The PNE (Pacific National Exhibition) is a Vancouver tradition, an annual fair started in 1910 that is famous for its farm animals, dog trick shows, and amusement park-highlighted by Canada's oldest wooden roller coaster still in existence. In 1980, when Nick Marino was twelve years old, he started working at the PNE and quickly learned there was more to the fair than winning stuffed animals and eating minidonuts; he had to contend with belligerent bosses, unhinged carnies, and teenage hustlers. In this funny, charming memoir of fair life, Marino revisits the "Wild West" of the city's East Side, which was home to the PNE, sharing stories from his six summers working at the fair, where arcade bouncers went on midnight roller coaster rides, riots broke out at concerts, and local kids helped themselves to everything. With poignant humour, he explores the history of the PNE, whose grounds have been home to everything from questionable sideshow attractions and incarcerated Japanese Canadians during WWII to storied performers and beloved professional sports teams, and pulls back the curtain on the culture of carnivals and fairs-an unpredictable and eternally young world of players, scammers, and dreamers.