We received an invitation to our friends’ annual Labor Day party and it sent me into an existential spiral. I’ve been doing all right so far, but the empty nest thing is real. We drive our son to university this week, and then, well. It will be the two of us, for the most part, from here on out.
Wow. That’s it? Twenty years, really? Okay, uh. Now what? And the idea of attending the Labor Day party, thrown by friends we only know because of our children, without our children. It kind of brought it all home to me.
Parade the Circle
We’ve been summering like hell in an overcompensation for years of sequestering ourselves, with our children, due to quarantine. Let’s get out and do all the shit. What I have failed to do is have people over very much, not since the end-of-year part of the residency program which sucks because the backyard looks awesome.
Angélique Kidjo
The summer kicked off attending commencement for our youngest, at the Wolstein Center, where I had also received my Master Degree two weeks earlier, followed by a flurry of grad parties, one for himself and more for his friends.
My wife and I have attended three Guardians games (so far) this season, with a variety of friends or on our own. I also had the chance to attend the first Parade the Circle that has been celebrated since 2019. The parade was shorter than usual, which was to be expected, I guess.
Go Guardians!
Theater camp was a big hit, I think we got that one mostly right. I was most delighted that we were able to incorporate a writing component into the camp, and I had several acolytes who were happy to join that rather than do craft.
The Tri-C Jazz Fest was another great public event, where not only did our son perform at one of the outdoor bandstands on East 14th Street, but we also saw Angélique Kidjo, Herbie Hancock and Trombone Shorty. Members of the Jazz Academy went nuts for that last show, almost bringing down the balcony of the Connor Palace.
Video: Jazz ensemble "floor3" at Larchmere PorchFest
Drinks at the Grand Pavilion
We also brought the boy to Cincinnati for orientation – this was all before the end of June.
Last summer I became enamored of the Hotel Breakers at Cedar Point. Not that the place is terribly fancy, it’s not. It’s basic and I like that, and also that it’s right there on the beach. I knew nothing about the Breakers growing up, often my folks would take us to the Point only for the twilight, discount hours.
Young people in Maine.
When my family first visited the hotel last summer, and as my wife was checking us in, I was looking around, walked straight through the lobby and out the other side to find … the lake! The beach! It’s right there! I had no idea!
Location, location, location.
So we took the boy and his boyfriend for an overnight and while the younger pair of us went off to ride rides, we did something I had never had the chance to, namely: watch the shows. You know, all those shows, performed several times a day, every day, by college students and other young performers. And you know what? They were good!
Four votes against Issue 1
The middle of July, time seemed to slow down a little bit. I had pulled a muscle in my ribs on a ride at the park and my days were full of work business, and other theater-related matters. The last week of July we packed up for Maine, the journey I had missed last year due to retinal detachment surgery. This was also my first time back since we distributed mom’s ashes into the sea. The week was not without strong feelings.
We arrived home in time for the BorderLight Fringe Festival, and this past week the boy played his final gig as a student with School of Rock, the Super Seniors Show at the Mercury Music Lounge in Lakewood. Each of the artists got to choose a song for the ensemble to perform, and he chose Soul Coughing’s “Screenwriter’s Blues.” (see video below)
To round out this list, we attended the opening performance of Fun Home last night at Cain Park.* The production is really, really excellent. The boy said it’s the best production of a musical he’s ever seen. A poignant close to a manic summer, don't you think?
"Fun Home" (Cain Park, 2023) Photo: Every Angle Photography
Two summers ago our eldest was terrified of the Big Wheel at Cedar Point. The sun was setting and we were making our way out of the park, and wouldn’t it be nice to get a relaxing view from 136’ above the park after dark?
They hated it.
It scared them the way a human should be scared when perched in a gently rocking open canopy, 136’ in the air.
In the time since that first visit to Cedar Point two years ago they have returned to that park several times and have developed a great love of roller coasters. Earlier this month we visited Coney Island and we rode the Cyclone — which is awesome — but still I was surprised when they not only expressed interest in taking the Wonder Wheel (which is not only 150’ high, but also features cars which periodically lurch and swing on a track) but that they actually thought it was fun!
Wonder Wheel is right next to a classic “dark ride” called Spook-a-Rama and when they saw that they asked if I wouldn’t ride it with them, and I said sure. Why not?
They hated it.
Legend has it the original Spook-a-Rama was a much longer ride, but it currently clocks at about a ninety seconds. It’s one of those deals where you sit in an open car for two that travels on a single track through a darkened room that takes you past creepy animatronic displays of ghouls and witches and monsters that hydraulically lunge and shake and also gibber and scream and moan.
There are no physical interactions, no real people in costume or actors to introduce variety, nothing comes into contact with you. Each ride is mechanically exactly the same.
I was trying to get into it, to laugh and gasp and shout a bit but they were entirely quiet. After, they said they had their eyes shut the entire time, though in the weeks since they admit they were squinting, watching a little.
I'm reminded of the first time we went on the Corkscrew together, their first inverted roller coaster. They didn't know what to expect. They hated it. They have since been on it a bazillion times.
Sleep No More
Recently I checked the Yelp reviews for Sleep No More. Originally announced as a two-month run, I attended after it has been playing for two years and they have since celebrated their fifth anniversary in the Meatpacking District.
People still rave, but I was drawn to the one-star reviews. You know what they say haters gonna do, and they gonna do it on Yelp, but I did find one significant, often repeated complaint among them.
Sure, folks whine because they got separated from their date, others because of the masks. Did they do any research, did they have the slightest clue of what they were getting into? Were they even surprised there would be naked people?
No, the thing that struck me were the comments from those repeat attendants who were disgusted by the sheer number of participants and by their behavior.
“Too many audience members. Looks like they increased the audience number limit.”
- Roslynn
“SO CROWDED! I really am sad that they let so many people in. It takes away from the beautiful show when people are pushing and shoving.”
- Leslie
“... did i mention about being pushed by rude and manner-less tourists ?”
- Alex
My attractive companions at "Sleep No More" (2013)
Alex is from Huntington Beach, so they should know from tourists. But, anyway, you get the point. Can’t imagine the overhead on a production like this, but even three years ago they were engaged in the hard sell, hawking the program and pushing cocktails you never have the time to consume.
We attended on a Friday night, but I wouldn’t call it “crowded” at least not in any way that was remarkable. Maybe the bar, but not the show. However, there have been so many write-ups, many describing where and when to be in just the right place to see all the “good stuff” I can imagine there would be quite a bottleneck in certain rooms and stairwells.
But what if this were your first time? Your first time experiencing everything, all of it. As though this thing had never happened before and would never happen again. But we are sentient beings and we know this is not the case, and can be extremely aware that this is a performance which has been created and rehearsed and performed numerous times.
Then again, it is a live performance, and that is what makes every performance unique, that it is live, that these performers will be performing 1) this one time 2) this one way 3) just for you.
Is the event more or less special if there are only twenty-five people in the room, as opposed to one hundred. Does it feel different? Do you feel different?
I had a one-to-one performance that evening, when I was brought into the witch’s hut. My friends did not. The experience is burned into my memory, I remember that moment with greater clarity than anything else that happened that night. I know exactly who the performer was, too, I looked her up, I know her name even if she does not know mine. Doesn’t matter. We had a moment.
Ha ha, I’m just playing with you, of course we didn’t. She and numerous others in that role have performed the same combination almost the exact same way, night after night, for five years. It’s documented, others have described the exact same actions and words. It was a private performance, but not unique.
Love In Pieces (2014)
Actually, she didn’t even ask if I wanted sugar. But maybe she already knew.
But to my friends with whom I attended the performance, to those who watched as I was taking by the hand (by the hand) and ushered into that intimate space, I had been chosen, chosen receive an experience to which they had been denied.
When we produced Love In Pieces in 2014 our guest list was limited to those who would fit into any of the rooms, settling on between sixteen and twenty attendants an evening, for three performances. They were chosen, too.
Hamilton
What does the Spook-a-Rama and Sleep No More have to do with each other, apart from the fact that they are only fifteen miles from each other? Well, some have referred to Sleep No More as a “haunted house” and not a theatrical event. You wander around for a scare or a thrill, but there’s no story there, nothing to be gleaned.
But that’s not true, or at any rate, does not being meaningful disqualify a play from actually being a play? When I attend the theater, I desire for a unique, emotionally affecting experience, whether I am sitting in row with an audience, witnessing in stillness, or wandering the halls of a fabricated, period hotel, seeking out the performance on foot.
Then there’s the sense of exclusivity, and by that I mean those limits imposed upon the experience for an exclusive audience. My child and I as the only two in our barrel car, the animatronic horror show presented at that moment solely for the two of us. Being led into the witch’s hut to be an audience of one.
Or even the entirely absurd sense of exclusivity felt by those of us who have seen Hamilton on Broadway. How did you get tickets! Well, I guess we paid a lot of money for them? But you can’t get them! Well, uhm, you really can? You are so lucky! And you begin to feel you are lucky. After all, you are a member of an exclusive club consisting of over thirteen hundred people a night, every night, eight times a week, every week, since July, 2015.
Source: The Great Fredini's Cabinet of Curiosities
Hurricane
The wife and I discovered a mutual admiration for roadside attractions and honky-tonk during our first road trip in 1995. Truth is, my family never went in for that. My older siblings never even wanted to go to Disney — openly disdained it, actually — so my parents assumed I didn’t want to either.
I miss the dark rides of Cedar Point, the disturbing Fun House, the racist Earthquake, the mostly harmless Pirate Ride. Unlike the eldest, I wasn’t into roller coasters until I was in high school, and so taking rides through bizarre landscapes was my personal jam.
Four years ago this October, Spook-a-Rama was submerged in six feet of water during Hurricane Sandy. Built in 1955, it had already been through many renovations over more than half century, and persevered as those attractions which we never built to last generally do, limping along and continuing to make a buck. But this "super storm" left the ride virtually unsalvageable. Little of the original mechanics were still functional.
Yet, the owners decided to rebuild and have created a functioning dark ride where it would no doubt have been much easier to raze the whole thing and install another traditional ride, arcade, snack bar or souvenir shack.
Maybe my kid hated it, or maybe they were acting cool because it was spooky and they needed time to deal. Maybe they will always remember the time they asked their dad to go on the Spook-a-Rama at Coney Island the day before the night they got to see Hamilton.
Maybe some once-in-a-lifetime, emotionally affecting events are more important than others.
The official history of Cedar Point as an amusement park goes back as far as 1870, when it featured a dance pavilion, beer garden and bathhouses. Construction continued over the years, adding a broadway, theater and concert hall -- the first roller coaster, Switchback Railway, was installed in 1892.
By the turn of the 20th century it must have been quite a fun-time destination, with new rides and attractions added all the time. However, during the Great Depression there was little expansion and the place was becoming financially troubled, and by the end of World War II Cedar Point was falling apart, literally, the boardwalk damaged in many places, the timber on its last roller coaster, the Cyclone was rotting.
The only ride that remains from that period is the Midway Carousel, which was installed in 1946. In 1951 even the Cyclone had been torn down, though there were still plenty of existing rides including Laff-in-the-Dark, Moon Rocket,Loop-A-Plane and Bug (?) as well as funhouses -- Krazy Kastle, Fun House, and Noah's Ark. A 10-ride Kiddieland opened in 1952.
Krazy Kastle
In 1954 land adjacent to the park was acquired by Dr. Dean Sheldon for a bird sanctuary, and would become Sheldon's Marsh State Nature Preserve.
