Parkular Mechanics

Popular Mechanics posted a piece recently titled 5 Theme Park Rides that Pushed the Limits of Common Sense. Guess which park featured two out of the five?

At The Movies

So.  Adventureland.   

I liked it much better than I thought I would.   The director, Greg Mottola, worked at an amusement park on Long Island in his youth, and he really captured the tedium and soul-sucking nature of the job.   The kids with their life ahead of them, trying to figure out their place, trying to live up to their parent's expectations, or free themselves from their parents' mistakes.  Wondering if they'll ever get out of Pittsburgh.  Get to New York.  Get the girl.  Figure out who they are, who they want to be.  Figure out that the strangely clean and well groomed maintenance guy is full of crap- he never jammed with Lou Reed and he's never going to leave his wife, in fact he'll never leave Adventureland, because that is where he's the king.  

It's not a new story Mottola's telling, but he tells it well.  And he fills it with great little touches- like the flirty hot girl isn't called Lisa- she's Lisa P.  Because in a place like Adventureland, there's always going to be people with the same first name.  Or when James, the protagonist, bursts into the manager's trailer trying to escape an angry patron, and without speaking, or even looking up, Kristen Wiig's character throws Bill Hader a baseball bat and he runs out to confront the problem.  It's a dance they've done before.  

Mottola did a Q & A after the screening and talked about how he had to fight to keep it a period piece, which was one of my favorite aspects of it, since it really put it in an almost parallel timeline with my Park experience.  And Adventureland is the type of park that doesn't exist anymore.  Besides, setting the film in the '80s allowed them to start off the film with the Replacements' Bastards of Young.   In fact, the soundtrack (and Yo La Tengo's score) was dead on throughout.  

Except for the roadhouse jukebox that featured the Velvet Underground.  Emotionally, it worked, but VU in a bar like that?  Never.   The coolest thing you'd get is Neil Young.  

 

Adventureland opens Friday.  Hopefully, it will screen at the drive in.  

Adventureland

Oh great, someone beat me to the Park movie.  Though this looks more like Bowcraft than the Park:

I pledge to you, Dear Reader, that I will go see this film and offer my professional opinion on the staff's shenanigans.

The Center Goes To Brooklyn

If you like your blog posts in a more dynamic, audio visual format, please come to Union Hall in Park Slope on Tuesday, March 3.   I will be participating in the Adult Education lecture series, theme for the night is Safety Lessons.    And afterward, you can apply what you learned on their indoor bocce court.   

From the Police Blotter

Of all the rides I attended at the Park, the only one I actively hated was the Transmobile.  It was hot, it was boring and the office manager usually staffed it with losers.  Like this guy Ron.  When he wasn't in uniform, he sartorial choices ran toward track suits and Oakley Blades.  He was a Jersey dumbass in the Christopher Moltisanti vein.   In fact, the one solid memory I have of him is particularly Christopher-esque.   

One night, after the Park was closed for the day, he and another dude happened to be in the Spa parking lot as they were getting a beer delivery.  Ron had the bright idea to steal one of the kegs. (Kind of like when Chrissy and Tony stole the cases of wine in Pennsylvania.   Except they had guns.  And were fictional.)   Ron was promptly arrested.    He was still wearing his Park uniform, something noted in the local paper, much to the staff's delight and management's chagrin.  

That's how we do it at the AP...

I got a text from Stacey the other day.  She told me she had just explained the Park's version of water polo to her husband.  It wasn't much different from regular water polo, really. (At least, based on my quick skimming of the sport's Wikipedia entry, I don't think it was....)  Games were held after hours in the Wave Pool and teams were loosely organized along departmental lines. Though sometimes, if a side was short, players were recruited from outside the Park. Like the time Bree showed up with two dudes she met at Burger King, who played while wearing cardboard BK crowns.    There were a few differences between our method of play and what you saw on the OC or in Beijing, the most noticeable one being the fact that we played in tubes.  No treading water for us.   I suppose it was to give the other teams a chance to be on par with the stronger swimmers from Waterworld,  though it could also have been because most of us were half drunk during the games.  Which would also go a long way towards explaining why the Motorworld team always played in their jumpsuits.   

That's Not in the Handbook

When I tell people I worked at the Park's Bungee Tower, one of their first questions is always, "So, how many people died on that ride?" When I tell them none, and that there were rarely even any injuries on the ride, they are both dubious and, dare I say it? Disappointed.

We would often assure nervous patrons that they were at one of the safest rides in the Park. Which isn't necessarily the most comforting thing they could hear, based on the Park's reputation, but it was the truth.

Over the course of my tenure at the Park, I worked in 6 different departments. The only time I ever received any real training when I worked at the tower. It was certainly the only time I ever received a 20-page manual detailing standard operating and emergency procedures. Everything on the tower was checked and double checked every morning before we opened. Three people checked each patron's harness before they jumped. We kept logs on cord use and retired them promptly. There were rules, and we knew them. Which isn't to say that we always followed them ourselves:

To be fair, the manual didn't specify that you COULDN'T jump from the tower strapped into your snowboard, but it's probably safe to assume that it would have been frowned upon.

Cold Trade for Warm Sunshine

Because I miss everything awesome, I was off the day Alice in Chains came to the Park to film segments for the Headbanger's Ball. Luckily, we can relive the magic via YouTube. Observe the band and Riki Rachtman fishing in Roaring Springs:



And Layne Staley losing his shorts on Surf Hill:



More clips can be found here, including Riki and Jerry Cantrell wrestling in Sumo suits. (In the Jungle Warriors ring. Yeah, I know. It makes no sense.) Those very same suits are still used at the Spa's annual Oktoberfest, proving that the organization is still not at all culturally authentic and/or sensitive and, more importantly, that you should never, ever put one of them on. It will take way more than a spritz of Lysol to vanquish metal sweat that's had 15 years to incubate. You can't snuff that rooster.

$3 off admission is no reason to patronize Pizza Hut

Okay, this seems to be just a normal 80s Pizza Hut commerical, featuring the comedy stylings of Rich Hall, until you get to the end:



The Park slapped coupons on everything for awhile. I also worked at the local supermarket, and would often witness people stopping in on the way to the park to steal coupons off Coke bottles. Come on people, 2-liter bottles were usually on sale for $0.99. Couldn't you just buy the bottle?

Another New Jersey Institution Needs Your Help

Okay, at the moment, the best connection I can make between WFMU and the Park is that they've both been featured in Weird New Jersey. They've both really shaped who I am today and they both probably shouldn't exist. But the Park did, and WFMU still does. And they need your money.

If the Park was open today, I would totally dive into the deep end of the Wave Pool and send them all of the loose change and jewelry I could scavenge. But it's not, so I'm just going to write them a check. You should too.

Don't beleive me? Ask the New York Times.

Tequila Shoes

The First Aid Department had a tradition of throwing an end-of-season party in late August that was held after hours at the Park. Most years this was a fairly tame affair where you brought a pot-luck dish and hung around smoking cigarettes in the sticky summer evening, waiting until you figured you could duck out and head up to Highland Lakes or wherever the parties were before everyone went back to college. But you know there's always one year. One year that is so completely different from the utter mundane of tradition that you don't think anyone- even yourself given the passage of time- would believe that you didn't just make this shit up to tell a funny story.

But first we must start with Frank. Or Frankie. Frank was in his mid-forties, had been an EMT for about three years, and was enjoying his first summer working at the Park. He was a pretty colorful character, had been from Brooklyn or something, and had a whole gaggle of kids. The Bosses loved him, so they called him Frankie and gave him all the cush assignments. He never spent time down in the rings of Dante's hell that were Motor World. But Frank was a cool cat, so you didn't spite him for his fortune of getting assigned to the MR-10 (Mobile Rescue-10, an electric golf cart retrofitted with a litter and light bar) or the ambulance jobs. Frank worked hard, and he played hard. For the end of season party, he signed on to bring the refreshments.

The Bosses had worked out a deal with security on this particular year to let us throw our party a little later at night than usual, and let us park down at the dumpsters behind the gates. I brought little egg rolls. Frank brought several cases of beer and a few bottles of tequila. The whole thing started off innocently enough- some beers, some snacks, some spilled beers and snacks. Frank started pouring shots and daring the youngsters (that's me) to go shot-for-shot with him. The Bosses, who had also been drinking, wholeheartedly approved, and started announcing that "Reverend Frankie" was going to save our souls with his holy water. Much drinking and many drinking games ensued, with liquor flowing from urinal bottles and drunken EMTs slipping and falling all over the orange-painted concrete floor.

Frank grinned a mischievous smile, exposing his missing eyetooth on the left. He matter-of-factly stated it was time to take the MR-10 and Cushman (another retro-fitted bone wagon for unfortunate patrons) up to the wave pool for a swim. It was probably 10:30 at night. The Bosses approved.

Doug and Frank fired up the vehicles. The Bosses seat belted themselves in. The rest of us dumped black duffel bags loaded with life-saving equipment out of the vehicles and into the parking lot. We loaded the rest of the beer onto a stretcher and fastened it down with backboard straps.

We packed ourselves into the trailer of the Cushman, and grabbed onto whatever we could as Frank tore out of the base area, up the concrete ramp, and onto the cobbles in front of the lodge. It was pitch-dark, save for the lights of the vehicles, as we swerved leftward up the hill towards Water World. We narrowly missed sliding into the chain-link fence at the Bumper Boats as we veered off the macadam and into the grass. Tony took a tumble off the back of the MR-10, and rolled into the evening dew-covered lawn that led into the gully before Roaring Springs. We didn't wait for him. "You're gonna hafta hike your ass up the hill," Frank yelled, joyously drunken as he recovered the Cushman from swerving around him, speeding onward to the top of the hill.

The MR-10 slid to a stop on the asphalt patio in front of the Tiki Bar. The Cushman was not far behind. When the drivers killed the engines, the silence of a Vernon Night back in the mid-nineties prevailed. No Bob Marley discs on repeat mode blaring from the Tiki Bar. The usual multi-lingual chorus of voices around the Wave Pool Snack Bar was absent. The white shadow of the back wall of the Wave Pool lie ahead, and once my eyes adjusted, I could make out the silhouette of the “ACTION PARK” logo facing out into the dark, still water.

The Bosses waded into the shallow end. Tony made it to the top of the hill and started helping us unload the beers. Frankie ran to the end of the concrete sidewalk alongside the pool, and started climbing up the ladder to the top of the Wave Pool wall. From the top, it was probably a 20 foot drop into the water below. The Reverend jumped.

A series of hollers and “whoops!” followed as EMTs ran toward the ladder and made the ascent to the top deck. What followed can only be described as the absurdity that comes with the suspension of your own mortality, as drunken EMTs dove into the 12-foot-deep water. No lifeguards, no security, not a sober soul in Water World.

The rest of the night was a blur. Spilled food slicking the first aid floor. Wet clothes. A ride home from Shelley. I awoke to my alarm at 7:30 in the morning with a dried mouth, head pounding, but still unbelievably drunk. A knock at the door- Shelley had offered to come pick me up for work (this I somehow remembered). I got dressed, but couldn’t find my white sneakers (First Aid regulation) anywhere, so I put on my water sandals- it was Sunday, so the Bosses wouldn’t be in anyway.

When we got to work that morning, First Aid was a disaster. Doug was already there, mopping. I got bathroom detail. As I cleaned, I vomited. 8:30 am. The Park was opening in 30 minutes and there was still food on the floor, beer cans stacked on the treatment tables and counters, and staff either hungover or still drunk.

I came out of the bathroom and went into the back room, where the kitchenette was. It was under the spare gurney that I spotted my white sneakers, still damp and stinking like beer, soles caked with salsa dip. It seems I had left my shoes at work and went home barefoot. That was the last time I drank Tequila- it was 1995.

Everybody Wants Some

Colleen just posted about the Van Halen concert she went to the other night. Which reminded me, as many things do, of the Alpine Slide.

I was loading the bottom chair. Matt P was on the phone in the lift shack. His eyes got huge, then he hung up the phone and burst out of the shack.

"Holy crap!!" he yelled. "David Lee Roth is back in Van Halen!"

The entire line of patrons let out a collective whoop. There may have even been a celebratory kick or two. One of those kickers may have been me. It was an immediate about-face from the normal staff/guest relationship that was tolerant at best, and outright hostile at worst. Because NOBODY likes Sammy Hagar. Or the guy from Extreme. Sadly, that mid-90s reunion didn't take. But Diamond Dave is back where he belongs now, and that's what matters.

The Action hasn't stopped, it's just on hiatus.

My job is sucking my will to live right now, so much so that I'm thinking that an $8.50/hr (in 1995 dollars- adjust accordingly for inflation) office manager job would be a good career move. Please enjoy this park logo from the 80s until I dig out from under my mountain of work:

It's got some really nice movement, I think. Anyway, I promise I'll be back soon. With tales of porn and accounting errors. Though not in the same post.

Office Politics

One winter, I was hired to work as an office assistant in lift operations. Stephanie, the department manager, hired a woman named Anne to be the office manager. Anne's qualifications, as far as I could see, were being old and knowing how to type. Old might not be the right word. She could have been anywhere between 45 and 65, it was hard to tell. She had a dowdy vibe about her- her hair was set, her lipstick was a bit too pink for her face, she wore slacks with nude nylons and what have traditionally been called sensible shoes. Sensible didn't necessarily equate to practical, as we worked at a ski resort. Inside, I'll grant you. But still.

It quickly became clear that Anne was kind of a dummy. She had no knowledge of or interest in any aspect of the resort that she didn't encounter between her car and her desk. Blue Chair, Yellow Chair, these were just words on the schedule sheet to her. One day she looked out the window and and asked me to point out the Blue Chair. I explained to her that it was the one directly in front of her. The one that was painted blue. I don't think I ever succeeded in getting her to understand that the Triple Chair was called that because it seated three people.

Worse was the fact that she couldn't handle the chaotic nature of the job. It takes a certain type of person to juggle the phone, two-way radio and shift change while simultaneously working on the next week's schedule or previous week's payroll recap. Anne just wanted to do her clerical duties in peace, which was never going to happen in that place. I needed to usurp her. Which... was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be, since the assistant manager and most of the owners (supervisors) were on my side. She didn't take kindly to being ousted in favor of a 23-year old, but she probably went right out and got a real job, as opposed to the $8.50/hour the office manager gig paid. So, in retrospect, I'd say she was the winner in that coup.

Fire!

What's that? You want a disaster porn image of the old Lodge on fire? I am here to oblige, sicko:

Insane, right? It burned down in October of 1999 and was replaced by the space port tents. Fortunately, no one was killed. As far as I know, they never figured out exactly what started it. But I have to say, the place was a tinderbox and it's a wonder it didn't go up years before it did. There was speculation at the time that the fire was not accidental. When questioned in December of '99 by the New York Times (I love working for a company with a ProQuest account) , a Park spokesperson replied, ''It's far fetched but it's easy to rule that out. Had we been thinking like that, we would have burnt it down in April.''

Time for a trip in the Way Back Machine

Further back than usual, that is. I just found these links, which give a great overview of the history of Vernon Valley and Great Gorge, before and after they merged into one ski resort. A lot of it was new to me, especially the part about Vernon Valley's penchant for all-girl lift attendants in its early days. Very 1960s. (You know what was also very 1960s? The Playboy Club that was located across the valley from the resort. Swinging! )

I got a litle misty seeing images of the old lodges:

Here's Vernon Valley's lodge, which burned down in the mid-90s and was replaced with a collection of horrible, industrial-feeling domed tents. Seriously, they make you feel like you're in some sort of refugee camp. Or maybe a space port.

And here's the old Great Gorge, or South, lodge. It had three bars!!! It was also kinda creepy and to rumored to be haunted. I remember Phil, the director of security, saying he hated going there at night because "There's monstahs down there!" Phil ruled.

Minor Characters 2: The Trans Techs

The Transmobile, a monorail that conveyed patrons between Alpine Center & Motorworld, was my least favorite ride to attend. It was a one-way deal, but people always wanted to make it a round trip ride, which damn near caused riots on busy days. There was no shade at either end, the mid-station was boring and your co-workers were usually lame. At the top, your friends could stop by, or at least wave, on their way to better rides. At the bottom, in Motorworld, you weren't as lucky. But at least had the techs to keep you company.

There were 4 or 5 of them, but over the years they've morphed into Glen and the rest. The rest included: Brian the boss (all I can remember about him was his general resemblance to Doug Henning), the runty guy with the harelip and the other one who wore too much cologne and had a girlfriend who worked at the Renaissance Faire. They cornered me in the parking lot of the A&P one day and lectured me on the sexual hierarchy of wenches, fortune tellers, pickle vendors, knights, etc... I'm getting nauseous just thinking about it.

Glen was the friendliest. He would hang out in the window of the maintenance shack that bordered the loading station and just shoot the breeze. Mostly he'd kvetch about his old lady (they were common law). When I told him I was taking a day off to go to Lollapalooza on Randall's Island, he gave me the address of a video store in the Bronx where I could score some primo weed. Unfortunately, I couldn't convince my ride to make the detour.

Postcards from the Edge

The Park's gift shoppes used to sell a poster-sized map of the place. One of my favorite things about it was that it depicted attractions like the Tsunami- a more massive version of the Wave Pool which was never built. I've been searching online for an image, but all I can find is this postcard:

Which gives you an idea of the sheer size of the place, but no real detail. Water World's almost completely invisible. You can make out the Speed Boats and Super Lola tracks pretty clearly, and if you squint you can see the old 2-wing Bungee Tower, back when it was officially known as the Snapple Snap-Up Whipper Snapper. Catchy, huh?

Polka your eyes out

Have I mentioned the Spa at Great Gorge before? It was the Park's upscale cousin. The company that owned both held onto it when they sold the Park off to the Canadians. They've sinced re-christened it Minerals. I worked in Member Services for a summer. The bar at Kites, the club's restaurant, was a popular evening destination for many Park employees.

If you happen to be in Northwestern NJ this weekend, stop by their 21st annual Oktoberfest. It is an excellent opportunity to drink beer in a field and listen to polka. The Jimmy Sturr Orchestra always brings it.

History Lesson

I found this on Gothamist today. It has nothing to do with the Park, but it's kind of hilarious. Observe, if you will, a young Matt Dillon discussing the evolution of the amusement park. I shudder to think what the Park's version of the Human Pool Table or Human Roulette Wheel would have been:




And a bit of Matt Dillon trivia- his aunt was, and may still be, an English teacher at my high school. She is one of the nicest ladies I have ever met.