Snowboarding contributes significantly to ski resort revenues. Shown here: a snowboarder in a freestyle move. Photo by Dmitri Markine, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Image courtesy of Dmitri Markine. http://www.dmitrimarkine.com
VAIL, Colo. (AP) – Trent Bush has spent almost all his life around snowboards. Now he’s a prime mover in putting the sport’s history on display in Vail.
Bush and other volunteers are in the process of setting up an expanded display of snowboarding heritage at the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Museum. The display — scheduled to open Dec. 8 – is in the area formerly dedicated to the museum’s hall of fame, which has been moved to another section of the space.
“This will be the most significant snowboard gallery in the world, and that’s appropriate. This is really a U.S. invention,” museum director Susie Tjossem said.
The exhibit will include a lot of boards, of course. But it also will include plenty of other displays and information explaining the evolution of the sport.
One of those items is a 1939 prototype of an early snowboard, along with a rejection letter from the Wilson sporting-goods company explaining why the company didn’t think the public would go for riding on one board.
There also are early boards from Burton, Sims and other pioneering companies, as well as a few pieces that show how early boards were made and painted.
Bush has collected many of the things going into the exhibit. A Boulder native now in his early 40s, Bush was first drawn to boarding in the early 1980s. Much of that riding came on local hills, not ski areas – “mostly as an alternative to sledding,” he said.
Bush’s history with snowboards means he’s seen the sport go from a faddish niche to a sort of outlaw movement to the mainstream. Bush also has spent his entire professional life in the business, from working at ski shops as a young man to running a couple of companies, Technine and Nomis.
Bush said he’s been waiting since about the late 1990s for someone to do something to document how snowboarding has come to its present status. No one ever did, so Bush decided he’d be the one to lead the charge.
“There’s so much snowboarding has gone through to be legitimate,” Bush said.
And while the museum had snowboarding displays, there was little in the way of historical context for what people saw.
Getting the space in the museum took some time, but Bush said it’s the logical place for the new displays.
“To do a snowboard-only museum would have been difficult,” Bush said. “This is a functioning museum, so this is a good place for it.”
And Tjossem said she’s thrilled to have the new exhibit, even in a small space. But while Bush and other volunteers are putting together the snowboarding exhibit, Tjossem said the museum itself needs to make a change.
“We don’t have ‘snowboard’ on our sign on the outside,” Tjossem said. “We’ve got to change that.”
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Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Snowboarding contributes significantly to ski resort revenues. Shown here: a snowboarder in a freestyle move. Photo by Dmitri Markine, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. http://www.dmitrimarkine.com
This CGC-certified 9.0 copy of ‘Action Comics’ #1, the highest-graded specimen featuring the first appearance of Superman, was sold by ComicConnect.com for $2,161,000, the top price ever paid for a comic book. Image courtesy of ComicConnect.com.
NEW YORK (ACNI) – In a story worthy of a comic book adventure itself, a highly graded copy of Action Comics #1 has set a world record price for a comic book, selling yesterday for more than $2.1 million. The 1938 comic book, stolen a decade ago from a high-profile collector and thought lost forever, was rediscovered earlier this year in an abandoned storage unit.
Certified by independent third-party grading firm Certified Guaranty (CGC) as a 9.0 (out of 10) – the highest-graded, publicly certified copy of Action Comics #1 – the book featuring the first appearance of Superman was auctioned by ComicConnect.com for $2,161,000. It was the culmination of a journey that amazed many.
The bidding for the issue closed at 7:25 p.m. EST on Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011, after 50 bids. The keenly watched offering had cleared the million-dollar mark earlier, joining only four other comic books that have achieved such heights.
ComicConnect sold the first of them, a CGC-certified 8.0 copy of Action Comics #1, February 22, 2010, for $1 million. Three days later, Dallas-based Heritage Auctions sold a CGC-certified 8.0 copy of Detective Comics #27 – the May 1939 publication heralding the first appearance of Batman – for $1,075,500. ComicConnect reclaimed the top spot on March 30, 2010 with the sale of a CGC-certified 8.5 copy of Action Comics #1 for $1.5 million.
Additionally, the company sold a CGC-certified 9.6 copy of Amazing Fantasy #15, the August 1962 first appearance of Spider-Man, for $1.1 million in March 2011. ComicConnect does not charge a buyer’s premium.
In the days leading up to the record-setting auction session, the mainstream media latched onto the story of this particular copy. It was reported stolen from the home of a prominent West Coast collector in January 2000. While ComicConnect did not name the former owner in promoting their auction, it was widely noted by sources ranging from comic industry websites to The Hollywood Reporter and MTV to have been actor Nicholas Cage. Known as an enthusiastic collector, Cage even took his stage surname from Marvel Comics’ Luke Cage, Power Man and went on to christen his son Kal-El, after Superman’s Kryptonian name.
Perhaps ironically, Cage’s Action Comics #1 had been purchased from Metropolis Collectibles, the sister firm of ComicConnect.com. Company representatives including Chief Executive Officer Stephen Fishler and Chief Operating Officer Vincent Zurzolo immediately recognized the copy when it was rediscovered in April 2011 after an as-yet-unidentified man purchased the contents of an abandoned storage locker in southern California.
Given the high market profile of the copy even before the days of seven-figure comic books, the issue would not have been an easy sale for the individual who stole it. It was readily identifiable to those who were familiar with it, causing some to believe it had been discarded, or worse, during the more than a decade it was missing.
Noted as holding the highest grade on the CGC Census, the copy is believed to be the second-best copy in existence. The top spot, according to some, would belong The Edgar Church Collection (also known as The Mile High Collection) pedigree copy, which has been estimated in the 9.4 range by experts in the hobby. However, it has not been publically graded, meaning that ComicConnect and the undisclosed buyer can enjoy their record-setting moment for now.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think as a kid that my business would be selling vintage comic books, let alone the most expensive comic book in the world. After selling the Action #1 8.0 for a million, the Action #1 8.5 for $1.5 million, I couldn’t figure out how we could top it,” Zurzolo told Auction Central News. “Then to recover the copy of Action #1 stolen from one of our very best customers 11 years ago, we knew there was a possibility. $2,161,000. We made history today.”
Given both the supply and demand for the issue, the price might not be as astronomical as it seems.
“It may seem shocking to those who haven’t been following the comic book market in recent years, but after a protracted period of six-figure prices, this progression is very logical,” said Robert M. Overstreet, author and publisher of The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, now in its 41st edition. “Following the sale in 2010 of a CGC-certified 8.0 specimen for $1 million, and that of an 8.5 copy for $1.5 million, the continued demand across all grades practically guaranteed that the highest-graded copy certified to date would attract spirited bidding.”
“Every existing copy of Action Comics #1 is a pop-culture treasure. There were reportedly 200,000 copies originally printed in 1938, of which roughly 70,000 were unsold and subsequently destroyed. 130,000 copies were sold when the U.S. population was approximately 130 million. Now in a nation of 305 million there are by most accounts only 100 copies extant of this issue, the origin of one of the two most recognized characters in the world (the other being Mickey Mouse). It’s great to see the scarcity and importance of this comic recognized in such a public way,” said Melissa Bowersox, Executive Vice-President of Geppi’s Entertainment Museum in Baltimore.
“The natural attrition of paper products, accelerated by World War II-era paper drives and the general low esteem in which comics were held for many years, contributed to the scarcity of this issue today. In the case of some Golden Age comics, there are many copies available, and the only shortage is for high-grade copies. In recent times with Action Comics #1, though, the market has witnessed demand even for poor condition examples or restored copies, which under most circumstances have long been taboo with most collectors,” Bowersox said.
The ComicConnect.com auction continues through Sunday, Dec. 4, including a Friday session featuring items from the collection of Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel.
Copyright 2011 Auction Central News International. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE
This CGC-certified 9.0 copy of ‘Action Comics’ #1, the highest-graded specimen featuring the first appearance of Superman, was sold by ComicConnect.com for $2,161,000, the top price ever paid for a comic book. Image courtesy of ComicConnect.com.The back cover of ‘Action Comics’ #1, originally published in June 1938, features the ubiquitous Johnson Smith & Co. ads that would populate comic books for generations. Even on the back cover, the superior condition of this 9.0 copy is obvious. Image courtesy of ComicConnect.com.
Amy Winehouse performing at the Eurockeennes of 2007. Image courtesy of Bojars, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 France license.
LONDON (AFP) – A dress worn by the late singer Amy Winehouse on the cover of her album Back to Black sold for £43,200 ($67,500, 50,500 euros) at auction in London on Tuesday.
The proceeds from the printed chiffon dress will go to the Amy Winehouse Foundation, a charitable trust set up by her family which supports activities for vulnerable young people.
Winehouse, 27, died at her home in July and an inquest heard she was five times the legal drink-drive limit.
After the singer’s death, Thailand-based designer Disaya decided to auction the dress, which was returned after the album cover was shot in 2006.
At least 3.2 million copies of Back to Black, which features the hit single Rehab, have been sold.
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ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
Amy Winehouse performing at the Eurockeennes of 2007. Image courtesy of Bojars, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 France license.
An autographed Roy Rogers and Trigger poster. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Heritage Auctions.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) – A rural cable network is celebrating the career of movie cowboy Roy Rogers by airing the performer’s old movies and planning a float in the Tournament of Roses parade.
The celebration organized by RFD-TV began earlier this month on the 100th anniversary of Rogers’ birthday. The network is trying to introduce younger viewers to Rogers.
Last year, RFD-TV bought Rogers’ horse Trigger and dog Bullet at auction. The stuffed and mounted animals will be featured on the float that will conclude the Tournament of Roses parade on Jan. 2. The parade will air on RFD-TV.
Between now and the parade, the Omaha-based network plans to air episodes of the Roy Rogers Show and some of Rogers’ movies weekly.
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Online:
http://www.rfdtv.com
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-11-28-11 1033GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
An autographed Roy Rogers and Trigger poster. Image courtesy of LiveAuctioneers.com Archive and Heritage Auctions.
The Atlantic City Boardwalk, looking south. In the background is historic Boardwalk Hall, where The Beatles held one of their largest concerts on their first U.S. tour. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) – A musical history museum with plenty of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia is a key part of Hard Rock International’s plans for a small new casino in Atlantic City.
Company CEO James Allen said Hard Rock owns the world’s largest collection of rock memorabilia. The museum planned as part of the company’s casino at the south end of the Boardwalk should give people another reason to visit the nation’s second-largest gambling resort, Allen told the New Jersey Casino Control Commission on Wednesday.
“When you look at the history of Atlantic City and its contribution to music, we felt this could be another reason for people to come to Atlantic City,” he said.
Among items that are likely to be displayed there are memorabilia from when the Beatles and The Rolling Stones separately played Atlantic City, Allen said.
Hard Rock, which is owned by Florida’s Seminole Indian tribe, is the first company to apply to build a smaller casino-hotel under a new law permitting them in New Jersey. The hotel would start at 208 rooms and eventually expand to 850.
The first phase of the project will cost about $465 million. Allen said he could not currently estimate a cost for the second phase, which would conclude with the 850 rooms.
Hard Rock plans to make more use of the beach than any casino ever has in Atlantic City: A pool, a café for afternoon barbeques and an outdoor entertainment area that could host concerts are part of the proposal.
The commission accepted Hard Rock into its pilot program for so-called boutique casinos designed to jump-start new construction in the struggling resort, where casino revenues have been tumbling for five straight years. Allen said Hard Rock would not have been interested in coming to Atlantic City without the ability to start slowly and then expand over several years.
“The main reason this was attractive to us is it allows us to not write a billion-dollar check, which is basically impossible to finance anymore,” Allen said.
That was the entire point of the boutique casinos bill, which was pushed by state Sen. James Whelan, the former Democratic mayor of Atlantic City. He said potential developers are interested in building in Atlantic City but feel the state has set the entry bar too high.
Previously, New Jersey law required at least 500 rooms. The most successful of the city’s 11 casinos have 2,000 rooms or more.
The law authorized two such boutique casinos, but only Hard Rock has applied thus far. The casino commission extended the deadline for applicants for the second license to April 30, 2012.
Allen was asked why Hard Rock was willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a new facility when it could have bought one of Atlantic City’s numerous distressed casinos for less than a tenth of what it will spend on just the first phase of its project.
“There were five or six, maybe more, properties here that came to us saying, ‘Will you take us over, manage it, buy it?’” Allen said. “We said no. We think new construction is going to change the perception of Atlantic City. New is better.”
The company expects to bring customers a heavy dose of celebrities, from the 3,000-seat entertainment center it would build to partnerships with charity-minded performers such as Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen and Yoko Ono, among others. At the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego, singer Fergie, of the Black Eyed Peas, helped design the employee uniforms, Allen said. Hard Rock typically makes a donation to the performer’s favorite philanthropic endeavor in return for memorabilia, he added.
The first phase of the project is expected to create 2,000 construction jobs and about 1,500 permanent jobs.
Allen said he hopes to break ground by July 15—about two months after the new Revel mega-resort is due to open at the opposite end of the Boardwalk—and finish the first phase of the project by mid-2014. The second phase would be started within two years of completion of the first phase.
Hard Rock is partnering with Och-Ziff Real Estate to do the casino project through a corporation called Gateway LLC.
Atlantic City’s existing casinos are split on the concept of allowing smaller casinos into the market. Some say the new casinos will bring more people to Atlantic City. But others say it is unfair to those companies that have invested billions of dollars to allow newcomers to enter the market more cheaply.
Yet that is precisely what the bill aimed to do. To compensate for the lower price newcomers like Hard Rock will have to pay, the new casinos will be taxed at a higher rate than the existing casinos.
Hard Rock now has 120 days to pay to the state treasury $1 million, which would be forfeited if the project is not completed by established deadlines. That payment will be used to make infrastructure improvements in the neighborhood surrounding the project.
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Wayne Parry can be reached at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
AP-WF-11-17-11 0024GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The Atlantic City Boardwalk, looking south. In the background is historic Boardwalk Hall, where The Beatles held one of their largest concerts on their first U.S. tour. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
PARIS – An exhibition retracing the short but eventful history of videogames is set to open in Paris — telling the story from monochrome Space Invaders to the latest 3D immersive extravaganzas.
Click below to view a voiced, copyrighted AFPTV video report:
George Harrison performing at Wembley Arena in 1987. Image by Steve Mathieson. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) – A signed guitar that the late Beatles member George Harrison donated to the Borders book chain has been sold following the company’s liquidation.
Harrison made the gift of the Fender Stratocaster about a decade ago in gratitude for Borders Group Inc.’s support of one of his reissued records, former employees told AnnArbor.com for a story published Tuesday. Harrison died in 2001.
The guitar was on display at Borders’ Ann Arbor headquarters until the company’s bankruptcy and closing.
The proceeds of the sale are being pooled and will go to Borders’ creditors.
Jim Shaw of the liquidating company Gordon Brothers Group LLC confirmed Wednesday that the guitar was sold. He declined to give the sale price.
The guitar was listed on eBay Oct. 24 with a starting bid of $500, AnnArbor.com said.
“This guitar was a gift to Borders Books from George Harrison and comes with a custom, lighted 2-door lockable cabinet,” the now-removed listing said. “This guitar was displayed in the Borders corporate office lobby for many years, but due to the bankruptcy, it is now offered up for auction.”
The guitar was made in Ensenada, Mexico in 2000-2001.
Susan Aikens, who worked for Borders for 16 years, said she “walked past it every day as I went to work.”
“George Harrison never wanted it to be sold,” said Aikens, whose last job with Borders was as a senior buyer of children’s books. “It was given to us as a gift as an appreciation. It’s just unfortunate because of way the bankruptcy and the liquidation has gone. Everything belongs to the liquidation now.”
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Information from: AnnArbor.com, http://www.annarbor.com
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Cardinals’ infielder David Freese, MVP of the World Series. Image by Keith Allison. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
ST. LOUIS (AP) – As hordes of other St. Louis Cardinals fans turned out Sunday to swaddle themselves in their team’s improbable World Series title, Dave Huyette was counting his blessings rather than the riches he might have received had greed overtaken sportsmanship.
Just three days earlier, Huyette briefly held history in his hands from a World Series game considered one for the ages, winning the dash to a walkoff, 11th-inning home run ball David Freese plunked onto a grassy knoll behind Busch Stadium’s center-field fence, propelling the Cardinals into the decisive Game 7 they won the next night.
The Illinois radiologist with a 5-year-old son could have cashed in, given that iconic home run balls have fetched tens – at times hundreds – of thousands of dollars on the memorabilia market. But Huyette would have none of that, knowing that giving the ball to Freese “was the honorable thing to do.” So he did.
On Sunday, there were no regrets.
“I’m not financially needy, and I knew I didn’t want any money,” Huyette, 39, told The Associated Press by telephone from his home in Maryville, Ill., figuring hawking the ball stood to make him “an enemy in my town.”
Freese – named the MVP of the World Series and the NL championship series before it – rewarded Huyette after Thursday night’s game with an autographed bat, a baseball signed by the Cardinals and a picture with him. An auto-parts company threw in tickets for Huyette to the series’ finale.
Valuable spoils indeed, all of them partly because Huyette – an Iowa native attending his first-ever World Series game – had positioned himself for that rare moment when luck and history collide, even if initially he wasn’t even planning to be there.
Huyette had shelled out nearly $1,100 for tickets to Game 6, which he planned to attend with Chicago Cubs-loving pal Jeremy Reiland only to see it postponed for a day to Thursday because rain loomed in St. Louis. Huyette mulled selling the tickets, voicing to Reiland indifference about going. Reiland talked him out of it.
From their right-centerfield seats on Thursday night, Huyette and Reiland – two in a record crowd of 47,325 – had an inkling a home run ball would come their way and for each of the last four innings they waited for it. They knew chasing down a home run ball could get them ejected, but they waved that off.
“At least half-jokingly, I was putting my foot up over the rope as if I was going to be springing onto the grass,” recalled Huyette, who even texted a half dozen people to watch for them on television going after a home run ball.
“I just kinda had a feeling,” he said. “I’m not sure why.”
With two outs and down to his last strike as the Cardinals trailed by two in the bottom of the ninth, Freese bounced a game-tying triple off the right-field wall. With the score again knotted at 9 in the bottom of the 11th, as Reiland was returning from a restroom run, Freese turned heroic.
“I just heard the crack of a bat,” then the wild cheering as the trajectory of the ball headed his way. Huyette was on the grass before the ball hopped to a stop there, then quickly gobbled up the souvenir.
Huyette, fearing others would try to wrestle the keepsake away from him, stuffed it down his pants – “outside the underwear,” he joked.
“I worried that if I held the ball up, someone would take it or rip my arm off,” he said. “Jeremy is a lot more of a (baseball history) aficionado than me. He said, ‘You have to get the ball back (to Freese). You’ll be on TV – that’s enough.’”
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This information may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Matt Senreich, co-creator of Robot Chicken, and Auction Central News reporter Bridget Brosnan. Photo copyright Auction Central News International.
NEW YORK (ACNI) – Auction Central News caught up with Matt Senreich, co-creator of the animated TV series Robot Chicken, during New York Comic Con. Reporter Bridget Brosnan discussed a variety of topics with Senreich, from celebrity guests who’ve appeared on the show to the special 100th episode that’s currently in the works. Here’s their conversation:
BB: What can we expect to see in the second half of Season 5?
MS: We actually have a lot of stuff with DC as weird as that sounds. We have a lot of Superman sketches for some reason. I guess we were inspired in some capacity coming off of our Robot Chicken Star Wars special that Geoff Johns has been working on so that helps spice us up in the DC world. We have a great musical number with, as weird as it sounds, Back to the Future with Christopher Lloyd. So that’ll be a nice one and we have our 100th episode that’ll debut Jan. 15th so that’ll be a special event that we put on.
BB: How long does it generally take to make an episode?
I always use Star Wars as kind of the barometer. It takes 14 weeks from starting to writing an episode to actually finishing and completing it. But ultimately were doing 20 completed episodes at any given time so it’s all overlapping at once. So it’s like 11 months for 20 episodes, as weird as that sounds. So it’s just a fury of information and ADD as it’s happening. Because you start and you’re like, “Oh I’m just writing one episode,” and then when you get to the place where you’re writing episodes and building puppets and toys and sets all at the same time and then shooting it on top of that. It’s just that you don’t know what’s happening at that point. You just keep looking at the clock thinking, “How am I working 20-hour days?”
BB: Who has been your favorite person to guest on the show? Have you gotten to meet anyone you were a fan of?
We’ve had a lot of guests on the show and it keeps getting like more and more exciting, the types of people that we get. I’m aways a fan favorite of the people that we always bring back. For me, someone like Breckin Meyer – whenever he’s in the booth just makes me laugh. So anytime he’s around it’s a wonderful experience. But then there’s the guest stars you get. One of my favorites still to this day was Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise, doing Cannonball Run in the first season. They were one of the first guest stars that we got and we got them as a pair. The Cannonball Run for me was one of the greatest movies growing up I’ve ever seen. And watching their dynamic – it’s just like in the movies. There’s nothing fake about it. They’re just genuine people, just like that and listening to their stories. … It was 9 a.m. when they came in and they sat there the whole day telling stories because we kept doing voiceover for other people. And all I wanted to do was just keep turning around listening to them as they were telling these stories to everybody else in the room. But this season we had Megan Fox in and Bryan Cranston and Jon Hamm. It just makes me smile. John Hamm you don’t expect from watching Mad Men.
BB: You have had a ton of celebrities on the show. Has any celebrity ever approached you to do the show that you had to turn down?
That we had to turn down? None that we’ve turned down. I would say maybe people we’ve said we’ll get to get you in because we haven’t stopped yet. We just had one of the Venture Brothers creators on. We haven’t got Doc Hammer on yet and we promised him. I know Doc I will get in to our next season. We just haven’t had the availability. It doesn’t mean I love him any less, which he makes fun of me for and I don’t.
BB: After all these years, how do you continue to keep the show fresh and funny? Is the creative process different from how you started back in 2005?
I don’t think we ever know if it’s funny or not, and I think that’s the key to our success and failure. We just make it for ourselves, as weird as that sounds. We’re just a bunch of friends hanging out in the writers’ room making each other laugh, and if we’re able to do that we’re just hoping the rest of the world is laughing at what we’re laughing at. Because once we try to cater to what we think our audience wants it’s gonna feel weird, and a lot of the people are still the same people in the writers’ room. It still started with myself, Seth, and our two head writers, Tom and Doug. It’s just the four of us who really are. We came out from New York to do this thing and we’ve known each other for 15 or 20 years now. And the group has just kind of expanded and it’s become a mini-family in the writer’s room. And we just keep slowly adding people to it.
BB: Do you have any plans for future specials? Can you tell us anything about them?
We do have the 100th episode which is a huge deal and we do have an announcement we are making today. We’re actually doing a Robot Chicken, DC Comics special so we’re gonna be announcing that today. We’re really excited about that. We’re aiming to get it out by summer of next year. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman – you can’t go wrong.
Copyright 2011 Auction Central News International. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Strapped in with seat belts, cocooned with front and side airbags, we’re safer than we’ve ever been on our teeming highways. Contrast that with the early years of this century and the huge chunks of Detroit steel – Japan, back then, exported mainly rice – hurtling up and down the narrow lanes of America’s storied east-west artery, Route 66.
It was the thrill of the primitive open road in cars devoid of every safety feature we now take for granted except brakes. You could put the pedal to the metal and go west, young man, with the nonsafety glass windows rolled down and God’s fresh air anointing your smiling face.
The one big drawback to getting your kicks on old Route 66 was getting killed: Head-on drivers obliterated each other on the too-narrow road or lost it on lots of interesting local highway features such as “dead man’s curve” in the town of Lincoln. Drivers who survived that wicked bend found themselves rocketing along a straight downhill stretch between two conveniently placed Lincoln cemeteries, only to come to grief at the hazard formed by the infamous “ghost bridge” bestriding Salt Creek.
All of which has left a treasure trove of highway ghost stories waiting to be mined by enterprising entrepreneurs who know how to feed our hunger for horror. Enter Chris Hotz and business partner Deborah Carr Senger, who run Bloomington-based Timeless Presentations. On Oct. 22, they are offering to take you on a tour they’re calling the “Ghost Bridge Ghost Walk.”
Visitors will wander with them down a long-abandoned stretch of old Route 66 as dusk falls like a dark river through the overarching fall trees that wrap the road in a golden shroud. Your hosts will take you deep down to the skeletal concrete bones of what’s left of the ghost bridge, all the while seeding nervous imaginations with stories about cars that went bump in the night and the fate of their luckless drivers.
Hotz says it’s going to be a scream. “Imagine charging down here at 70 mph,” he adds with relish, wandering down the lumpy abandoned road while dry leaves crunch underfoot as if they were brittle, sun-bleached bones. “There were a lot of deaths right here, especially coming down to this bridge. You just get an incredible feeling of the history.”
Some of the drivers may have met their ends while up to no good. One of the characters fright fans will be introduced to is a Lincoln Prohibition bootlegger and bosom buddy of Al Capone called John “Coonhound Johnny” Schwenoha. His nickname is right on his grave marker that lies not far from the spooky disused stretch of Route 66. “There is a great mystery about how he died in 1944,” says Hotz, 53, who doesn’t want to give too much away ahead of the ghost walk. “It’s real interesting.”
Hotz will be giving a portion of the ghost walk’s ticket price away to the Route 66 Heritage Foundation of Logan County, which is working to save the fabric of “The Mill,” a historic former Route 66 restaurant and haunt of Coonhound Johnny. Geoff Ladd, the executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Tourism Bureau of Logan County, says the eventual aim is to resurrect the old watering hole as a Route 66 museum.
“There could very well be a mix of ghosts in there,” says Ladd, eying the building with its faux windmill sails hanging dead despite a light breeze. “Some could be the bodies rumored to be buried under the foundation from gangster days, and there could be spirits from when part of the building was a World War II army barracks.”
Our co-host for the ghost walk, Deborah Carr Senger, is also a practicing medium and says bluntly that parts of the old mill “creep me out.” She’ll be lending her expertise and sensitivity to all aspects of the walk and providing insights as the walkers plod towards the waiting bridge. Don’t be surprised, however, if she goes quiet sometimes.
“I might be talking to them,” she says of the departed.
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Information from: Herald & Review, http://www.herald-review.com
Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
