I’m screaming for my life and all I hold dear as the roller coaster plunges to what seems like certain disaster, only to somehow remain on its ancient clickety-clack track. The coaster violently jerks us upward, thrusting us forward. The inertia yanks us right out of our seats, saved only for the safety bar across our laps.
Ah, the PNE. It’s something my parents would drag me to once a year in the dog days of our Vancouver summer. It was an event I grew to actually fear as a suburban, nerdy, bespectacled child, afraid of any ride faster than the Honeybee Express kiddie train.
The PNE seemed even grittier back then than it is now, when roaming bangers in mullets, jorts, and Judas Priest t-shirts seemed to rule supreme like dinosaurs, proudly parading across the sugar-sticky pavement with their Playland conquests: gigantic stuffed animals they somehow managed to win from those seemingly impossible midway games. I would stare through my fogging Coke bottle-thick glasses in sheer envy, wondering if they actually were a PNE plant: paid employees hired to make kids like me believe winning one of those ridiculously large stuffed creatures was actually possible.
Thirty years later, I’m still being dragged to the PNE once a year, now by my two eager nephews Tanner (age 14) and Avery (age 10) who both love it all. Incredibly, so much of the noise, lights, people, and – ahem – comfort food seems exactly the same. All those rickety rides with names like “Starship 3000”, “Gladiator”, and the all-time classic “Tilt-A-Whirl”, are still run by generally surly carnies, some even complete with face tattoos. I’m not judging, though I did find my fingers tightly crossed when I noticed the ad-hoc hockey tape that was holding the electrical wires in place in our Ferris wheel bucket, as we teetered 70 feet above that infamously sticky pavement.
Rock bands play throughout the two weeks of the PNE, and on our night it was Halifax indie pop heroes Sloan, who understood their audience by all but ignoring material from their new album and instead cranking out 75 minutes of their hits, mostly from the 1990s. And that seedy underbelly that I sensed as a child is still present: my wife spotted the VPD gang squad roaming the grounds, and later on in the evening a Vancouver punk rocker sustained multiple leg injuries and a black eye in an unfortunate tussle with security staff.
But my nephews missed all that, distracted by the rides and the junk food, which I vowed to keep them away from. So much for that: by the end of the night the culinary count for the four of us included slushies, mini donuts, cotton candy, tacos, pizza, pretzels, deep fried Snickers bars, kettle corn, and frozen chocolate bananas.
My nephews also challenged me onto rides I’ve never done before, including that supposed Vancouver rite of passage that is the ancient wooden roller coaster, the grand dame of Playland and the PNE. It was sheer and complete spine-altering terror, feeling more like a runaway mechanic bull than a roller coaster, but yes, I’m glad I did it. Once.
As we stumbled out of the east gate onto Renfrew Street, the clock nearing midnight, it hit me: I had a pretty good time at the PNE. Just like the roller coaster, many aspects of the PNE remain highly questionable, but sometimes, you just have to strap yourself in and go for it.
