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From Vox
How California’s bizarre recall system could elect a Republican governor -
California Gov. Gavin Newsom pauses during a news conference after touring Barron Park Elementary School on March 2, 2021 in Palo Alto, California. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
There’s an odd asymmetry in what Gov. Gavin Newsom needs to stay in office, versus what his replacement would need to win.
If you haven’t been following California’s recall election battle, you might scoff at the idea that Gov. Gavin Newsom is fighting for his political life — and perhaps even to safeguard Democratic control of the US Senate. California is a deep-blue state, after all; could a Republicanreally win?
But the strange design of California’s recall system, and Newsom’s strategy for navigating it, make a Republican win more plausible than might be expected. That’s one reason the conservative activists who started the recall effort are pushing to remove Newsom from office this year rather than waiting until the 2022 election: They believe they have a better shot of winning now.
The first question voters will see on the ballot: Should Governor Newsom be recalled? Voters get to answer yes or no.
The second question: If Newsom is recalled, who should be his replacement? Here voters are presented with 46 candidates (Republicans, Democrats, and others) — but not Newsom. Mail-in voting has already begun, and in-person voting will take place September 14.
Here’s where it gets bizarre. Newsom needs to win a majority of the vote to stay in office. If he fails to get that majority, his replacement can win merely by being the top-vote getter in a crowded field. Two recentpolls have shown conservative talk radio host Larry Elder (R) in first place with 23 percent of the vote — a small plurality that could still make him governor if Newsom loses the recall question.
It gets weirder. Newsom and top Democrats are specifically urging their voters to leave the replacement question blank. That makes sense as a political strategy: Newsom wants to frame the choice as between him and a Republican. But if Newsom loses the recall vote and many Democrats follow this advice, it will make it easier for a conservative Republican to get into office as his replacement, rather than a moderate Republican or one of the nine little-known Democrats in the field. Replacement candidates include 2018 GOP nominee John Cox (R), former San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer (R), celebrity Caitlyn Jenner (R), and developer/YouTuber Kevin Paffrath (D).
A Republican win would havemajor implications for the state’s pandemic response policies over the next year (the governorship will be up for election again in November 2022). But the biggest consequence could be national: The United States Senate is divided 50-50, and the oldest senator is 88-year-old Dianne Feinstein (D) of California. If she were to die in office, as octogenarians occasionally do, California’s governor would choose her replacement — and a Republican governor could flip control of the Senate to Mitch McConnell’s GOP.
Democrats are optimistic that all of these challenges will be overcome, and that the fundamental partisan dynamics of California will reassert themselves and save Newsom. Most polls show Newsom narrowly leading on the recall question. But that outcome can hardly be taken for granted. In oddly-timed elections, weird things can happen, as Democrats learned when Scott Brown won a Massachusetts Senate seat in January 2010, or as Republicans learned from Doug Jones’s Alabama Senate seat victory in December 2017.
So there is a possible slow-motion disaster unfolding in California for Democrats — but there’s also still time for them to avert it, if they can communicate the stakes to their base voters.
The weirdness of California’s recall system
The recall effort was launched by conservative activists who were generally dissatisfied with Newsom’s governance. The incident that got the most attention was Newsom flouting his own pandemic guidelines by dining maskless at the French Laundry restaurant last November, but conservatives also point to Newsom’s handling of the pandemic generally, the state’s serious homelessness problem, and a high level of unemployment benefits fraud. The motivation for the timing of this push, though, is likely that they think they have a better shot at winning in the recall than in next year’s ordinary election.
Now, in theory, the recall process is all about giving more power to the people so they can boot out politicians they think need to go. Who could be against that? But the devil’s in the details about just who “the people” happen to be, and how that choice is structured.
For one, to get the recall on the ballot, activists needed to meet a relatively low signature threshold: 12 percent of the voters who turned out in the last governor’s election. Even in a deep-blue state like California, 38 percent of voters backed Newsom’s GOP opponent last time around, so with the proper shoe leather and funding, that wasn’t a very hard threshold to meet.
Turnout is another issue. The nature of a recall means it’s an election that happens at an odd time, and oddly-timed elections can have a different electorate, in which those who are more fired up are more likely to turn out. So in practice, what the recall can do is give an impassioned minority of voters a chance at scoring an unexpected victory, due to low turnout from the less-engaged majority. (Though it doesn’t always work that way — turnout ended up being higher in the 2003 recall than in the governor’s election the previous year.)
The handling of the replacement candidates is also unusual because, unlike in typical elections, there are no primaries beforehand in which the field is sorted. So this time around there are 24 Republican candidates, 9 Democrats, and 13 others from third parties or with no party preference. With only a plurality necessary to win if Newsom loses the recall question, and no runoff, this poses the possibility that someone with a small slice of the vote would end up governor. This thrills conservatives, since a conservative candidate would have little chance of winning a typical two-candidate California election.
Another feature of the system takes away one possible choice from voters: Newsom is prohibited from appearing as a replacement candidate. That creates the strange asymmetry where Newsom needs a majority on the recall question to stay in office, but his replacement does not need a majority to be elected.
Put another way: If Newsom loses the recall question 51-49, and his replacement wins with 30 percent of the vote in a split field, would that really be what “the people” wanted? In that scenario, more Californians would have wanted Newsom than any one other candidate. Of course, it’s inherently tougher for a replacement candidate to get a majority since they have so much competition, but that only drives home how odd it is that these two differently- designed election systems are juxtaposed.
Why does California do things this way?
Like the other notable “direct democracy” feature of California politics — the state’s frequently-used ballot initiative and referendum system — California’s recall system was created in 1911, during the Progressive Era. Contrary to the modern-day use of “progressive” as a term for those on the left, these capital-P Progressives were “an anti-party, anti-partisan, anti-special interest movement of reformers” in both parties, says Raphe Sonenshein, a political scientist at Cal State LA.
In California, Progressives were mainly concerned with corruption — specifically, the enormous influence of the Southern Pacific Railroad over state politics. But to build a “big tent” coalition to win power, these anti-corruption reformers sought allies. And one valuable ally was John Randolph Haynes, a wealthy doctor and investor who had an idiosyncratic interest in issues of direct democracy.
Haynes had studied direct democracy examples from around the world and from history, and he was taken with the idea that giving the people more power over politicians and lawmaking would improve society, according to an article by historian John Allswang. So he founded a group called the Direct Legislation League, and had already helped make Los Angeles the nation’s first city to give its voters the recall power back in 1903. (Voters approved it overwhelmingly, along with the ballot initiative and referendum reforms.)
So when a faction of California Progressives later launched an effort to take over the state’s Republican Party, they found Haynes’s money and organization helpful, and incorporated his proposals into their platform with little debate. Haynes “often seemed the only person in California who really cared about the initiative, referendum, and recall,” Allswang writes.
Progressive Republicans took over the state party and won the governorship, and they set about enacting their agenda in 1911. The legislature approved Haynes’s reforms and other sweeping changes, including women’s suffrage. Those reforms were put to a statewide vote later that year, and again won overwhelmingly. Haynes had put the idea on the agenda, but it was clear voters quite liked the idea of giving themselves more power.
The reasons for the specific design of California’s recall system are murkier. For instance, historian Tom Sitton says that the recall system Los Angeles created a few years prior allowed the incumbent to run as a replacement candidate. But when the state-level reform was drafted, a provision prohibiting that was included, and it’s not clear why the change was made.
The other notable choice was not requiring a runoff for the replacement candidate — letting a new candidate win with just a plurality. One possible motivation here is to save on money: A statewide election is expensive; a recall already adds one new costly election, and a runoff would add another. Another possibility, Sonenshein speculates, is that drafters may have wanted the recall process to be “as simple and quick as possible,” limiting “shenanigans” of any kind from the recalled incumbent.
Newsom’s risky strategy
The recall did not revolutionize state politics immediately. A few state legislators faced recall attempts in the 1910s, but then nobody successfully got a recall on the ballot again for another 80 years, when ideological conservatives embraced the tool to try and oust state legislators who’d taken positions they disliked.
But the person who first put a gubernatorial recall on the ballot was Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), who funded a push to oust the unpopular Gov. Davis in 2003. Issa’s key insight was that, with modern communication technology, the signature-gathering requirement was trivial as long as you were willing to spend the money to pay organizers. So he spent big, intending to run for the office himself. In a Hollywood twist, though, Schwarzenegger jumped in the race, and, knowing he couldn’t compete with Arnold’s celebrity, Issa tearfully quit.
In the end, 55 percent of voters opted to recall Davis. Among a crowded field to replace him, with over 100 candidates, Schwarzenegger won 48 percent of the vote. That wasn’t quite a majority, but another Republican candidate got 13 percent of the vote, so together well over half of voters wanted a Republican. And Schwarzenegger governed as a moderate, winning an easy reelection in 2006.
Newsom’s situation is different in many respects. He is more popular than Davis was at the time, and there is no formidable celebrity like Schwarzenegger in the race. (Caitlyn Jenner is running, but she has not been doing well in polls.)
But he still faces the inherently difficult challenge of winning a vote between “Newsom or not Newsom” — which is much more difficult than a typical election, when the choice is between one politician or another politician.
As a result, Democrats have tried to reframe that choice as being really about “Newsom or Republicans.” They made sure no credible Democrats entered the race as a replacement candidate (unlike in 2003, when Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante jumped in). The nine Democrats who did make the ballot this time are all little-known, with 29-year-old developer and YouTuber Kevin Paffrath being the only one who’s gotten some attention.
Democrats are going even further in trying to draw a contrast. They’re outright urging voters to leave the replacement question blank, even though voting on it would not hurt Newsom in any way.
Ballots for the radical right-wing recall will begin to be mailed out on Monday. Remember: vote NO on question 1, leave 2 blank, sign, date, seal & return. IT IS CRITICALLY IMPORTANT THAT WE ALL DO OUR PART TO DEFEAT THIS DANGEROUS POWER GRAB.
The calculation seems to be that Democrats don’t want anyone thinking about a second choice or a backup plan. They want the election to be a choice between Newsom and Republicans, and they think this message will most effectively communicate that choice.
But it’s not advice that actually makes sense for individual voters, who are being asked to voluntarily forfeit their say over who the next governor would be if Newsom loses. Do they really want to hand the state over to Larry Elder, a far-right conservative, rather than Paffrath, who is at least a Democrat, or Kevin Faulconer, the former San Diego mayor who is a moderate Republican and at least has governing experience?
And if large numbers of Democrats do abstain from the replacement question, the math for a Republican victory gets even easier — again, since only a plurality win is necessary.
It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that state Democratic leaders might prefer, if Newsom loses, to have a deeply conservative Republican in the governor’s office, who would be easier to beat in 2022.
But Democratic voters who care about the state’s governance over the next year — or about whether the US Senate remains in Democratic hands — might think it best to fill out the whole ballot, to have a backup plan. Just in case.
The economic case for letting in as many refugees as possible -
Afghan nationals disembark from an evacuation airplane at the Torrejon de Ardoz Air Base near Madrid, Spain, on August 20. | Mariscal/AFP via Getty Images
Save America’s declining cities. Bring in the refugees.
The reason we should care about refugees is they are people.
But, unfortunately, for many people that is an insufficient moral claim. Even for the tens of thousands of Afghan people who put their lives in jeopardy working alongside the US military over the past 20 years. So let’s put it another way: Evidence shows that accepting refugees benefits the host country too.
“When the supply shrinks, the cost rises,” Carlson says. “One reason it’s happening is that America’s becoming a lot more crowded than it ever was and one of the reasons for that is that we’re living through the biggest influx in refugees in American history.”
Tucker Carlson blames the housing crisis on refugees for taking up too much physical space pic.twitter.com/Koy6ou7tJS
This is false; rising demand is due to historically low mortgage rates and the largest generation in American history (millennials) entering the housing market in force. (This is all the more ironic since Carlson himself has railed against the actual solutions to the housing crisis on his show.) The claim that America has more refugees than ever is also false, as research from the Migration Policy Institute shows, the country is actually letting in record low numbers of refugees.
The rhetoric that the nation is overcrowded is not borne out in reality. Cities like London, Seoul, Tokyo are much denser than any of America’s large cities, making room for America’s current population as well as immigrants is entirely within policymakers’ control.
But this desire to depict refugees as a burden is widespread. Even some proponents of opening America’s doors use language similar to Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham’s statement in 2015 that the country should accept our “fair share” of Syrian refugees. In the White House, concerns that refugees might be politically costly weigh heavy: Politico reported that the Biden administration has previously worried that bringing in more refugees would prompt conservative backlash and imperil their domestic policy agenda.
The fact of the matter is that for selfless and self-interested reasons alike, the US should welcome more people. In small towns or declining cities, they can help reverse depopulation trends that threaten the financial viability of the region. Even in growing places where many people seek to live and work, refugees provide a clear economic benefit.
Refugees are a boon, and they can help revive struggling towns
UC San Diego political scientist Claire Adida recently reviewed the economic literature in a Twitter thread, concluding that “refugees are an economic boon to their host communities.”
She cites research showing that refugees in Rwanda who received $120 to $126 in cash aid from the United Nations “increased annual real income in the economy by $205 to $253.”
Evidence in the US shows that “after 6 years in the country, these refugees work at higher rates than natives. … [Researchers] estimate that refugees pay $21,000 more in taxes than they receive in benefits over their first 20 years in the US.”
Refugees are an economic boon to their host communities, both because of the economic dynamism of refugees themselves (https://t.co/YQ1XQl3RyH) and indirectly because of the positive spillovers of cash transfers to refugees (https://t.co/T6m0mHLXRf).
Beyond their generalized impact, refugees can also help solve one of the most difficult urban policy problems facing the US: how to induce growth in cities and towns outside of the coastal superstar cities and the growing sunbelt. A 2019 report by Economic Innovation Group (EIG) found that “uneven population growth is leaving more places behind. 86 percent of counties now grow more slowly than the nation as a whole, up from 64 percent in the 1990s.”
Several market forces have pushed the majority of good-paying jobs into a handful of cities. This phenomenon is referred to as “agglomeration economies,” something economist Enrico Moretti explained to Vox earlier this year: “Agglomeration economies … [are] the tendency of employers and workers to cluster geographically in a handful of locations.”
One factor is that employees who splinter off to start their own firms often do so in the same cities that they were working in. More broadly, workers and industries clustering in the same place increases employment opportunities for workers and increases the qualified labor pool for employers. Additionally, a large number of young college graduates have a preference for urban environments, and firms often follow valuable labor pools.
This has an outsized effect on the US economy, as more higher- income workers cluster in the same cities, the demand for goods and services (anything from legal services to restaurants and plumbers) shifts as well. Encouraging firms and young professionals to move to your city is a hard problem as a mayor.
As highly educated workers move away, cities may shrink in population. That, in turn, leads to fewer taxes, which means declining public services. It also means less demand for goods and services which leads to higher unemployment as businesses don’t need as many workers to service a shrinking population. This becomes a dangerous spiral as higher unemployment and a declining young population makes these places even less attractive to new entrants and new businesses. This is one of the most vexing problems declining neighborhoods and towns face.
One way to get around this problem? Refugee resettlement.
The authors of the EIG report propose a similar, innovative policy proposal: place-based visas, called “heartland visas,” that would bring immigrants to the US to live in communities “facing the consequences of demographic stagnation” and in desperate need of new entrants. These visas would not limit where immigrants can visit or travel but would “simply require that their residence and place of work be somewhere within a specific geography.” Similar visas have been successful in Canada and Australia.
There’s a reason why several governors (both Republican and Democrat) have indicated their support for refugee resettlement in their states.
The case for opening America’s doors is clear. Refugees and immigrants are not only good for the economy, they can help us reverse dangerous trends in stagnant cities and towns. Policymakers should stop referring to refugees as a burden and trust that new Americans will benefit the nation.
The story of amusement parks is the story of America -
Tourists at the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World on July 1, 2021 in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. | Liao Pan/China News Service via Getty Images
When fairgoers entered the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, they were dazzled by the White City, a sprawling collection of massive exhibit buildings dedicated to manufacturing, transportation, electricity, and other themes that captured the imagination of a country on the move. Boasting a mixture of architectural influences, the gleaming, almost regal structures were assembled around a large reflecting pond festooned with Corinthian and Ionic columns as well as golden and white allegorical statuary.
It was a giddy time in America as the young, growing country was establishing its prominence, and the fair was its coming-out party. The White City, so named for the alabaster substance made of gypsum and other materials that covered the buildings, was a celebration of progress and a brash ode to capitalism. It reinforced the sense of hope and promise — the swagger even — that Americans carried. Visitors were overcome by the scale, spectacle, and opulence of the buildings and grounds as well as the bustle and merriment of its midway and amusements.
Toward the end of the expo’s five- month run, though, keen-eyed observers noticed something amiss with the exhibit halls: Their exteriors were starting to crumble.
The buildings’ plaster-like coating was never meant to last. It was a cheap facade that could easily and quickly be formed into virtually anything. It was an illusion, emotionally charged but ephemeral. The fair presented an inspiring vision of a utopian city built on American ingenuity but not one that was built to last or that considered urban reality. The Columbian Exposition, like the amusement parks and theme parks it inspired, was about the America for which its people longed, not necessarily the America they encountered. It was about the American stories they told themselves — tales of reassurance and a brighter tomorrow, even if some of the tales were illusory and fragile.
The fair presaged and set the template for parks, fanciful places where thrills abound, and visitors can aspire to greatness as they test their limits, even if they are never in any actual danger. They are carefully controlled environments that engender pleasure and filter out the distracting truths beyond their gates. In all their bombast and bluster, parks embody the American story itself.
Getty Images
An illustration of an event at the Chicago World’s Colombian Exposition, depicting flags from various countries in 1893.
There are about 475 amusement parks and theme parks in the US today, ranging from mega-parks, such as those operated by Disney and Universal, to regional parks that are operated by large companies such as Six Flags and draw customers mostly from the areas in which they are located.
Although their numbers are dwindling, there are smaller parks as well, some of which are family-owned and operated, and a few of which date back many years. All of them feature rides such as carousels and roller coasters, but the larger parks also boast more sophisticated, technology-laden attractions that often hew to a theme. They provide an escape from the mundane and stir emotions, but unlike movies, television, and other forms of entertainment, they require active participation and are best experienced in the company of others.
If there’s any doubt about the preeminence of parks, consider that nearly 160 million people visited the top 20 North American theme parks and amusement parks in 2019. The Disney parks in California and Florida alone accounted for more than half the visitors. 2020 was a different story, of course. The coronavirus pandemic shuttered parks and kept many of them closed for months. Those that did open were hampered by capacity limits, social distancing guidelines, and other restrictions.
It’s more than Covid-era longing, however. Above all, people are drawn to parks to join with those whom they cherish and to celebrate life together. That’s appealing, regardless of pandemic lockdowns. In an often-polarized country, parks provide safe havens to seek joy without having to take sides (at least on the surface). For a brief while anyways, they can become the America for which Americans long, not the America that exists beyond the manicured grounds.
“Theme parks are all about us,” says Margaret King, who has studied and written about theme parks throughout her career and is the director of the Center for Cultural Studies and Analysis, a market research institute. “It’s a museum of us, of America. It’s a distillation of the qualities we most value and like about ourselves.” The Disney parks, in particular, reflect the small-town ideals, the innocence, the inventiveness, the strong work ethic, and other characteristics that are part of Americans’ self-image.
We are nostalgic for places that never really were, she says. Disney’s Main Street USA, the thoroughfares themed to the early-20th century that serve as gateways to the rest of Disneyland and Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, are idealized portrayals of a more genteel, if unrealistic America. They are spotlessly clean, impeccably landscaped, and overflowing with cheery optimism (as well as plenty of keepsake merch). Visiting the Disney parks is “like going back to your hometown,” King says. “It’s the hometown that’s shared by everyone in the country.”
Disneyland in Anaheim, California, circa 1955, the year it opened.
Bing Guan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Decades later, masked restaurant workers greet returning guests on Main Street USA during the reopening of Disneyland in April 2021.
Of course, parks have not always been shared by all Americans. The reality of racism and the denial of civil rights long clashed with parks’ carefully crafted fantasy. As with nearly everything in the country, the amusement industry has a shameful past that included some segregated parks. In her book, Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters, Victoria W. Wolcott writes that owners of parks such as Belle Isle in Detroit, Idora Park in Ohio, Glen Echo Park in Maryland, and others prohibited Black patrons as late as the 1960s. Some of them were sites of protests, riots, and clashes. Federal courts intervened, and, under order, parks eventually complied and opened to people of color.
Among the parks that exemplify the American devotion to imagination and idealism is Epcot, the second theme park at Florida’s Walt Disney World. When it first opened in 1982, Mickey Mouse and the company’s other established characters were banned from the park, and the tone was mostly serious. But the company learned that you gotta give the people what they want. Today, Epcot has loosened up considerably, and Mickey and his pals cavort with characters from “Frozen” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
Walt Disney’s original notion for Epcot was even more high-minded — a White City 2.0. He didn’t want to develop a conventional theme park so much as an actual “experimental prototype community of tomorrow” (hence the acronym). Disney envisioned a thoughtfully planned city in which real people would work, live, and play. It would showcase the latest innovations and ideas in urban planning. Major corporations would have field-tested their technology and cutting-edge concepts while helping to foot the bill for the grand-scale project. Visitors would have been invited to witness the living laboratory in action.
After his death in 1966, Walt Disney’s successors at the company struggled to bring his unrealized dream to life and instead settled on the Epcot that exists today. Modeled after a world’s fair, it offers pavilions devoted to themes such as the land, the sea, and space exploration as well as a variety of nations. Perhaps they couldn’t muster the single-minded vision and passion that Disney had to pull off the wildly ambitious project. Or maybe they realized that bridging the gap between the sanitized, highly controlled, and idealistic contours of a theme park with the more messy and unpredictable parameters of a real live city was a bridge too far.
What the Disney company and other park operators took away from the Columbian Exposition and early iterations of amusement areas is that people enjoy marveling at and experiencing innovation, joining together with others whom they might not otherwise encounter, letting loose and disregarding the social conventions of the day, and engaging in something bigger than themselves and their everyday lives. They also learned that people love the physical sensations of mechanical rides. Visitors couldn’t get enough of the Chicago fair’s Ice Railway, but they especially went bonkers for George Washington Gale Ferris’ wheel.
“America was emerging as a world power, and the Industrial Revolution was at its peak,” explains Jim Futrell, historian for the National Amusement Park Historical Association. “The fair itself celebrated the latest technology.” People clamored to take a ride aboard the 264-foot-tall wheel, an engineering and manufacturing wonder which rivaled the Eiffel Tower. They paid a then-considerable 50-cents fee for a 20-minute revolution.
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Coney Island’s Luna Park at the turn of the last century.
Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images
And Coney Island in more recent times. The park is hugely important to New York’s immigrant populations, who have flocked to it over the years.
Brooklyn’s Coney Island was another seminal place, largely because of its importance to New York City’s immigrant population. Located nine miles from Manhattan (but seemingly a world away) and about 10 degrees cooler, city dwellers were already drawn to the natural beauty of the remote barrier island. They really began coming in droves once horse-drawn trolleys, steam railroads, steamboats, and the subway established service in the latter part of the 1800s and the early 1900s.
The millions of immigrants who poured into New York at the turn of the century visited Coney Island, ran many of its businesses, and invented and manufactured the rides that lined its boardwalk, according to Charles Denson, author of Coney Island: Lost and Found and executive director of the Coney Island History Project. They also provided the craftsmanship that characterized the rides, such as the intricate hand-carved horses featured on many of the area’s carousels. Coney Island was a workshop and proving ground for the nascent amusement industry, notes Denson.
One of its most significant contributions to the genre was the Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway, which opened in 1884. It helped popularize roller coasters, which subsequently exploded across the country. Part of their appeal, naturally, was the speed, the forces passengers experienced, and the novelty of the thrill machines. But there was more to the rides’ mystique.
“It was okay to let your guard down,” says Futrell. “I’m not going to scream in public like I scream on a roller coaster.” The coaster remains king of the midway and shrieks of terror and delight reverberate throughout parks today.
Screaming was not the only inhibition that amusement rides shattered. By choice, or more often by design, New York City immigrants largely kept to themselves in their own tenement neighborhoods and conformed to the morals of the old country. But not at Coney Island. “They came here to assimilate,” says Denson. “They came to mix, to learn about freedom. They came to learn how to be an American.”
The environment at Coney Island was meant to keep visitors off balance, sometimes literally, and mix them together, again, sometimes literally. Unlike most modern models, there were no seat dividers on the early roller coasters. As they took sharp corners, passengers slammed into one another. (If slamming into seatmates is your thing, you can still savor the experience on surviving coasters of the era such as Coney Island’s Cyclone or Jack Rabbit at Kennywood outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.)
On Coney Island’s Steeplechase Ride, couples straddled the horse-like vehicles. “You had to put your arms around your girlfriend to keep her on the ride,” Futrell says. “Within that context, it was viewed as socially acceptable.” Just to enter Steeplechase Park, visitors had to navigate a rotating barrel, often tumbling onto each other.
Besides making it de rigueur to scream, parks still encourage patrons to shed other inhibitions. Most folks would probably not don mouse ears or a Gryffindor House robe in their hometown, for example, but it’s perfectly fashionable at the parks. And while parks have elevated their dining considerably, many visitors still opt for the junkiest of otherwise verboten junk foods.
Today, the amusement area at Coney Island is much smaller than during its heyday, although it has recently been expanding amid a flurry of renewed interest and investment. Exuding a palpable sense of history, the boardwalk playground nonetheless remains relevant and abuzz in all its funky, gritty charm.
Coney Island still resonates because it continues to do what it has always done: bring people together. “The appeal of parks is that people can share emotions and share stories with their friends,” says Gregory Beck, architect and experience designer and the former dean of the School of Entertainment Arts at Savannah College of Art and Design. “Often, we go to parks with the biggest posse we can get.”
We also go to parks to dream about the future; they’re often the first places where we experience innovations at scale. That was the appeal of the original Ferris wheel. When Disney introduced them, the monorail and the PeopleMover offered wide-eyed passengers a chance to step aboard the transit systems of tomorrow. Despite its nostalgic allure, the Coney Island Cyclone still packs a potent punch. Thanks to new launch systems and other technological and design breakthroughs, some coasters today tower over it, blasting riders over 400 feet in the air and well beyond 100 mph.
Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
The monorail jets past Spaceship Earth — the iconic geodesic dome — at Walt Disney’s Epcot Center in Florida.
Regardless of their intensity, coasters and other thrill rides are aspirational. They give riders a sense of conquest and mastery. It’s part of the reassurance that’s embedded in parks. “The attractions are literally rites of passage,” says Eddie Sotto, a former Disney Imagineer (the creatives who conjure the company’s parks and rides) and president of the attraction design firm, Sotto Studios. (Interestingly, one of Disney’s best attractions is called Avatar Flight of Passage.) “Our job isn’t just to entertain you. We want you to come out not just as a survivor, but someone who thrived in the experience.”
Amusement parks proliferated throughout the early 1900s, then contracted after the Great Depression and World War II. With the opening of Disneyland in 1955, Walt Disney introduced a park that redefined out-of-home entertainment.
Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Minerva Mendez and Ahmed El take photos in front of Sleeping Beauty’s Castle on reopening day at Disneyland after a lengthy closure for Covid-19. The appeal of amusement parks is emotional — and intangible.
Whereas amusement parks typically include a mishmash of design influences and focus on the rides and thrills for the sake of the rides and thrills, Disneyland was developed using deliberate, organizing design principles. Its rides, recast as “attractions,” adhered to and advanced the larger narrative of the lands in which they resided. Guests, as Disney refers to its customers, were no longer merely riding a thrilling roller coaster. They were sliding down an icy mountain in Fantasyland’s rendition of Switzerland. The term “theme park” wasn’t coined until a few years after the park opened, but what Disney and his Imagineers created in California was decidedly different.
“There is an embedded, layered design [at Disneyland] where every piece relates to every other piece,” says King.
“There is a subtext of hope,” adds Sotto. “Theme parks are a unifying demonstration of a world where everybody can get along. People like the escape, because it tells them that everything is going to be all right.”
Today, highly complex attractions, such as The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man at Universal Orlando’s Islands of Adventure, blur the line between virtual and reality. Rather than lands with broad themes such as adventure or fantasy, parks have been developing immersive (a word the attractions cognoscenti love to toss around) and transportive environments devoted to single intellectual properties such as the Harry Potter franchise at the Universal parks and the Star Wars mythology at the Disney parks.
It’s not just fictional stories that we long to share at parks, however. It’s also our own stories. “Parents want to share the parks with their children,” Beck says. “This is what was important in my childhood, and I want you to have that same experience.”
Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
A look at Knott’s Berry Farm in Orange County, California, reveals a thicket of winding coasters and rides. The multi-sensory thrills may be our nation’s very definition of leisure.
Parks have long had an egalitarian appeal, though marred by the history of segregation. People from all backgrounds and political camps can come together in a common pursuit of fun. Because of their enormous popularity, however, some parks have been raising prices considerably. Costs may be shutting some people out.
This is especially true at theme park resorts such as Disney World and Universal Orlando. Most of its visitors are from outside the area and must factor in transportation, hotel, dining, and other costs in addition to the admission prices. On the low end, a five-day visit to Disney World, including airfare, lodging, and tickets, could cost about $3,500 for a family of four. And that’s before factoring in food, ground transportation, and souvenirs. Known as destination parks, the resorts provide even more of an escape from the everyday. Visitors literally leave their homes and live at on-property hotels.
In addition to money, parks often require significant investments of time and energy. The more they cost, the more people feel compelled to organize their visits and make sure they get the most value for their dollar. “Planning a [Disney World] trip is like planning an amphibious invasion,” King says, laughing. “You wonder, where’s the leisure here?”
The nonstop action and the multi-sensory assault at parks may be our nation’s very definition of leisure. It’s distinctly American to be on the go, busy, and productive — even during our free time.
There may be a middle ground between the destination parks and day trips to regional parks. Falcon’s Creative Group, an Orlando-based attraction design firm, recently launched a division that has begun building boutique theme parks at locations around the world. According to David Schaefer, chief development officer of Falcon’s Beyond Global, the micro-parks would include high wow-factor attractions tied to intellectual properties. They would feature “rich story, complex types of experiences that you’d expect at the large destination theme parks, but at a smaller scale,” he explains. By requiring less time to visit, the parks could be more accessible. They would probably charge less to visit than the major parks as well and may be easier to get to depending on their locations.
“We think the theme park as a leisure activity is here to stay forever,” says Schaefer. “It’s so ingrained.”
That’s a good thing in a country where people are anxious and divided. We need places where we can encounter one another, share experiences, and enjoy stories together. We need the reassurance, the connection to the past, and the hope for the future that parks provide.
Arthur Levine is a theme park journalist whose work has appeared in publications including USA Today, the Boston Globe, and Thrillist.
From The Hindu: Sports
Indian para athletes primed for unprecedented medal haul in Tokyo Paralympics - India is competing in nine sports in the Paralympics, which is being held under strict safety and health protocols
Eng. vs Ind. Test series | Mark Wood out of third Test with jarred shoulder - Wood had hurt his shoulder while fielding during the second Test at Lord’s with India winning the game by 151 runs
Tokyo Games is going to be our best outing at Paralympics, says Deepa Malik - India will field its biggest contingent with 54 athletes set to compete in nine sports
Shaili is more or less like me, will be happy to see her break my record, says Anju Bobby George - Shaili Singh is nonetheless being touted as the next being thing in Indian athletics
Sania Mirza-Christina Mchale enters quarterfinals at Cleveland - Sania Mirza and Christina Mchale dominated the match thoroughly
From The Hindu: National News
Delay in reaching Jayalalithaa led to 2015 Chennai floods, charges TN Finance Minister - Former CM Palaniswami, however, said when water bodies were full during the rainy season, local officials could decide on the release of water as there was no need to get permission from anyone
Kalyan Singh cremated, top leaders attend funeral - The two-time CM died at a Lucknow hospital on August 21 after spending weeks in the ICU
Experts warn of imminent third wave of COVID-19 in Sept-Oct - The NIDM report quoted the prediction of experts from IIT Kanpur which suggested three likely scenarios for the third wave.
Duraimurugan recalls his close association with WR Department - Walking down the memory lane, senior DMK legislator Duraimurugan recalled his long involvement and vast experience with the Water Resources Departmen
AAP alleges corruption in organisation of 2019 Kumbh - Citing a CAG report, the Aam Aadmi Party accused the U.P. government of ‘huge irregularities’ in the expenditure of ₹2,700-crore fund allocated for organising the Kumbh.
From BBC: Europe
Nord Stream 2: Russia must not use gas pipeline as weapon, says Merkel - The German chancellor says Moscow could face sanctions if it uses Nord Stream 2 against Ukraine.
French match abandoned after player hit by bottle - Nice versus Marseille is abandoned after Dimitri Payet throws a bottle back into the crowd and fans storm the pitch.
Greece erects fence at Turkey border amid warnings of Afghan migrant surge - A 40km (25-mile) barrier is placed at the land border amid warnings of a surge of Afghan migrants.
Afghanistan: Afghan woman gives birth to baby girl on US evacuation plane - The woman went into labour en route to Ramstein Air Base in Germany and gave birth on the plane.
Act now to end lorry driver crisis, UK government told - Retailers and lorry firms join forces in call for new work visas, training and better Covid testing.
From Ars Technica
Intrepid brewer risks scalding to recreate recipe for long-lost medieval mead - The recipe for bochet was lost for centuries, until it was rediscovered in 2009. - link
Tiong Bahru Social Club review: Won’t you be my algorithmic neighbor? - In this Fantasia Fest film, happiness algorithms dictate terms of community living. - link
Looking for a new job in tech? It may be your lucky day - Employers are turning on the charm to attract engineers and developers to their firms. - link
Hydrogen lobbyist quits, slams oil companies’ “false claims” about blue hydrogen - Recent studies have questioned blue hydrogen’s low-carbon bona fides. - link
On Roblox, kids learn it’s hard to earn money making games - New report claims that the massive video game platform can exploit young developers. - link
From Jokes Subreddit
What’s the difference between Iron Man and Aluminum Man? -
Iron Man stops the bad guys. Aluminum Man just foils their plans.
A policeman was interrogating 3 guys who were training to become detectives. To test their skills in recognizing a suspect, he shows the first guys a picture for 5 seconds and then hides it. “This is your suspect, how would you recognize him?” -
The first guy answers, “That’s easy, we’ll catch him fast because he only has one eye!”
The policeman says, “Well…uh…that’s because the picture I showed is his side profile.”
Slightly flustered by this ridiculous response, he flashes the picture for 5 seconds at the second guy and asks him, “This is your suspect, how would you recognize him?”
The second guy smiles, flips his hair and says, “Ha! He’d be too easy to catch because he only has one ear!”
The policeman angrily responds, “What’s the matter with you two?!!? Of course only one eye and one ear are showing because it’s a picture of his side profile! Is that the best answer you can come up with?”
Extremely frustrated at this point, he shows the picture to the third guy and in a very testy voice asks, "This is your suspect, how would you recognize him?
He quickly adds, “Think hard before giving me a stupid answer.”
The third guy looks at the picture intently for a moment and says, “The suspect wears contact lenses.”
The policeman is surprised and speechless because he really doesn’t know himself if the suspect wears contacts or not.
“Well, that’s an interesting answer. Wait here for a few minutes while I check his file and I’ll get back to you on that.”
He leaves the room and goes to his office, checks the suspect’s file on his computer and comes back with a beaming smile on his face.
“Wow! I can’t believe it. It’s TRUE! The suspect does, in fact, wear contact lenses. Good work! How were you able to make such an astute observation?”
“That’s easy…” the third guy replied. “He can’t wear regular glasses because he only has one eye and one ear.”
An elderly couple was having dinner one evening when the husband reached across the table, took his wife’s hand in his and said, “Martha, soon we will be married 50 years, and there’s something I have to know. In all of these 50 years, have you ever been unfaithful to me?”
Martha replied, "Well Henry, I have to be honest with you. Yes, I’ve been unfaithful to you three times during these 50 years, but always for a good reason.
Henry was obviously hurt by his wife’s confession, but said, “I never suspected. Can you tell me what you mean by ‘good reasons?’”
Martha said, "The first time was shortly after we were married, and we were about to lose our little house because we couldn’t pay the mortgage.
Do you remember that one evening I went to see the banker and the next day he notified you that the loan would be extended?"
Henry recalled the visit to the banker and said, “I can forgive you for that. You saved our home, but what about the second time?”
Martha asked, “And do you remember when you were so sick, but we didn’t have the money to pay for the heart surgery you needed? Well, I went to see your doctor one night and, if you recall, he did the surgery at no charge.”
“I recall that,” said Henry. “And you did it to save my life, so of course I can forgive you for that. Now tell me about the third time.”
“Alright,” Martha said. “So do you remember when you ran for president of your golf club, and you needed 73 more votes?”
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