Let me tell you all a little about Kennywood Amusement Park. Wedged somewhat uncomfortably into the Homestead area of the greater Pittsburgh region, Kennywood is nevertheless a premiere amusement park for Western Pennsylvania. With more than 120 years of history, Kennywood has roller coasters both old and new, from wooden rides like the Jackrabbit and the Thunderbolt to steel coasters like the Phantom's Revenge and the Sky Rocket. And, like any self-respecting Pittsburgh-area institution, there's also a healthy Steelers presence in the new-ish Steel Curtain ride. It's a destination attraction for the area, and a great mid-level amusement park all around.
When I moved from Pittsburgh to the eastern side of the state a few years ago, I knew that I wanted to visit some of the nearby New York City-area amusement parks, namely Luna Park at Coney Island and Palisades Park. I had Coney Island in mind because it's a world-famous park and a real slice of Americana; why not visit somewhere that's been immortalized in different forms of media over the last several decades?
I've since checked that off my list. I've rode the Cyclone and enjoyed it, though I've yet to ride the Wonder Wheel. It's a park that's quaint and quite overpriced, though it's a place I'd recommend seeing at least once, and it's directly off of NYC's most popular beach, south of Brooklyn. I bought a hot dog there! I got the whole experience.
Palisades, New Jersey is located near the George Washington Bridge, across the river from northern Manhattan. It's definitely a town for people who want to live in the city but don't want to pay a million dollars to get a condo there. The commute across the bridge is a relatively easy one.
There were two reasons I wanted to check out Palisades Park: the first is, okay, the 1962 Freddy Cannon pop bubblegum hit of the same name:
Can I just say that "I gave that girl a hug/In the tunnel of love" is a pretty awkward attempt at a rhyme? Anyway, the second reason is that I've gotten used to seeing the following ad in old copies of certain DC Comics:
Any amusement park that's good enough for Superman is good enough for me, right? So I thought that the park would be fun to check out.
This particular ad comes from 1967's Green Lantern #56, which features the second appearance of Charlie Vicker, the actor who played Green Lantern on TV and was deputized as a real GL when his brother was killed (revenge being a central tenant to wielding the ring). This half-page ad also comes with a coupon for the park to (gasp) cut out and use for a free admission:
The coupon was also good for one trip on the Batman slide! Now, one might wonder why Superman is the only figure in this ad and not Batman, if the ride was named after the Dark Knight, especially since the extremely popular Adam West Batman show was on the air at this point. But I suppose you just have to accept that Superman is a world-renowned character and just go with it.
One thing I learned while planning a trip to the semi-world-famous Palisades Parks is that...it's been closed since 1971. Over 50 years! In its place now sits, would you believe it, a high-rise apartment complex, which, okay, now that I type it, I can very much believe it. I'm sure it remains prime real estate.
So what WAS the Batman Slide at the forever-closed Palisades Park? From the information you can find online, it seems like it was a pretty standard slide tower, rising to heights of about 20 feet; kids would take a burlap mat up a flight of stairs and slide down while riding it, just like...you know...just like Batman. I found a video that briefly shows the slide, complete with the Batman logo. Here's a grainy screenshot!
I suppose my dream of riding the Batman slide has been forever dashed by the fact that this park closed down before I was born. To be honest, though, they probably wouldn't have accepted my coupon, anyway.
Interestingly enough, right after I snapped the picture of the ad, I sat down to read a copy of Marvel's Sleepwalker #1, a new and possibly masochistic purchase. Where does Rick and his best girl go on date night? To Coney Island, of course. Let me know if the Wonder Wheel is worth it, Rick.
- Blogger is kind enough to save viewing statistics for this blog, and I am obsessive enough to check them all the time; the stats tell me nothing other than how many views specific posts have in a given time period and what countries the views come from, which is juuuust unintrusive enough for me to be okay with. These page views, for the most part, seem to follow a predictable trend, with new posts getting the majority share (but fading away after a week or so) with a few time-tested posts continually getting hits. Sometimes, though, a post from three months ago will all of a sudden pop back up on the radar and top the list in a given week. This is thoroughly confusing.
Case in point: I've had, what, seven different posts with art from my Thing sketchbook; one entry (the third, I think?) keeps getting more hits than any other. I think the big reason for this is because, as someone else pointed out to me, some of the sketches show up pretty early on in Google Images searches, which I think is extra cool. The wording is sometimes tricky, but I've found that searching for images of the Thing with the keyword "cigar" somewhere in there brings a bundle of familiar sketches, like the one above from Chuck BB. I've seen images from the sketchbook as high as on the sixth page of results, which, when considering how many thousands of images of the Thing there are out there, is fairly surprising.
- Speaking of statistics (YOUR FAVORITE SUBJECT!), the month of June still has a few days left in it, and it already is my most-viewed month since Blogger started keeping record of such things (according to this graph, it looks like a total of zero people viewed it in May of 2009). November, 2010, directly after the New York Comic Con, held the previous high, but woo! No more. Thanks, everyone, for reading my stupid ramblings!
- One of the big reasons for this jump is because of the "Accordion Theory" comic strip, which has quickly become one of my most-viewed posts. It seems that Yahoo! Images is bringing the strip up very early when people search for "Weird Al" Yankovic, which is great - especially since the man is getting a lot of publicity lately for his brand new album, "Alpocalypse", which came out on Tuesday. It's a tremendous album, and you should totally buy several copies of it. My goodness, look at the cover!
And holy crap, buy it buy it buy it! And marvel and how incredible it is.
- You know what other cover is cool? The just-released cover to the much-anticipated FUBAR volume 2, due out this fall. Danilo Beyruth drew this one just as he did the cover for volume 1, and as with that one he knocked this out of the park. Really, how awesome is this cover? Very awesome. That's the answer. It is.
- Your friend (and mine) Paul Tucker is hard at work on a new story featuring John Watkins, Phantom for Hire! Here's some thumbnails...see if you can guess what's happening! I can, but...I wrote the script.
- Lastly, happy birthday to friend and Franks and Beans co-creator Larry, whose exact date of birth I always manage to forget, but hey, it's around here some time. I hope he enjoys the Dukes of Hazzard parody porno DVD that I bought for him, which is sure to bring laughs and laughs. And boobs.
Oh, hey, we (and I think eight other people) went to Kennywood amusement park last week, and I filmed the Thunderbolt roller coaster while riding it. Watch it, and hold your hands up when the car goes down the hill.
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