Rides, Music and Livestock Fair Game for Rodeo-Goers

Preparations were orderly and relatively peaceful Tuesday as workers and exhibitors brought in livestock, carnival rides and heavy equipment to get the Los Angeles Equestrian Center ready for Thursday’s opening of the 53rd annual Valley Fair and Rodeo.

The four-day event, organized by the 51st District Agricultural Assn., is expected to draw more than 50,000 people with activities ranging from a professional rodeo and live musical entertainment to carnival rides and livestock auctions.

For many people who spend their lives on the road, getting ready for the Valley Fair was business as usual.

Shannon and Zach Johnson, owners of the Kansas City-based racing pigs, spent time doing test runs of their potbellied porkers, which have celebrity-inspired names like Jean Claude Van Ham and Spamela Anderson.

Workers with G and S Shows were setting up more than 20 amusement rides, including the new “Kamikaze,” and the popular “Skydiver,” “Gravitron” and “Yo-Yo.”

Students from schools in North Hollywood, Shadow Hills and Canoga Park were checking on the animals they’ve raised to auction off at the fair.

For Shannon Johnson, 29, the pigs that take her and her husband from coast to coast in a trailer nine months a year provide a good life.

“We get to work for ourselves,” she said. “Sometimes it’s hard being on the road, being away from family. . . . But it also makes it an adventure.”

The Johnsons race the pigs for about three months and then trade them. Losing the pigs, most of which go to slaughter, was not easy to handle at first, Shannon Johnson said.

“I had named them. I totally cried,” she said. “Zach said, ‘Shannon, you never name them. If you don’t name them you don’t miss them.’ ”

Besides the racing pigs, the Johnsons also feature Dozer, a 400-pound exotic New Zealand breed known as Kunekune.

“He’s very friendly and he loves cookies,” Shannon said. “He sleeps all the time and he bulldozes things over.”

For the 60 workers with Garden Grove-based G and S Shows, setting up rides on the fairgrounds takes three days. Each ride requires five workers and takes about eight hours to assemble, said Chris Guadagno, 36, an owner of the family-operated business.

G and S Shows, which provides amusement rides, games and concession stands for fairs, was founded in 1956 by Guadagno’s grandfather. The company now travels throughout the Southwest during the fair season, from February to November, he said.

“You’re kind of born in the business. It’s in your blood. This is seven days a week. It’s very hard to get a day off during the season,” he said.

“The whole family is involved--it’s what makes life bearable on the road,” Guadagno said.

The traveling life has its rewards.

“I like the atmosphere--the rides and games. The money isn’t bad,” Guadagno said. “I couldn’t sit in an office seven days a week, I’d go nuts.”

For fair-goers who come for the livestock attractions, this year’s event will feature hundreds of entries, from poultry to sheep to cattle.

On Tuesday, Braden Chew, 18, a student from Canoga Park High School, was checking to see that his lamb, pig and calf had enough water.

Chew, who said he hopes to make $1,500 for his work raising the animals, said he wasn’t bothered by the fact that his livestock will be headed for a slaughterhouse.

“The next day, I’ll be like, I’m over it,” he said. “It’s tough sometimes. Some people can’t do it. You can’t get attached to [the animal]. You can’t love it.”

The fair opens at 4 p.m. Thursday at the Los Angeles Equestrian Center, 480 Riverside Drive in Burbank.

On Friday and Saturday it will be open from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.; Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Admission is $6 general and free for children 11 and younger.

For more information, call (818) 557-1600.