Teachers keep returning to parking jobs
One in 10 PNE attendants are former students who are now educators who come back year after year
When Ralph Gabriele started working as a parking lot attendant at the PNE fair, he was a 16-year-old high school student and you could park for $3.
Now he’s a high school principal — at St. Patrick’s School in Vancouver — with three children of his own, and parking in one of the lots at the PNE is $20 (which means it costs a car more to attend the fair than an adult who pays the $18 admission).
However, while most teachers enjoy their summers off, Gabriele is one of 12 to 15 teachers who return to work the lots every year during the last two weeks before school resumes in fall. He didn’t think when he got that part-time job in the summer of 1983 that he would still be showing up for shifts 35 years later.
“It’s something I look forward to it,” said Gabriele during his shift on Wednesday. “I’ve got a lot of friends here. It gets in your blood.”
The teachers, who make up about 10 per cent of the lot attendants, obviously feel the same way, returning year after year.
They come from all over Metro Vancouver, Gabriele said.
Some of them were former students, whom he trained for the PNE job.
“They were in high school and had the same mindset as me, to help them get through university,” he said.
Gabriele grew up 10 minutes from the PNE and a part-time summer job during high school and university was a perfect fit.
He has taken on a number of duties over the years, including working in payroll, training new recruits and filling in about once a month for concerts and other events over the years. But he still works the lot during the fair, directing drivers to their spot for a shift that could last eight to 10 hours on busy weekends.
It’s not the most exciting of the fair jobs, a couple of altercations, the occasional accident, a rare break-in, but Gabriele said he sees himself returning for as long as he’s physically able.
“I used to say I would quit at 40, but here I am,” said Gabriele, who turns 51 in a few days.
He is good-natured about the competition, the nearby homeowners who undercut the PNE price and wave signs to entice parkers to their yards.
“They’re just trying to make a buck. I don’t think they take away from our business,” he said.
The PNE parking fees have gone up at a faster rate than inflation, according to the Bank of Canada’s online inflation calculator, which says $3 in 1983 would be worth $6.90 in 2018 if the prices were raised only according to inflation.
When parking fees jumped 50 per cent to $6 from $4 in 1990, The Vancouver Sun ran an article with the headline: “Parking-fee raise irks PNE visitors.”
But there’s no such opposition these days. The lots, said Gabriele, usually sell out.