Tag: Coney Island

Patent PeopleMovers

On the other side of the planet they like to build things bigger, taller, and longer. In Saudi Arabia you’ll find the world’s largest airport, covering an area of 300 square miles. In the UAE you’ll find the world’s highest skyscraper, at a dizzying height of 163 floors. And who isn’t familiar with China’s Great Wall – the world’s longest at over 13,000 miles. Now China can make another lengthy claim, with the Goddess Escalator in the city of Wushan.  The Goddess might as well be the stairway to heaven.

China’s “Goddess”

The mundane escalator you remember from your local department store whisked you from one floor to the next in about twenty seconds.  China’s Goddess will take you on an escalator ride for twenty minutes.  In that time you ascend 800 feet, which doesn’t elevate you just one floor but more like eighty.  Wushan is built on the side of a mountain, and the Goddess snakes from the lower regions to the upper housing district, saving the residents what used to be a strenuous one-hour hike.

She’s longer than she looks!

Technically the Goddess is not a single escalator.  She’s twenty-one of them one after another – and 8 elevators – resulting in a continuous network that qualifies her to be the world’s longest.  I can’t blame the Chinese for calling her a goddess.  Heck, I’d travel all the way to Wushan just to experience her “uplifting” twenty minutes.

There are times I think I should’ve been an engineer instead of an architect.  Like when I’m riding an escalator.  Something about the mechanics, organization, and precision really appeals to me.  There’s wonder in still not understanding how it all works.  And that moment you step on or step off is a bit of a thrill as you surrender your mobility to a machine.  It’s the same feeling you get when you’re trying to catch the chair lift at a ski resort.

Old-school people-mover in Macy’s

The escalator was patented in 1889 (a lot earlier than you would’ve guessed, right?), with the first working version installed at Coney Island ten years later.  Original escalators were made of wood, and early models required a hand-crank mechanism before motors became commonplace.  Today’s versions – where the stairs flatten and slip seamlessly under the surface only to reappear again at the bottom – came along much later.  You can still ride one of world’s oldest escalators (a 1920s model) at Macy’s in New York City.

New-school escalator in San Diego

I have fond and not-so-fond memories of escalators.  At the rental car center at San Diego’s Lindbergh Field, a single escalator takes you from ground level to the Avis cars three stories higher.  It’s kind of a thrill-ride sensation ascending and elevating through that many floors.  You actually have time to enjoy the view.

On the other hand I’ll never forget the narrow escalators on the outer edge of the football stadium at the University of Texas in Austin.  You ride several of them to ascend to the nosebleed seats, turning ninety degrees from one escalator to catch the next.  Those in-between landings are small, so small so that any pause of the patrons means no space for those still moving up the escalator.  It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to being crushed by a surge of humanity.

Moving walkways go “step in step” with escalators and elevators; devices that make short journeys easier on the feet.  In airports moving walkways make sense because your destination is more horizontal than vertical.  They may be convenient, but only if those who choose to just “go for the ride” step aside for those who are late for the plane.  Hats off to the frustrated person who came up with signage like “STAND to the right, WALK to the left”.  Also, they should hold a contest to give moving walkways a more creative name.  Escalators sound cool.  Moving walkways not so much.

Disneyland’s (long ago) “PeopleMover”

Some day I hope I see Wushan, China.  Okay, let’s get real – I could care less about Wushan.  I just want to ride the Goddess.  Twenty minutes up and twenty minutes down.  Over and over and over.  I’m too old for the amusement parks but I’ll never turn down another ride on an escalator.

Some content sourced from the Futurism.com article, “China Built the World’s Largest Outdoor Escalator…”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Tale of the Little-Dog

When my son and his wife visited with their daughters last week, the consensus for dinner was hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill.  These choices were noteworthy in that I honestly can’t remember the last time I ate a hot dog.  Sweet Italian sausage?  A couple of times a month cut up into a stir-fry of vegetables.  Beer brats?  Also delicious, hot off the grill with a little mustard.  But a hot dog is child’s play by comparison.  Or should I say, a “dachshund sausage”?

It’s true.  The Germans, who by all accounts can take credit for the invention of the hot dog (five hundred years ago!) nicknamed their frankfurters “dachshunds” – or “little-dog” sausages because, well, they looked exactly like the dog breed.  The only history Americans claim is the re-nickname “hot dog”.  Even the hot dog bun – which really took hold at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 – points back to the Germans, who always ate their sausages with bread.

Are hot dogs a staple in your diet, or like me are they simply a distant memory?  If they weren’t hot off the grill in the backyard or at a summer picnic, perhaps you had one at a baseball game (but not so much football or basketball, go figure).  You’ve probably also seen hot dogs on the midway at carnivals and county fairs.  Wherever you get your franks today, they’re just not as likely to come from established restaurants.

In the 1970s, America seemed to have hot dog stands on every corner.  The most popular of these was the distinctive drive-thru Der Wienerschnitzel’s, but you also had – at least from my California-based memory – Pup ‘N’ Taco, Ben Franks, Tail o’ the Pup, and the walk-up Hot Dog on-a-Stick booths you’d find at amusement parks.  Today’s retail hot dog is at a Sonic Drive-In or the food court at Costco.  If you live anywhere near New York’s Coney Island, you can also include “Nathan’s Famous”, or at least the annual hot dog eating contest of the same name.

A hot dog may be “a cooked sausage eaten in a long, soft piece of bread”, but its secondary meanings are less definitive.  “Hot Dog!” is something you used to say when you were VERY happy about something else (“used to”, meaning sixty or seventy years ago).  A “hot dog” is also a person “who makes fast, skillful movements in skiing, snowboarding, or surfing to make people notice them”.  That last definition still stands.

Speaking of “used to say”, we also used to sing about hot dogs, didn’t we?  Oscar Mayer’s jingle convinced us we should BE hot dogs (so everyone would be in love with us).  But the better song came from Armour, which asked us what kind of kids eat Armour hot dogs?  Per the lyrics, “…fat kids, skinny kids, kids that climb on rocks… tough kids, sissy kids, even kids with chicken pox…”  Today’s version of the Armour jingle would probably be censored just for using the word “kids”.

“I wish I had a million dollars. HOT DOG!” (Courtesy of Paramount Pictures and “It’s A Wonderful Life”)

Hot dogs will always be a childhood memory more than a dietary preference in my book.  My mother, raising five hungry boys, developed several dinner recipes when time and ingredients were in short supply.  These included canned baked beans and weenies (two ingredients = dinner!), and a truly odd creation from the Betty Crocker cookbook made up of hot dogs, mashed potatoes, and cheese (three ingredients!).  Whether it tasted good or not – I honestly can’t remember – dogs, mash, and cheese conveniently covered the protein, carb, and fat categories, all in one broiler-blasted casserole.

The Oscar Mayer “Wienermobile”

My most vivid childhood hot dog memories are not the dinners mentioned above.  Instead, I can’t forget snacking on raw hot dogs from the refrigerator (which sounds awful now, but hey, I was a kid).  My mother was faithful to the Oscar Mayer brand so I ate a lot of their hot dogs raw.   Speaking of Oscar Mayer, here’s the better memory.  They built a motorized advertisement which to this day may be the coolest vehicle on wheels.  The “Wienermobile” cruised the streets of Los Angeles, stopping every now and then in a parking lot so you could view it up close.  The driver handed out tiny plastic replicas of the vehicle, appropriately labeled “Weenie Whistles”.

(Courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures and “The Santa Clause”)

Let me conclude with a solved hot dog mystery.  Your grocery store sells most brands in packages of ten.  They also sell hot dog buns but in packages of eight.  Why?  Because hot dogs weigh about 1.6 ounces, which makes a package of ten a convenient sale of exactly one pound of meat.  On the other hand, hot dog buns are baked in trays of four, which work best with conveyor belts and processing.  An odd number of buns – trays of five – is a model of inefficiency.  So until one or the other manufacturer changes their standard, you’ll always have leftovers for snacks.  Or better yet, for your dog.

The hot dogs I served my granddaughters last week were comically advertised as healthy: no fillers, no preservatives, and so on.  They weren’t very good.  Maybe the worst part of a hot dog is what makes it taste so good?  Or maybe hot dogs have simply lost their appeal to me?  No, wait, that can’t be true.  Anything my granddaughters ask me to eat has instant appeal.

Guess I haven’t eaten my last little-dog sausage just yet.

Some content sourced from the National Hot Dog and Sausage Council (NHDSC) website, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.