I visited an amusement park the other day.\u00a0 I won\u2019t name it, because I\u2019m going to rake the management over the coals.\u00a0 They do deserve a good coal-raking, though!\u00a0 This is an older amusement park, with large sections of it that are delightful relics from the 1950s.\u00a0 They had hand-painted signs, miniature golf, sky rides, ferris wheels, and real wooden roller coasters.<\/p>\n
But now, in a desperate attempt to compete with the \u201cbig\u201d amusement parks, like Six Flags and Kings Island, new owners are ripping out the old stuff and installing new rides to appeal to \u201cmodern\u201d tastes.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s going to kill them.\u00a0 They don\u2019t have the money or the space to do what they want to do (the place is on a little peninsula), and it can\u2019t really be expanded.\u00a0 And what they\u2019re losing in the bargain is one of the last historic amusement parks around.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just the owners who are losing what they have.\u00a0 We all are.<\/p>\n
The problem is that it is very difficult to compete with those bigger corporate parks, and, frankly, I don\u2019t visit those.\u00a0 I have no desire to lose my lunch on a metal coaster that takes me upside down three times.\u00a0 The older wooden coasters are much more fun and much harder to find these days.<\/p>\n
I have a huge problem with people throwing out their history in a desperate attempt to seem hip and with the times.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s that very history that makes them hip.\u00a0 There\u2019s nothing particularly historic about Kings Island, despite their \u201cConey Mall.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019d love to shake the new owners of this historic park and tell them that what they\u2019re ripping out is what makes them unique.\u00a0 I doubt they\u2019d listen.<\/p>\n
Take another example.\u00a0 I\u2019ll name these folks because I have nothing bad to say about them.\u00a0 Zaharako\u2019s<\/a> is a great ice cream parlor in Columbus, Indiana that knows its niche and exploits it brilliantly.\u00a0 For years, the place was in a state of disrepair.\u00a0 The old man who owned it was enthusiastic enough, but he couldn\u2019t maintain it.\u00a0 I heard that he died, and I feared the worst.\u00a0 I was wrong.<\/p>\n A new owner purchased the building and lovingly restored it.\u00a0 Zaharako\u2019s beautiful orchestrion (a mechanical organ\/orchestra, from the early 1900s) was lost.\u00a0 The owner found it, bought it, restored it, and put it back exactly where it had been.\u00a0 The skylight was restored.\u00a0 Pressed tin ceilings were restored and replaced, even to the point that the new air conditioning system uses vents carefully matched to the original ceiling tiles.\u00a0 The original soda fountain completely repaired and restored (beautiful onyx!)<\/p>\n When you walk into Zaharako\u2019s today, it\u2019s as close to walking into a 1900s-era ice cream parlor as can be replicated.\u00a0 You want attention to detail?\u00a0 They even have paper straws<\/em>.\u00a0 Not this plastic stuff.\u00a0 Paper.\u00a0 The way it used to be.<\/p>\n A lot of people would have counseled the new owners to be as cheap as possible, throw in some soft-serve ice cream machines, and to cut costs to the bone.\u00a0 They could have done that, and if they had, the place would be closed now.\u00a0 After all, Zaharako\u2019s is right around the corner from a Dairy Queen.<\/p>\n Dairy Queen is what it is.\u00a0 Zaharako\u2019s is something different, and they know it.\u00a0 Zaharako\u2019s has a historic ambience that is their greatest strength.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t hurt that their food and ice cream are outstanding as well.<\/p>\n Was it a crazy dream?\u00a0 Nope.\u00a0 I\u2019m happy to report that the place is filled to overflowing on most weekends, to the point that I couldn\u2019t get a table on a recent visit.\u00a0 That\u2019s unfortunate, but it\u2019s a nice problem I\u2019d prefer to have.\u00a0 I\u2019ll get down there again on an off-time, and I\u2019ll have them crank up the orchestrion.\u00a0 I don\u2019t care how many times I\u2019ve seen it… it\u2019s still cool.<\/p>\n Another historic place that does things right is the Capitol Theatre<\/a> in Rome, New York.\u00a0 While Zaharako\u2019s is in a fairly healthy metropolitan area, Rome is, well, an economic disaster.\u00a0 I could go on and on about things that have been done poorly in Rome.\u00a0 Worse, many of their key industries have packed up and gone away.\u00a0 The place is full of lovely, but often empty, buildings.<\/p>\n The Capitol, I\u2019m happy to say, is not among them.\u00a0 I\u2019m always amazed to see giant old theaters that are still running the way they were designed.\u00a0 I once spoke to an architect who told me his main job was rehabbing old theaters: \u201cNobody sees movies anymore, especially in single-screen theaters, so you gut these buildings like a fish and turn them into music venues.\u201d\u00a0 It was one of the saddest things I have ever heard, and the obnoxious echo of it still stays with me.<\/p>\n The Capitol is already a music venue, because it always was.\u00a0 It is also a stage venue, because it always was.\u00a0 It was designed for these multiple uses. Movies?\u00a0 Yes, they do them as well, on a large screen.\u00a0 Low-power cheap xenons bulbs or wimpy DVD projection?\u00a0 NEVER.\u00a0 The Capitol uses old-fashioned carbon-arc projectors, everything in 35mm.\u00a0 Absolutely stunning pictures.\u00a0 Someday they\u2019ll get a 16mm working.<\/p>\n Art Pierce, owner of the Capitol, is smart enough to know what he has.\u00a0 You won\u2019t be seeing Transformers 3 <\/em>there.\u00a0 That\u2019s not a tragedy, since all the multiplexes are running that.\u00a0 On the other hand, the multiplexes are not running classics in beautiful 35mm.\u00a0 And you\u2019ll never see a stage production of Arsenic and Old Lace <\/em>at a multiplex.<\/p>\n The Capitol has managed to become a regional theater with varied programs, and it\u2019s working for them.\u00a0 They have embraced their history and it\u2019s paying off.\u00a0 It\u2019s one of the best-run historic theaters I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n I have a soft spot in my heart for people who are determined to do things properly.\u00a0 I took a lot of guff for some of my decisions on the Dr. Film <\/em>pilot (many people wanted it to be 30 minutes with only film clips, but I wouldn\u2019t allow it.)\u00a0 I think the public is a lot smarter some of the cynical marketers think.<\/p>\n I have to feel that way.\u00a0 It would drive me crazy to live in a world with only Dairy Queen and Transformers 3<\/em>.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mind the easy choices so long as we have something else once in a while…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I visited an amusement park the other day.\u00a0 I won\u2019t name it, because I\u2019m going to rake the management over the coals.\u00a0 They do deserve a good coal-raking, though!\u00a0 This is an older amusement park, with large sections of it that are delightful relics from the 1950s.\u00a0 They had hand-painted signs, miniature golf, sky rides, … Continue reading “If You\u2019ve Got History, Flaunt It!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,207],"tags":[12,14,13,15],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-films-pocket-rants","category-film","tag-amusement-park","tag-capitol","tag-history","tag-rome-ny"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1938,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions\/1938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}