Reach Party (or: Johnson & Johnson & More Johnson)

October 23, 2009

A second casting of J. Seward Johnson’s undeniably eye-catching 4,100-pound struggling sculpture, “The Awakening,” has been permanently installed in a grassy expanse in Chesterfield, Missouri. The grasping giant was added to Chesterfield Arts‘ public art collection and will be available for perpetual public gaping and climbing, forever frozen in an angry state, quite annoyed at being awakened from its underground nap.

The October 10th unveiling featured drumming and a T-shirt contest. For the event, children were encouraged to swarm all over the powerfully built yet helpless metal man (but let’s just see what happens when some reckless child takes a fall from a finger, or some frat guy jokester gets his butt stuck in its gaping jaw). J. Seward Johnson made it to the event in person; he also appears in two promotional videos, where he stated that the work “has a place in the universal subconscious” but also admitted that “God only knows what this means.”

Regular Roadside readers may recall the ongoing saga of the original version of “The Awakening”, which spent 27 years attempting to emerge from the earth at Hains Point in Washington, DC. Then, in 2007, it was sold to developer Milton V. Peterson for $750,000. The heavy duty cast aluminum body parts were dug up, hoisted onto three flat-bed trucks, and driven to their new home: a man-made beach within the appropriately huge 4-billion-dollar mixed-use waterfront development at National Harbor in Maryland.

It seems that developers just love Johnson’s work, which combines the caché of fine art collecting with a populist Neat-O Factor. The Chesterfield acquisition was commissioned by Louis Sachs and will serve as the centerpiece of an ever-growing sculpture garden — sure to add class to his Chesterfield Village (the “first masterplanned community ever developed in the St. Louis Region.)”

In conclusion: the J. Seward Johnson juggernaut cannot be stopped! Emboldened by a recent decision in support of his over-sized sailor/nurse liplock “Unconditional Surrender”, and with the encouragement of well-heeled builder patrons from coast to coast, we predict that soon there will be a JSJ sculpture in every American hamlet that aspires to artiness. His only serious competition in this march to total public art project domination seems to be the proliferation of those endless painted fiberglass CowParades. [Post by Anne D. Bernstein]

Sections: Attraction News, Statues
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Walking Tall: Latest In Lofty Thrills

October 19, 2009

Do you enjoy peering over railings? Do you like to feel gusts of unobstructed wind shoving you toward doom’s abyss?

Then you’ll love the new World’s Highest and Longest Pedestrian Bridge in Highland, New York.

Foreign countries may have the tallest observation decks, but America has moved beyond cheap thrills — or at least it expects to get them through the windows of something more exotic than a building.

Better yet, let’s have no windows at all. Let’s have it so that we can walk out over the precipice, not just gawk at it from a skyscraper.

The World’s Highest and Longest Pedestrian Bridge satisfies those urges. It follows a trail blazed by Arizona’s successful Skywalk and Kentucky’s unsuccessful Purple People Bridge (unsuccessful for reasons other than the bridge). It puts you into the void.

Officially titled Walkway Over the Hudson, it’s a smooth concrete sidewalk laid atop a rusty, 120-year-old railroad trestle. It’s 1.25 miles long, and most of that length is spent 212 feet above the Hudson River. Walkers and runners are welcome, bicyclists and roller-bladers as well. Skateboards are banned, although we presume it’s for philosophical reasons rather than for any deficiencies in locomotion.

But who needs wheels, anyway? Just strolling across the Hudson River gorge during a howling snowstorm should be excellent exercise, as well as an exercise in terror.

Sections: Attraction News
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The Urge To Burj

October 13, 2009

Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building, is set to open to the public on December 2, 2009. This titan of towers is the centerpiece of a 20 billion dollar development project that is bizarrely ambitious and ostentatious even by Dubai standards. Other record-setting features of this enormous undertaking include Dubai Mall (”the world’s largest shopping and entertainment destination”) and the Dubai Fountain (”the world’s tallest performing fountain”). There will also be an Old Town (which is new, of course) and a 14,000 car parking facility.

Could it be that the U.S. has permanently opted out of the global skyscraper race (after all, our national ambivalence about tall buildings is entirely understandable post-9/11). Have we ceded the field to upstarts like the United Arab Emirates, China and Malaysia?

We at RoadsideAmerica.com scoff at the idea. For although we may come up short on the basis of feet and inches — we also scoff at such un-American units of measurement as the kilometer! — in this country we know how to have fun with our skyscrapers!

Sure, Burj Dubai will have an observation deck on the 124st floor. But will it have THRILL RIDES!!! like Las Vegas’ Stratosphere Tower? Will you be able to hang out over the edge of Burj Dubai in a contraption that resembles four claws of a giant robotic lizard? We think not!

Burj Dubai plans to offer non-scintillating interactive exhibits such as “Dubai: Then and Now” and “Burj Dubai Among The Greats”, but we think that the popularity of Chicago’s Willis Tower attraction “The Ledge” proves definitively that tourists prefer the heart-palpitation thrills of a claustrophobic, high altitude, tempered glass box to educational Dubai-boosterism of a multi-media nature.

Not only that, but Burj Dubai’s extensive fact sheet conspicuously lacks any mention of the most essential of high-altitude amenities: a tacky revolving restaurant that serves $35 eggplant parmesan and makes you feel rather nauseated when you try to wobble your way to the restroom after a few drinks.

This is all pure speculation, of course.  Maybe Burj Dubai will be great fun. After all, the “virtual time-travel” telescopes do sound cool.

Anyway, we still have the World’s Tallest Totem Pole and the World’s Largest Thermometer (which we assume is also the World’s Tallest). Not to mention the Wonder Tower, where you can (possibly) see six states and visit an eight-footed pig upon descent. It’s high time you check it out! [Post by Anne D. Bernstein]

Sections: Coming Soon, Rants, WorldTourWatch
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Christ, Born Again in Gatlinburg

October 7, 2009

Early 2008 was bad for Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Long-time attraction Christus Gardens closed. The property was sold to a condo developer. Everything in the attraction — the murals, the wax dummies, the famous marble face of Jesus with-the-eyes-that-followed-you, even the name “Christus Gardens” — had been sold to an outside Christian group. Rumors had them moving it somewhere else, possibly to a place like The Holy Land Experience in Orlando, Florida.

Then the economy tanked.

No more condos. No more new location.

The exhibits of Christus Gardens still sit in a warehouse, somewhere. But the property in Gatlinburg, befitting a Christian attraction, has been reborn.

The Christus Gardens building has been leased to several of its old employees, and is now reopened as Christ in the Smokies Museum and Gardens. If it seems remarkably similar to Christus Gardens, it’s because the building was designed to hold a Christus Gardens-like attraction. Wax dioramas once again recreate the life of Jesus, accompanied by prerecorded narration and angelic music. According to director Joe Waggoner, the scene of Jesus’s ascension to heaven now “has movement in it,” and efforts have been made to bring the wax figures out to where visitors can almost touch them.

Almost, but not quite. The idea that any Christian attraction would allow you to drape your arm around Moses or Judas, or make Mary Magdalene blush, a la Madame Tussauds, is unlikely.

Waggoner told us that the museum is working hard to create new, improved versions of many of the old Christus Gardens exhibits. The “one thing that people really remember,” he said, was Christus Gardens’ marble face of Jesus, with its mysterious moving eyes. If attendance is good this year, he suggested, the new museum might have the funds to commission “a similar piece.”

We remember Christus Gardens fondly, and suspect with the same team at the helm, Christ in the Smokies Museum and Gardens can match the same caliber of entertainment, if not Christus Gardens’ creaky charm.

And it was only possible because of a lousy economy. We mentioned that to Waggoner, and he agreed that, “There was a kind of blessing there in disguise.”

Sections: Attraction News, Places
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Chupacabra On This!

October 7, 2009

Creationist realtor John Adolfi has been trying to open his Lost World Museum in Phoenix, NY for years, seeking to undermine evolutionary science through the exuberant fun of an old-fashioned sideshow chock full of entertaining oddities. Now it looks like a mysterious blood-sucking monster has come to the rescue (A dead, stuffed one, admittedly).

The Chupacabra Exhibit will be open on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays (plus Halloween!) throughout the month of October. The Chupacabra is said to be a vicious beast that preys on livestock, with a particular fondness for tasty goats. A relative newcomer on the mysterious monster scene, it was first spotted in Puerto Rico back in the not-so-ancient times of 1995. Adolfi’s specimen was trapped in a barn and recently purchased from a now-cash-happy Texas taxidermist.

What does the gathering of bizarre examples of biological confusion (such as the Cyclops Kitty) have to do with the Bible? Adolfi believes the existence of such currently unclassified anomalies that “don’t make scientific sense” somehow bring down the entire evolutionary worldview (But hey, plenty of weird creatures fit nicely into conventional taxonomy — what could be more bizarre than a humpback anglerfish?).

Back in 2006, Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, California mounted its own temporary Chupacabra exhibit for entirely opposing purposes: to lure the kiddies in with a “Spooky Science” angle, and then expose them to “facts” about blood-sucking creatures such as mosquitoes and leeches. Not only did the show lack a taxidermy Chupacabra, but it did not display a single image of the horrifying beast. Creationists: One; Well-Meaning Educators: Zero.

Not that the Lost World Museum Chupacabra is a slam-dunk for Intelligent Design fans (and how exactly is it intelligent to design such a thing anyway?). It lacks the more colorful physical details of  legendary sightings (spiny quills running down the back, a forked tongue, glowing red eyes). Could it simply be a mangy coyote? A less-than-photogenic fox with an attitude problem?

Go see it and make up your own mind. For if Mr. Adolfi is right, “scientists need to figure this mystery out proper” so that we can finally “answer the question that is at the heart of the debate: “Is it Apes, Aliens or Adam?”"

For entertainment purposes, perhaps it can be all three? [Post by Anne D. Bernstein]

Sections: Attraction News
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Gettysburg Electric Map: No Address

October 5, 2009

The Battle of Gettysburg saved American civilization from certain destruction. Now free Americans want to see the battle as they had done so for decades: at the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center, on a big Electric Map.

Unfortunately, it’s gone — split asunder. Or, at least in storage.

The map was a marvel of mid-20th century analog multimedia. Visitors would shuffle into a special 554-seat auditorium, stare down at a 30-foot-square Plaster of Paris rendering of the Gettysburg terrain, and be mesmerized as a sonorous narration told the story while hundreds of light bulbs winked off and on, showing troop movements.

But in 2008, the Battlefield’s management was turned over to a private group named the Gettysburg Foundation. They hated the map. They broke it apart and stuck it in a warehouse. Their two excuses for doing so were 1) that the map had asbestos insulation, and 2) that it was too big to fit into the new visitor center. Which, of course, they designed so that it would be too small to hold the hated Electric Map.

According to the York Daily Record, people who come to Gettysburg still ask to see the map. They’ve been doing it so consistently that the Foundation has announced that it may now bring back the map — as a video. The Foundation apparently filmed the map presentation one last time before they broke the map apart. Now a film is being created “based” on the presentation. It would be shown in the Visitor Center theater, although “there is no timetable for the film’s release.”

Yeah, that sounds like fun. Watching a video of the Electric Map would be like watching Tombstone’s Historama on a counter-top TV — a pale imitation of a pale imitation of reality.

Sections: Attraction News
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