNE has three new family rides, including the Flutterbye, which is designed to look like a big butterfly. Big bugs are a big deal at this year’s PNE: There will be 19 super-sized animatronic bugs set up along Miller Drive by the Hastings Park racecourse, including a Madagascar hissing cockroach, a Chinese earth tiger tarantula and a brown marmorated stink bug.
“Last year we had the big dinosaurs on Miller Drive. This year we have Xtreme Bugs,” PNE president and CEO Mike McDaniel said. “It’s a great outdoor exhibit for families to walk through.”
Another family attraction is Toytopia, a 20,000-square-foot history of toys that’ll be taking over Rollerland, the lovely art deco building near the Pacific Coliseum.
The giant theme is big there, too — the display includes the world’s largest Etch A Sketch and a lifesize replica of one of the cars from Monopoly, which looks like a 1940s Kurtis Kraft midget race car.
Toytopia also has an educational component, showing kids how tin toys are made, relating which toys were popular throughout the 20th century, and providing an answer to the age-old question: How did GI Joe talk without batteries?
For teens, and adults that wish they were still teenagers, East Van Amusements will be bringing a pop-up retrocade into Rollerland with nine pinball machines that people will be able to play for 50 cents or a buck.
Most have pop-culture themes, like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Lord of the Rings and Metallica. But the most popular game may turn out to be Super Chexx Bubble Hockey, a longtime favourite in bars.
“We have a big toy exhibit, so we wanted to bring in the nostalgia of old-school pinball machines to complement that,” said Faizzal Fatehali, the PNE’s manager of exhibit space. “We’ll run daily tournaments and stuff like that.”
“That’s the dance we always do here,” Ballance said. “The strength of our future is built on the foundation of our history.”
The PNE Gardens will be the site of a 5,000-square-foot display from the Hockey Hall of Fame, reportedly the largest display the Hall of Fame has done outside its home in Toronto. The Agrodome will host the 4-H competition the first four days, then give way to the RCMP Musical Ride from Saturday to Wednesday.
The Musical Ride, Toytopia and the Hockey Hall of Fame exhibit are all free. So is the ever-popular SuperDogs, which will be at the Coliseum for three afternoon shows each day, at 12:30 p.m., 2:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. At night, the Coliseum is taken over by Unbelievable, a magic show put together by Victoria’s Murray Hatfield.
For classic rock fans, what’s really unbelievable is the free Summer Nights concert lineup the PNE has lined up, which features several acts that used to fill the Coliseum in the 1970s and ’80s.
A good example is ZZ Top, who will be bringing their beards and hmm-hmm-how-how blues to the PNE Amphitheatre Aug. 24. (It’s kind of a fitting place for ZZ Top to play, given the amphitheatre used to be the site of the demolition derby.)
Chicago will be playing Aug. 25, Huey Lewis and the News are Aug. 27, the B-52s are Aug. 30 and the Doobie Brothers (with Tom Johnston and Patrick Simmons, but without Michael McDonald) are Aug. 31.
If Cancon is more your thing, Mother Mother plays Saturday, Colin James is Aug. 26, and Tom Cochrane and Red Rider are Aug. 29. There are reserved seats available for $20 if you don’t want to risk a gig being full.
Rocking out to classic rockers like ZZ’s La Grange or the Doobies’ China Grove may leave fairgoers a bit peckish. So the PNE has brought in the latest taste sensation to sweep the nation: crickets.
You don’t eat them live, though — they’re fried.
“There’s a whole cricket movement happening,” Ballance said.
“Sustainable protein,” McDaniel said. “I’ve heard it tastes like chicken.”
“We see big opportunities for the province of Manitoba in this,” Ballance said with a laugh.
In any event, you’ll be able to sample cricket fries or a cricket burger. Alas, there will be no fried grasshoppers, which have been incredibly popular at Seattle Mariners games this season.
If the thought of eating fried crickets is appealing to you, you’ll want to check out the deep-fried chicken feet a vendor will be selling. They’re on a stick, like a corn dog, and look really, really gross, which is probably the main attraction — kids will be daring each other to eat them.
Of course, the PNE will also have traditional favourites, like candy floss. John Chapman will be operating two booths spinning out the sugar treats, and anticipates he’ll serve 20,000 customers.
“Dentists love me,” Chapman, 63, said with a laugh.
His family has worked the PNE so long, Chapman said, that “I used to sleep under the counter in an apple box when I was a baby.”
Jim Parsons is 57, and has been working the PNE nearly as long as Chapman. He’s named after his grandfather, the Jimmy in Jimmy’s Lunch, a PNE staple since 1929.
“We’re famous for the fried onions, heaping (stacks of ) fried onions,” said Parsons, who works in the film industry as a carpenter the rest of the year.
The PNE has a big selection of healthier fare, including a new booth that’ll specialize in salads. But a lot of people come for traditional fair food like burgers, hotdogs and french fries.
During the fair, Parsons anticipates Jimmy’s Lunch will go through about 1,000 kilograms of burgers, 3,000 kilos of onions and 3,000 kilos of potatoes.
Candy-floss magnate Chapman said the appetite of fairgoers depends on the temperature.
“If it’s too hot, they don’t want to eat nothin,’” he said. “If it’s a beautiful day like this, they’ll eat ice cream. They’ll eat anything.”
He adds with a laugh: “Go on the rides, puke and then come back and eat some more.”
That’s the dance we always do here … The strength of our future is built on the foundation of our history.