I don't really remember how it happened, but somebody called my name and they handed me the Cup.

And that moment where you just put your hands up over your head with that thing, it was just bananas.

That doesn't make any sense.

And I was like, my mind was blown.

This guy has no idea what he's doing.

This is my opportunity.

♪♪♪ Hi.

I'm Mark Shunock, and I'm a ringmaster here in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I was born and raised in Sault Ste.

Marie, Ontario, Canada.

It's a small town, a steel mill and a hockey team, but great people.

And growing up in Sault Ste.

Marie was pretty special.

My father was a dentist by trade.

But in the late '80s, acquired our home team, the Sault Ste.

Marie Greyhounds.

My dad's dental practice was directly across the street from the facility, the Memorial Gardens where the team played, so it wasn't an oddity for my father and I, after I finished school and he was finished work to be in that arena.

Any chance I could get on the ice, I was on the ice, whether it was outdoors, in somebody's backyard rink.

I was awesome at hockey.

My dedication and understanding of what it would take to go to the next level was not as awesome as my skill set.

I think I was always a performer.

Going back to my young days on the bus as a hockey player, I was constantly told to shut up and sit down.

I was a goalie and I'd be caught in my crease singing songs.

[whistling] I prided myself on being good in the sport.

The maturity was not there.

The theater found me.

And in my last year of high school, I jumped on stage per the request of a high school teacher.

There was a gentleman by the name of Richard Howard who was married to an Oscar winner, Lila Kedrova, and started a small theatre company.

And from there, I ventured off to New York City.

And I essentially grew up in Manhattan.

I left home at 19, learning from whoever would be willing to let this goofy, awkward, short Canadian kid into their class.

Growing up where I did, I didn't understand what NYU was or Juilliard or Tisch or Carnegie Mellon or Yale, but I just got lucky, just started working.

What I love about the stage is the process more than anything, just the process of ripping scripts apart, rehearsing, and finding new ways to tell a story, essentially.

Timon in The Lion King was probably the role that changed my life in the theater world because it was the first big theatrical job, big Broadway production.

Once you're in that club, there's this confidence in the community that, That person's done a show, they can do another one.

Rock of Ages was an exciting call to receive.

They said, Vegas, do you want to do it?

For sure.

I still had the audition process, and that was exciting.

Vegas to me was just the city that everybody else in the country knows.

It's three or four days, great restaurants, nightclubs, parties, shows, and go home.

I was like, I'll go do six months, a year, and we'll see what's next.

So getting the call to come to Vegas with Rock of Ages essentially changed my life.

Early in our sit with Rock of Ages, our owner, Mr. Bill Foley, went on the news and said, Hey, I want to bring professional hockey to Las Vegas.

And a little crazy that I am, I just literally picked up the phone.

I joined the Vegas OneHockey campaign.

There was 50 or 60 of us, and we called people and said, Hey, give me $1,000.

For what?

A hockey team.

Which one?

Doesn't exist yet.

And we sold 14,000 season ticket deposits.

The National Hockey League awarded Mr. Foley a franchise, branded it the Vegas Golden Knights, the front office then contacted me and said, Would you be interested in hosting?

I said absolutely.

The ride that the Golden Knights have had in 6 1/2 seasons now is unheard of.

So to almost win it all in year one, three games away from winning the Stanley Cup in your inaugural season, that's unheard of.

I'm sure there will be a movie made about that.

To winning it all in Season 6, it was just bananas.

But that's a testament to the people within the organization.

At the end of the day, my job is to make sure 18,000 people bring the noise night in and night out.

I guess I'm a glorified hype man.

And I approach what I do as a host as a fan.

I didn't go to school to become a journalist or a news anchor or a sports personality.

It's just the path that I was on brought me here.

And I think that's a unique skill set that I have, whether it was starting out as an actor or kid who wanted to play the game who went into acting and had a wonderful career as an actor now working in sports.

You know, when I walk into T-Mobile Arena 41 times a season with the team, not including playoffs, I don't think of it as a job.

I really don't.

I think about it as I'm a fan with a microphone.

[chanting Go Knights Go!]

Game 5, we win the Stanley Cup.

The next day, we were planning a parade.

But to be able to take that stage, grab that microphone in front of a quarter of a million people who packed the streets, closing the Strip, double-decker buses coming down, it's something that I'll never forget.

I think I said something along the lines, It's not about lifting a Stanley Cup, it was about lifting a city.

And the Vegas Golden Knights certainly did that.

Even to this moment sitting here, it hasn't set in.

I'm a host for a Stanley Cup winning franchise.

As a kid who grew up in Sault Ste.

Marie, Ontario, who just wanted to win the Stanley Cup, to have a picture hanging in my office of me hoisting the Stanley Cup at center ice inside T-Mobile Arena, it really hasn't set in.

Season 1 of the Golden Knights is when the phone started to ring from other sports organizations.

Top Rank Boxing on ESPN is based in Las Vegas.

They're headquartered here.

They were at a hockey game and were like, Get that guy.

And so I started working for Top Rank Boxing on ESPN.

The trajectory and gigs, as I call them, started to be all sports related and not theater related, and I wasn't mad at it.

At first I was like, Wait a minute.

I'm an actor.

I'm not a sports host.

I got over that pretty quickly.

So Mondays Dark is a nonprofit that my wife and I started a decade ago.

And in 90 minutes, you never know who's gonna show up.

But in those 90 minutes, we raise $10,000 for a deserving local nonprofit.

This is seeing some of the best performers in Las Vegas take off their costumes for a night and do something they normally wouldn't do for a cause, right?

And that's one of the, I think, offshoots that I never expected.

My circle of friends are executive directors for nonprofit organizations in Las Vegas.

And those are people that have dedicated their lives to a cause whether it's an animal rescue, a cancer rescue, and LGBTQ+ cause, Metro, Fire, hospitals.

You name it, we've supported them.

And those people who run those organizations are now my friends.

But I simply love Las Vegas.

You know, before I moved out here, it was always the same opinion that I think most of the country has, Hey, do you live at the Venetian?

That's the number one question I think anybody who lives in Las Vegas gets from their friends and family that do not live here.

The community, the people in Las Vegas, are what kept us here.

The buildings are sensational, the shows are sensational, the restaurants are amazing, but without the great people who make them go, they're really nothing.

So that's what kept us in Vegas.

That's what made us fall in love with the city.

It wasn't these big buildings and the shows.

It was the people.

♪♪♪ I think this was hands down something that will be synonymous with the Stanley Cup parade in Vegas.

250,000 locals crammed into Toshiba Plaza.

Wild Bill is shirtless.

He then proceeds to grab the microphone in arguably one of the greatest moments in sports history.

And I quote, "So this guy, this effing guy, yeah, I know.

I know.

So he was here day one, and I know you have been here day effing one.

You guys are so amazing.

We played Arizona in the first game, and we beat the eff out of them.

And I had no points, no points, but that's okay because that year one, I was pretty effing great.

You guys were greater.

And we've been up and down on this journey to the Cup.

We've been waiting for six long years for this guy to be MVP!"

That's Shakespeare.

[chanting MVP] ♪♪♪ For me, the journey in entertainment was so up and down and so difficult that when I got to a point, finally, with Rock of Ages here in Vegas, we were so spoiled.

This community is so special that I almost felt obligated to give back to the community.

Unfortunately but fortunately at that time, the only night I had off was Monday.

That's where the name came from, Mondays Dark.

Our Broadway schedule, we're dark on Monday, we don't perform.

So on our night off, I would gather friends from shows and say, Hey, let's do what we do, which is perform and entertain, and give all the money away.

And that's how it started.

And here we are 10 years later still going strong.

It's evolved.

It sort of is this now free-flowing thing that the philanthropic community has embraced.

All of the nonprofits in Vegas know about Mondays Dark and want to celebrate with us and partner with us and party with us.

And the entertainment community has embraced it, which I think is the most important thing.

They love performing at Mondays Dark and donating their time and talent.

And without them, we wouldn't exist.

This is the "All Things The Space."

So obviously, the purple squares that you see on the wall, these are Mondays Dark dates.

They're set last year, 21 dates a year.

It's every other Monday.

At the core of everything in The Space, that's it.

Mondays Dark is the core of The Space.

It sort of sets the bar for everything that happens out of here.

That's our community give-back.

That's $10,000 checks going out the door every other Monday to a deserving nonprofit.

-Our goal is to give you the best show you've ever had.

And we are very blessed in that a lot of our bands walk out like, Man, I've never had the sound go this well.

Your security team was amazing.

The lighting was kick ass.

-Variety is the key, right?

Like we do everything in here from charity events to burlesque shows to concerts to fundraisers.

We're big supporters of the LGBTQ+ community.

So that's important to us.

The more eclectic, the better.

All right.

I just want to take a few minutes.

This happens every show.

My name is Mark.

Thank you, thank you for all the hard work in putting the silent auction together.

Great job.

How many have been to a Mondays Dark before?

Oh, good!

All the hard work is done.

You've put the work in.

We're going to open the doors in about a half an hour.

We'll get people registered.

They'll start bidding on stuff.

I'll put a jacket on, put some stuff in my hair, and let's raise $10,000.

Thanks guys.

♪♪♪ I love the unexpected of Mondays Dark.

I don't plan anything.

Like I don't script my hosting, and I think people know that.

They've come accustomed to it.

Like I don't prepare a monologue, an opening monologue, like a late night talk show host.

I don't do that.

I let the audience really drive it.

I love the spontaneity, the improv, the vibe that the crowd puts out.

They know why they're here, and they bring it.

The fact that people are willing to donate their time to perform and then also spend money to attend and spend time with us as a patron is awesome.

All right, guys.

Real quick.

Thank you so much for donating your incredible talents but mostly your time.

Let's go.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -My name is Colin Fukunaga, and I've been in Las Vegas for 28 years.

I was born in LA.

My grandfather owned a sandwich shop in downtown LA.

Like a lot of Asian kids, we grew up in our family businesses, and my sister and I ran around in the back.

Those were fun times.

It was a real bustling business.

My mom worked there, my grandma, my grandfather, our family friends.

It was like a gauntlet.

It was crazy because my family is very animated.

So you hear my mom scream, and my grandfather's like, Order is ready!

They're cussing, and the customers are in the middle.

It's like a reality show in the '80s before there was reality shows.

And of course, I wanted to be a part of it.

So right at high noon, I'd wait and then come out and ask, Hey, Grandpa, can you make me a burger?

One day he was just like, Here.

Take the spatula and cook it yourself.

I was seven years old.

I grabbed the spatula, and I was wincing.

And I flipped my first burger at seven years old, and that was a wrap.

I thought I knew how to cook after that.

But that was the beginning of my love and fascination with not just the restaurant business, but specifically in burgers.

I never planned to stay with the restaurant business, but it just gave me an opportunity to move around and be mobile.

So I moved to Las Vegas in '95.

I still had ambitions to get out of the business, but I had a manager ask me to possibly manage.

Manage?

I don't want to manage.

Like that's, you know, that's blue-collar.

I'm a white collar.

I went to college.

He's like, I think you'd be good at it.

You should check it out.

I'll give it a try.

I found it a guilty pleasure for all the dopamine hits I was getting from customers.

Like, Oh, my God!

This is so awesome!

Every day I went home and I felt like, God, I love this.

And it was a 12-year stint.

From 2008, everybody was downsizing.

I was let go after 12 years, and I had to figure out what was I going to do?

I had been cooking for like friends and family and employees at my house.

My mom always had a cupboard full of Asian ingredients.

I didn't know they were Asian, just ingredients.

And naturally they infuse with your pizza and your pasta and chicken, meat, burgers.

That's the only way that I knew how to cook, you know, with these Asian flavors.

Everybody was saying, Yeah, this is different.

This is like an Asian burger.

You should do a restaurant.

I kept that in mind.

I think everybody in the restaurant business has a daydream of creating their own concept.

So I put pen to paper, started putting together what became my business plan.

I originally wanted to do Fukuburger as a restaurant because that's all I knew.

I knew how to run restaurants, how to build teams, but I didn't know how to open a restaurant.

I got a phone call from my mom.

She sent me a video of this food truck in LA.

And she said, Colin, you got to see what this Korean guy did.

This Korean chef made a restaurant out of a taco truck.

I'm like, What the hell does that mean?

Like, that doesn't make any sense.

And my mind was blown.

I'm like, This guy has no idea what he's doing.

This is my opportunity, because I'm sold on this food truck concept.

Everybody was like, that's a bad idea.

This is the worst time to open a business during this recession.

This is not a food truck friendly town.

And for all the reasons why people are saying no, that's why we got to do it here at this time right now.

I bought a food truck, and I'd never-- I've never been on a food truck.

I'm the first one to say that a full-scale kitchen with hot grease and wires and oil and refrigeration should never be allowed on the back of a flatbed truck.

It's just, it's just crazy.

It's chaos.

It's pure chaos every day.

You don't know what's gonna break.

I had to pick a launch date.

My favorite day is Fourth of July.

It was coming up, so we launched on the Fourth of July 2010.

It was the most nerve wracking day of my life.

This is Colin Fukunaga with Fukuburger giving a little tour of the truck.

I just want to point out the A rating.

So let's take a look inside.

Here we are, like 30-40 people gathering around the food truck before we opened, but this time they're not your friends.

Yeah, it was a crazy first day.

Things went wrong.

I mean, we learned from them.

Year one in Vegas was crazy with the food truck.

Nobody was doing the gourmet food truck thing.

Because of that and because of the timing, we got all the publicity.

-I ordered the Tamago Burger and the Pig Burger.

You see, it's dripping.

-We got on the front of the Las Vegas Weekly.

We got the cover of it, which was amazing.

Like, I couldn't believe it.

Like we went from obscure to the most popular kids on block.

We were on Food Network, Travel Channel, LA Times, New York Times.

This was in the first six months.

So we got free publicity, didn't have to do any traditional advertising.

I got a call from the former owners of a casino.

I actually sold the intellectual property of Fukuburger to this guy.

He had promises to expand the business.

How can I say no?

He's a billionaire.

It's like saying no to a lottery ticket.

So I opened up in LA.

-Hollywood, California, is not only the world's entertainment capital, it's also a foodie's dream.

And located right in the heart of Tinseltown is Fukuburger.

-A lot of people had warned me be careful.

This is not a corporate company; this is your name on there.

The concept was changing, the menu was changing, and these are things that were specified not to be messed with, and they were.

There was nothing to do because I sold my IP and, you know, even though I could sue, like how do you sue a billionaire?

They can bury you.

Sure enough, business started to stall and then my partner got bored with the business.

He just stopped paying me.

I'm like, oh, yeah.

So we go back to Vegas, put together a termination letter, emailed it, and there it was, his signature.

I'm like, Oh, my God!

I've got my company back.

This is incredible.

I put myself on the free market again.

I got picked up by a company on the Strip.

I get to be on the Strip, Las Vegas Strip?

I'm like, this is incredible.

Unfortunately, the theme of the food didn't work.

So that was my third business that failed.

Just coincidentally, I had another business opportunity.

They said, We have a standalone business in Chinatown where you started your food truck.

Would you consider coming to Chinatown?

I'm like, Yeah, this is my dream.

That's where I would have wanted my first one.

I probably would have had 10 by now.

- What is a Fukuburger?

What makes it so special?

-I feel like my failures were always my secrets to the success because if I had just gotten to that Chinatown one first, I would not know as much as I do about my business.

My advice is like, don't do this unless you're kind of crazy, because I just I think I'm kind of crazy.

So at this point, I have to admit I owe a lot to Las Vegas and the community for supporting us going from a food truck to where we are now.

I'm pretty committed to just stay here in Vegas, and we'll expand probably a couple more locations.

But this will always be a Vegas secret.

All right.

So one of the cool Vegas stories is this guy Guiliano.

He owns 303 In the Cut food truck.

If your food and service is good enough, you can make any spot actually really awesome.

And that's exactly what he did.

With his social media and his prowess of taking care of guests, he's become really famous not just in Vegas, but on the internet.

Like TikTok, he went viral.

Let's see what Guiliano has cooked up for us today.

Pretty excited.

I said, Make us something good.

And he's already got a massive line.

This is crazy.

What's up, dude?

-How are you?

-You already got a line?

You're not even open for another 32 minutes?

-Yeah.

-I hit you up earlier.

You're gonna make me something good?

-Yeah.

-All right.

-I made you-- -A surprise.

- --Crackin' Fried Chicken Fries.

It's a six-spice seasoned fry, cheese sauce over fries, a buttermilk panko fried chicken on top of that.

The fried chicken is actually a 48-hour buttermilk/kiwi brine.

We do both sauces we make in-house on top, half and half.

Half roasted garlic, half 303.

303 is a little tangy, little spicy.

Pickles.

This is a top sellers.

-This is spicy.

Is one side spicier?

-This has more bite.

-What makes it spicy?

-Green chilies.

We use Colorado green chilies in all our sauces.

-So I know you've told me this before, but I know there's like a food fight between Colorado and New Mexico.

Why are the chili peppers better in one state or the other?

I know you're partial.

-What I do with Colorado green chili is better than any New Mexico green chili you get anywhere.

It's a meatier-- You're talking too much.

[laughter] Yeah.

So describe what I'm-- Okay, it's on the back side.

-It's like a slow heat.

So a jalapeno pops in your mouth right away.

Green chili is kind of like a slow heat.

-It's not supposed to be overwhelmingly spicy like Thai chili or habanero?

-No.

There's different levels on the Scoville.

-Hello.

All right, this side, it's like the ying and yang side.

-Yeah.

This is the roasted garlic.

Still a green chili base.

There's good flavor in the green chili we have, like a bit of citrus.

-For you, your views are so high and you already have this massive hype.

How do you follow up with the, you know, when people come here like, Man, this better be good.

I'm waiting for an hour.

How do you live up to the expectation?

-Guest experience.

It's the basics.

-I've heard that before.

-100%.

-How do you do your guest experience?

-Every single person, you welcome them like they're walking into your home.

How you doing?

You've been here before?

You haven't?

Let me give the rundown.

Little stuff.

Where you from?

In a steakhouse, they used to do that.

-I feel like a lot of people still talk about service industry and taking care of guests, but they just talk about it.

They don't follow through with it.

You actually come out in your Instagrams and your TikToks.

You talk about you talking to the guests and making sure that they have a tailor-made experience every time.

That's awesome.

And you actually do it.

People question, Is he really liked that?

And the other TikToks will say, Yeah, he's really like that.

Good one for you.

-I appreciate it.

Just following what you laid down.

It's been a long journey.

-A long road.

-It's the funest thing I've ever done, but the hardest thing I've done.

-That's awesome.

-This guy has laid out the path for me.

He gave me the cheat codes to this food truck game.

I didn't make this up.

None of this is me.

I took what he had already laid the foundation of.

He's a true heavy hitter of Las Vegas and the community.

-Thanks, man.

♪♪♪ -That's the show.

Watch more Vegas All In stories and moments whenever you want to.

Go online and search @vegasallinpbs, and we'll see you there.