Speaker 1: Hey, you daylight, come and we start the pod. All
Speaker 1: the podcasts, potty potty cast cast, it's a podcast and
Speaker 1: it's started. Jesus, I don't know why I committed to
Speaker 1: that so much. That was at no point was that good. Um,
Speaker 1: this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast that's incompetently introduced
Speaker 1: by a hack and a fraud. I E me uh
Speaker 1: And you know what, I had a great script. We're
Speaker 1: finally going to do the Will Wheaton episode. I wrote
Speaker 1: words on it really really jarring, horrifying stuff. But I'm
Speaker 1: so ashamed of that introduction, so ashamed that the last
Speaker 1: minute I'm canceling our normal guest. We're bringing on Garrison.
Speaker 1: He's reading an episode instead. Nobody gets the podcast episodes. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm ashamed. I was really looking forward to the four
Speaker 1: hour Will Wheaton podcast, but six hours. Yeah, you know, honestly,
Speaker 1: I think it was too dark. I don't think Spotify
Speaker 1: would have put it up. There was just too high
Speaker 1: a body count. You know, we can talk about maw
Speaker 1: or the British Empire, Hitler, but when you get to
Speaker 1: Will Wheaton, you know, that's that's a lot. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of corpses. That's a lot of corpses well, and
Speaker 1: it's like several rob zombies worth of corpses. Um. Garrison's here, Hello,
Speaker 1: that was a house of a so so so I
Speaker 1: saw somebody that said that one Garrison and Chris come
Speaker 1: on that they have to turn their podcast speed to half.
Speaker 1: I know you guys talk. Yeah, we're working on that.
Speaker 1: I mean both of you and Chris are no. I
Speaker 1: think that they need to get used to because that's
Speaker 1: how the youth. I think. I think both Garrison and
Speaker 1: Chris need to slow down a bit. This is a
Speaker 1: process of learning. Everybody, everybody has a learning process with podcasting.
Speaker 1: That's what we're doing. We're we're all we're all finding
Speaker 1: our voice. You look, listen to the earlier episodes of
Speaker 1: this show. It took me some time. It takes everybody
Speaker 1: some time, and they're doing great. But yes, it is
Speaker 1: important to go slow when you're reading. Because the good
Speaker 1: thing thing is that I've only had two shots of
Speaker 1: espresso this morning, so that's good. Oh so you're not
Speaker 1: even away and it is morning. For Garrison, we had
Speaker 1: to get him up. I had to get up with
Speaker 1: him at eleven a m. Yesterday, which was just a nightmare.
Speaker 1: For both of us to interview. It was, and it
Speaker 1: was worse because we were both interviewing someone who's work
Speaker 1: we admire, and that was just just the worst. Just
Speaker 1: an absolute interviewing a competent person as you're struggling to
Speaker 1: keep your eyes open is not super fun. Oh, in
Speaker 1: the moment he came on the screen, it was David
Speaker 1: Wallace Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth. The instant he
Speaker 1: came on the screen, I was like, Oh, that's a
Speaker 1: fucking morning person. That's a guy he gets absolutely, absolutely
Speaker 1: earlier than it was. Just I felt like such a
Speaker 1: piece of ship. True, that's funny, Yeah, that's this well yeah,
Speaker 1: um well, what are we talking. We're talking about amusement
Speaker 1: parks a matter of fact. Um now, I actually really
Speaker 1: like amusement parks. Not not so much as in like
Speaker 1: I enjoy being in them, but more like I find
Speaker 1: their whole like design, their structures, their engineering, and like
Speaker 1: surrounding culture extremely fascinating. Yeah. I can see that. I can't.
Speaker 1: I've been to the beach with you on a number
Speaker 1: of occasions. Garrison. I can't fathom you at an amusement park.
Speaker 1: It's real funny. So maybe maybe the Star Wars did.
Speaker 1: I'm excited. I've never never been to Disneyland, but like
Speaker 1: I I like learning about it and its whole like
Speaker 1: process because I think just like I can't imagine you
Speaker 1: like in board shorts at a six Flags going down
Speaker 1: a water slide. I've I've never I've I've never warned
Speaker 1: bard shorts, but I had one of six Flags. Um
Speaker 1: when when I would take when I would take trips
Speaker 1: from Canada down to Texas to visit a family, one
Speaker 1: of the highlights was visiting six Flags over Texas in Dallas.
Speaker 1: Um So, I happened. I happened to be a really
Speaker 1: big like Luney Tunes and Batman fan, because those are
Speaker 1: some of the there was. There was some of the
Speaker 1: few TV shows we were allowed to watch his kids.
Speaker 1: Dallas is a Looney Tunes town, and and and the
Speaker 1: six Flags there was was the first six legs. Um
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's it's it's all like Warner
Speaker 1: Properties and stuff. Um So, but yeah, but like I uh,
Speaker 1: the best part for me was going to the Gotham
Speaker 1: City area with all of it's like set dressing and
Speaker 1: Batman rides. Now before you go like Pooh, pooing how
Speaker 1: Batman's a fascist or whatever, which he's not. Sometimes he's
Speaker 1: he's sometimes not a fascist. There's actually there's a good
Speaker 1: there's a good video essay strong arguments there. There's a
Speaker 1: there's a good video essay by a guy named thought
Speaker 1: Slime about how Batman isn't always fashy but he is
Speaker 1: sometimes but any but the Batman at six Legs is
Speaker 1: like the Tim Burton or like animated series one. So
Speaker 1: it's fine, um, but it also means like all of
Speaker 1: like the sets and architecture look really cool because it's
Speaker 1: like this like gothic, um like neo, like our deco
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. Um, it's it's very fun. All this
Speaker 1: to say. The main ride they had there was called
Speaker 1: Batman the Ride, and it was kind of like flying
Speaker 1: in the bat Wing, but on a roller coaster. It
Speaker 1: was the first ever inverted ler coaster, so like you're
Speaker 1: strapped into a hard harness and belt while sitting on
Speaker 1: a small seat and your legs are like dangling in
Speaker 1: the air. Um, it's a fun ride. But one of
Speaker 1: the things we talked about was that Batman the Ride
Speaker 1: had killed two people in it's in its short history.
Speaker 1: That was always the best thing about six Flags because
Speaker 1: as as a kid, when you go with a group
Speaker 1: of like your cousins, you all want to go to
Speaker 1: all of the rights that have killed people. So you
Speaker 1: like look that ship up ahead of time to ride
Speaker 1: the rides that killed kids. You could be better than
Speaker 1: that kid like you fucking died on this ride, you loser,
Speaker 1: Like what are you doing so diing on a ride?
Speaker 1: So but both both of them and the ride deaths
Speaker 1: happened the same way. Um people actually ventured past the
Speaker 1: fence into the off limits area under the ride, and
Speaker 1: riders dangling legs um hit people in the off limits
Speaker 1: area and they died of blunt force trauma. And a
Speaker 1: one I think like a seventeen year old on a
Speaker 1: youth group church trip was decapitated actually by the force.
Speaker 1: I mean have been on a couple of youth group
Speaker 1: church trips. That's the best case scenario for one of those,
Speaker 1: really is you get decapitated and you don't have to
Speaker 1: get back on the bus with everybody. So these these
Speaker 1: deaths are not like one hundred percent six Flags is
Speaker 1: fault because it was a fenced off area off limits,
Speaker 1: but the track could have easily been higher to not
Speaker 1: have like this risk at all. Like you don't need
Speaker 1: people's legs close enough to the ground for this. Um,
Speaker 1: Like I don't. I think we've got enough people as
Speaker 1: it is. So it seems like six flags did us all. Anyway, Sorry,
Speaker 1: you're doing it just a casual manslaughter pill, okay, But
Speaker 1: like some parks are kind of inherently dangerous. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: yes they should. You don't want to go to an
Speaker 1: amusement park that hasn't killed somebody because then there's no
Speaker 1: there's no thrill at this at the same six things
Speaker 1: that I went to as a kid. Um, someone else
Speaker 1: died after a falling off a roller coaster called the
Speaker 1: Texas Giant. Oh yeah, the Texas Giant, which is which
Speaker 1: is the biggest wooden roller coaster in the world. Um,
Speaker 1: and someone um fell into that and died only Texas
Speaker 1: because normal people are like, well, if I want to
Speaker 1: go on the biggest roller coaster, I want to go
Speaker 1: on the biggest roller coaster in Texas. Is like, yeah,
Speaker 1: well what about the biggest made of trees the entire
Speaker 1: rest of the world coast. I don't really give a
Speaker 1: ship that doesn't appeal to me at all. But Texas.
Speaker 1: It's like eight percent of Texan identity is that we
Speaker 1: have the biggest wooden roller coaster. My god, are we
Speaker 1: proud of that giant, stupid wooden piece of shit, the
Speaker 1: Texas Giant Man. At at a at another six Plagues Park,
Speaker 1: eight teenagers got trapped in a walk through Haunted Castle
Speaker 1: attraction and the and this gets a real dark, real
Speaker 1: quick rofford um, and all of the lights went out,
Speaker 1: like like like the lightbels went out, making the area
Speaker 1: pitch black, and one of the kids used a small
Speaker 1: lighter to see, which then caught some foam adding on
Speaker 1: fire and there was no there's no indoor sprinklers, and
Speaker 1: the whole thing burned down with those eight kids inside.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's a nightmare. So that I think
Speaker 1: I think that is the highest death toll from a
Speaker 1: single instant at any amusement park. Um is that incident um,
Speaker 1: Which again it's not like it's not just six legs
Speaker 1: as fall, but like they should have had sprinklers inside
Speaker 1: or something, right give it's like an indoors they absolutely
Speaker 1: should have had sprinklers. Like, yeah, it's part of your
Speaker 1: job if you run a facility like that, is to
Speaker 1: assume to try and figure out ways in which dumb kids,
Speaker 1: because your entire clientele is dumb kids, will attempt to
Speaker 1: do things that could hurt themselves and then mitigate that.
Speaker 1: And you can't. You can't expect everything. Like in the
Speaker 1: case of like kids crawling under the thing and getting
Speaker 1: hit by feet, like yeah, you know, you can after
Speaker 1: the fact try to deal with it, but like it's
Speaker 1: just a horrible thing that happened. But in the case
Speaker 1: of like well, yeah, you should have fucking sprinklers in
Speaker 1: buildings filled with flammable materials, like you should just always
Speaker 1: have that for the workers too. Yea's been there's been
Speaker 1: very few like debts at Disneyland, like like besides, they've
Speaker 1: have to be like a number of suicides, but like
Speaker 1: this then we know, but it's a swamp. You can
Speaker 1: hide corpses in a swamp. But like the in terms
Speaker 1: of like like park guests, there hasn't been there many debts,
Speaker 1: but there has been. There has been a lot of
Speaker 1: worker debts um and like um like deaths like into
Speaker 1: like construction and stuff because they don't really care about
Speaker 1: you know, their workers and who's building all of the things. Um.
Speaker 1: But like in terms of like the actual amusement park
Speaker 1: when it's operating. You know, deaths and injuries are often
Speaker 1: like a combination of negligence on behalf of the park,
Speaker 1: user error, and sometimes pre existing medical conditions that maybe
Speaker 1: you shouldn't be doing super like extreme high intensity stuff. Yeah. However,
Speaker 1: there was one to a certain point there there was
Speaker 1: there was one amusement park who is inherent danger wasn't
Speaker 1: simply negligence or user error. Um. It was designed into
Speaker 1: every single aspect of the park itself. And that's gonna
Speaker 1: be today's today's bastard. It's a little place about forty
Speaker 1: five miles outside of New York City in the small
Speaker 1: town of Vernon, New Jersey called Action Park. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: um yes, I firstly mean about Action Park a few
Speaker 1: years ago and was immediately immediately fell in love with
Speaker 1: this concept. Um it is. It goes by a few
Speaker 1: other names, uh, most popularly the class action Park, um
Speaker 1: traction Park, friction park, accident park. Um we we We've
Speaker 1: actually talked about Action Park a few times previously just
Speaker 1: because it's it's it's yeah, because it's just one of
Speaker 1: the funniest things ever. Like it's it's it's you know
Speaker 1: what it is, Garrison, It's the kind of libertarianism that
Speaker 1: I yes, exactly. So that's kind of what I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be talking about today because like I would be honest here,
Speaker 1: I think Action Park rules. I think it's like the
Speaker 1: perfect place for a hed my predispositions. It was absolutely
Speaker 1: like it has done innumerable harm to the world, into
Speaker 1: into into a number of families and altered and ended
Speaker 1: people's lives, but it's pretty funny. Yeah, So like I'm
Speaker 1: I'm going to try to recognize how like there's there's
Speaker 1: you know that the very aspects of the park that
Speaker 1: make it charming to me also led to thousands of
Speaker 1: serious injuries and a number of preventable debts, but you know,
Speaker 1: there could have been more deaths. Actually, Like it is
Speaker 1: actually surprising how once we once we finished this episode,
Speaker 1: will be surprising how few deaths there are based on
Speaker 1: how ridiculous things get. Um, We're gonna start by discussing
Speaker 1: the park's founder, Jean Mulda Hill, because Action Park really
Speaker 1: uses just the direct spawn of this man um similar
Speaker 1: to how like Disneyland and Disney World is like it's
Speaker 1: like an extension of Walt Disney and it's like a
Speaker 1: test ground for how Walt would like society to operate.
Speaker 1: Action Park is both an extension of Gene and like
Speaker 1: a playground for his ideal like Weird Iron Randy and
Speaker 1: Circus World. Um he is, there's a there was a
Speaker 1: I think all of these kind of parks that are
Speaker 1: built by like a dude have that to them. Like.
Speaker 1: There's another one in Texas called schlitter Bond, which was
Speaker 1: also just like a dude who had no business and
Speaker 1: no experience designing water slides, just making a bunch of
Speaker 1: giant water slides and yeah, people died, um, but it
Speaker 1: was also a pretty rad place to get drunk and
Speaker 1: roll down a lazy river. You're fucking hammered at schlitter Bond,
Speaker 1: And it was clearly this man's dream to just design
Speaker 1: different water attractions having never studied or gotten any sort
Speaker 1: of relevant training and how to do that, um, and
Speaker 1: then give people cheap liquor in order to ride them.
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what happens here too. Yeah, I love
Speaker 1: I love that thing. I love that kind of It's
Speaker 1: always fun when that specific thing happens. Um. There's a
Speaker 1: financial journalist named Mary Pilton who described a gene as
Speaker 1: a mix of P. T. Barnum and Donald Trump, which
Speaker 1: is like like a D S. Donald Trump. I think
Speaker 1: it's like a really good explanation of the bizarre man
Speaker 1: that this is um So Eugene A ka Geen Moleville
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen thirty four. He grew up in
Speaker 1: a working classighborhood in West Orange, New Jersey. UM. He
Speaker 1: gradually he graduated from Lahy University with a Bachelor's of
Speaker 1: Science UM in nineteen fifty six, which he then basically
Speaker 1: never used again UM. But he he also got a
Speaker 1: focus in business of administration when he was in university.
Speaker 1: After this, he served in the Marine Corps UM in
Speaker 1: and uh yeah in in two in two different battalions
Speaker 1: or divisions, and he earned the rank of Captain UM.
Speaker 1: According to his obituary, so spoilers, he's dead um quote.
Speaker 1: Mr Velville was a pioneer in the mutual fund industry
Speaker 1: and a venture capitalist and financier with a distinguished career
Speaker 1: spanning many industries including cellular cellular broadcast, cancer, drugs, robotics,
Speaker 1: magnetic imaging technology, amusement park rides, ranching, and real estate development.
Speaker 1: UM by by by all accounts Jeane started out with
Speaker 1: not much money to his name when he began on
Speaker 1: Wall Street, and he was evidently good at picking stocks
Speaker 1: and a decent a decent portion of his fortune was
Speaker 1: made through Wall Street investments in the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: and soon he actually found it. And when you when
Speaker 1: you have that skill, when you're able to make money
Speaker 1: that way, one of the things that says about you
Speaker 1: is that you are capable of completely cutting human beings
Speaker 1: out of out of the equipment. Absolutely that like it's
Speaker 1: a necessary thing to make a fortune as a stock
Speaker 1: trader um and also leads to really fun water parks.
Speaker 1: So it does lead to very fun water parks UM.
Speaker 1: So on board. So eventually he founded his own Wall
Speaker 1: Street a firm called Mayflower Securities UM, and then he
Speaker 1: went to co found um develop a few medical research
Speaker 1: companies which specialized in developing cancer vaccines. Now spoilers that
Speaker 1: that did not work out because we do not have
Speaker 1: vaccines for cancer. Uh oh, that's a shame. I got
Speaker 1: excited there for a secce. Instead we got water parks,
Speaker 1: you know. So in in in the early to mid seventies,
Speaker 1: Jeane dot started getting into the the penny stock schemes
Speaker 1: also called the pump a dump frauds. UM within yeah,
Speaker 1: it's bitcoin, but with a worse name, coin with a
Speaker 1: worse name, and on wall strips and and on all
Speaker 1: wall streets. So it's a little They're both very insufferable
Speaker 1: in their own way. UM. At least one you can
Speaker 1: buy drugs with. I guess actually he probably you could
Speaker 1: also buy drugs that well, never mind, Yeah, both of those,
Speaker 1: both of those you get drugs from. Um. It's it's
Speaker 1: basically when a salesman would sell a worthless shares to
Speaker 1: an unknowing client for a lot of a lot of money. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: Morville was a very outstanding and charismatic character on Wall
Speaker 1: Street and uh and he he he applied this whole
Speaker 1: plan um um with with his with with appal Robert Brennan,
Speaker 1: who helped him start may Flower Securities. UM. Robert Brennan
Speaker 1: was another noted kind of Wall Street fraudster at the time,
Speaker 1: and an all around pretty sketchy dude. Um he's he's,
Speaker 1: He's gonna come back if a few times in this story.
Speaker 1: But in nineteen seventy three, UH, Mayflower Securities was suspended
Speaker 1: by this curious and Trades Commission on the grounds of
Speaker 1: selling its customers worthless securities in a bankrupt electronics company.
Speaker 1: According to a nineteen seventy four issue of The New
Speaker 1: York Times, so, um Brennan continued to make other any
Speaker 1: any other penny stock firms on Wall Street. But for
Speaker 1: Eugene Mulville, he was basically kicked off of Wall Street
Speaker 1: and he was he was not able to operate there anymore.
Speaker 1: No one wanted to do anything with them because he
Speaker 1: was frauding people for a long time. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's just when you retire, right, Like, that's
Speaker 1: how every good Wall Street guy's career ends, is they
Speaker 1: get caught committing what for anyone else would be the
Speaker 1: rest of their life in prison crimes. And instead of
Speaker 1: just like well you have to at least temporarily stop
Speaker 1: bay stopped working for Wall Street, and then they go
Speaker 1: on to become I don't know, Well he doesn't become
Speaker 1: his senator, but he has he has another idea. Yes,
Speaker 1: so he still has a decent about of financial assets. Um.
Speaker 1: And what he decides to do is by two ski
Speaker 1: resorts in Vernon, New Jersey. UM. So, back in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, one of his Wall Street investments, Vernon Valley
Speaker 1: and Great Gorge Ski Resort went bankrupt. So Jean and
Speaker 1: Bob Brennan formed a company called Great American Recreation and
Speaker 1: purchase both of those both of those ski resorts and
Speaker 1: combined them into one UM. So the and and the
Speaker 1: vacation resorts were popular in the wintertimes, you know, you
Speaker 1: would have people from New York come down and do
Speaker 1: skiing and stuff. But they wanted a way to crank
Speaker 1: out income during the summer. And it was in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six when they arrived on the winning idea to
Speaker 1: build an outdoor summer adventure park, which would soon grow
Speaker 1: into Action Park in nineteen seventy eight. So this is
Speaker 1: kind of this is how we get from All Street
Speaker 1: investor guy to this guy who buys two ski resources
Speaker 1: on a mountain and wants to transform it into basically
Speaker 1: the first water park in the country. Because that Action
Speaker 1: Park was like was like one of the original UM
Speaker 1: like us based like what we call water parks. Now,
Speaker 1: no one had thought of the brilliant idea of mixing
Speaker 1: the fun of a playground slide with the sheer, erotic
Speaker 1: joy of being surrounded by other people's bodily fluids mixed
Speaker 1: in with poorly chlorinated water. There wasn't much chlorinated water
Speaker 1: at Action Park, thank god, so you love to see it.
Speaker 1: So Gene wanted Action Park to be different from other
Speaker 1: like thrill based amusement parks where just like hop on
Speaker 1: a roller coaster. Um. He wanted he wanted as as
Speaker 1: the Action Park TV as used to say, for you
Speaker 1: to control the action. That was that that was that
Speaker 1: was the line they used. Um. Jean's son Andy Moville
Speaker 1: explained his dad's thought process like this quote. Gene didn't
Speaker 1: Geane didn't want to do the same old ship where
Speaker 1: you get trapped in or something twirls around. He wanted
Speaker 1: to He wanted to take the idea of skiing, which
Speaker 1: is exhilarating because you control the action, and transferred into
Speaker 1: an amusement park. There's inherent risk to that, but that's
Speaker 1: what makes it fun. So it's like here we want
Speaker 1: to like similar ads for like very high powered vibrators
Speaker 1: and they have a similar death toll to Action Park. Cool.
Speaker 1: There's a danger in controlling the action. You have to
Speaker 1: put into a twenty vote plug like the ones that
Speaker 1: you run an arc welder off right like that, those
Speaker 1: kind of vibrators. His the first the first addition he
Speaker 1: made to the ski resorts to make it, you know,
Speaker 1: this summer adventure summer adventure park. UM. It was the
Speaker 1: and it was called the Alpine Slide. It was. It
Speaker 1: was almost a three thousand footlonging track going down uh,
Speaker 1: just a mountain. It's it's just like a big, big
Speaker 1: track of going down the mountain. Um. It was. You know,
Speaker 1: it was a part of the mountains, part of the appellations. UM.
Speaker 1: You were you you were on this small cart controlled
Speaker 1: by a steering rod and you had a break that
Speaker 1: sometimes worked. UM. More on the Alpine Slide later, but
Speaker 1: pretty soon, UM. Two water slides, a car racing track,
Speaker 1: and a skate park were added, and over the next
Speaker 1: few years we had more water slides, a swimming pool
Speaker 1: good like tennis courts, a softball field, and at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the nineteen eighties the softball field was replaced
Speaker 1: with a gigantic wave pool. This is this was one
Speaker 1: of the first wave pools in the country as well. UM.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about this away full a little bit later.
Speaker 1: I'll bet it was very secure. It was very safe
Speaker 1: and well well designed. UM. Eventually they got a whole
Speaker 1: another race track, more ridiculous slides, a kayaking ride, a
Speaker 1: few bungee jumping sets dra Oddly enough, like one of
Speaker 1: the safest rides at Action Park was the bungee jumping
Speaker 1: ones UM, and you know various other like action based
Speaker 1: attractions UM. In nineteen seventy mine the summer section of
Speaker 1: the resort was renamed Action Park, and altogether the park
Speaker 1: ultimately had about seventy five rides, forty of them being
Speaker 1: water slides, and Action Park is still considered one of
Speaker 1: the first modern water parks in the States. So the
Speaker 1: thing is is that like Jean didn't Jeane didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about amusement park. Jane didn't like them. Still was
Speaker 1: still pretty new, but there was already like experts in it,
Speaker 1: we like specialized and stuff. Gene did not Um. He
Speaker 1: was not an engineer. He didn't really know engineers UM,
Speaker 1: and random people just approached Gene for ideas for rides.
Speaker 1: No one had engineer, no one had an engineering degrees. UM.
Speaker 1: See that's perfect because it's a pure meritocracy that you know,
Speaker 1: you don't have any kind of false divisions like having
Speaker 1: a degree knowing how to make things safe, understanding the
Speaker 1: basics of physics. None of that gets in the way
Speaker 1: of making a truly great ride. Pure meritocracy. I love it.
Speaker 1: Jean would go to like amusement park conventions and they'd
Speaker 1: be like ride designers who are blacklisted from Disney and
Speaker 1: six Flags, who would like talk to Gene because Jean's
Speaker 1: like the weird dude that he could that you could
Speaker 1: get to build your crazy right, but like no one,
Speaker 1: no one was qualified. Um. However, and and and Jean
Speaker 1: Geene basically greenlit every single ride that that that came
Speaker 1: to it. Um. But he also do a lot of
Speaker 1: tinkering with the designs to make them like more extreme,
Speaker 1: to push them a little bit further. So like again
Speaker 1: pure meritis. It's like it's like the ride was already
Speaker 1: not great to begin with, but then Jeane would change
Speaker 1: it all of the time and just like make things
Speaker 1: just a little bit worse, just like turn it up
Speaker 1: a little bit. Um. And he actually designedly designed quote unquote.
Speaker 1: He he drew a lot of these on Napkins Um
Speaker 1: most of the rides at Action Park. It was he
Speaker 1: was the one that came up with the idea for
Speaker 1: and he like, maybe you know, rough diagrams. Um. Then
Speaker 1: he you know, just hired contractors and welders to build them.
Speaker 1: They were you know, they were made out of like
Speaker 1: a concrete cement, fiberglass and PBC piping. That's what most
Speaker 1: of the rides were made out of. Um. It just
Speaker 1: it's just glue and glue and PVC pipes together and
Speaker 1: calling it good enough. That's basically how he set up
Speaker 1: his park. UM and Gene. Yeah, I mean it's one
Speaker 1: of those things like you could spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time making sure it can like cover the hold the
Speaker 1: weight of a human body, or that people can travel
Speaker 1: down at without lacerating themselves or cracking bones, but you're
Speaker 1: probably good at just eyeballing it, you know, like why
Speaker 1: why why go further? To be fair, the rides did
Speaker 1: always have a testing phase. He would pay his teenager
Speaker 1: he would pay his teenage employees money to test the rides,
Speaker 1: and many of the many of them did not get
Speaker 1: past the testing phase. Um. So I'm guessing testing for
Speaker 1: Gene was not wildly different from how the SS tested
Speaker 1: vaccines on children in with a high body care. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's basically what happened. Um. It's like the final product
Speaker 1: was was truly a mix of Iron Rand and Lord
Speaker 1: of the Flies, which sounds amazing, like this is like
Speaker 1: the perfect place to be as a teenager, Like this
Speaker 1: is this the best best combination everything. There's no rules
Speaker 1: in the park, no no regulations from the government. Um.
Speaker 1: We'll get into those legal issues later. Um. Action Park
Speaker 1: was it was really only possible in a specific time
Speaker 1: in like like like um Reagan's America. Like it's very
Speaker 1: very obvious that, like, you know, this was like a
Speaker 1: zeitgeist moment. Um and Jane was actually friends because because
Speaker 1: of all street, Jeane was friends with future president Donald Trump. UM.
Speaker 1: And according to parking employees, Trump was very close to
Speaker 1: investing in Action Park and actually dropped by one time
Speaker 1: to take a look. Upon seeing the park, he decided
Speaker 1: that it was too unhinged to invest in. Yeah. Captain
Speaker 1: Covid took one look at Cheese Park. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is gonna get people killed. Yeah, so the park
Speaker 1: was too wild for Donald Trup to invest in. UM
Speaker 1: and that's kind of that gives you a really good
Speaker 1: idea of what the whole what the whole vibe is here. Um.
Speaker 1: There are two other aspects which that made Action Park
Speaker 1: the legend that it is today. Um. Alcohol and the
Speaker 1: exclusively local teenage staff. Um. These are the These two things,
Speaker 1: combined with the rides, are what made Action Park the
Speaker 1: kind of the legend that it exists as now. M
Speaker 1: journalists um Seth Porges, who has done most of the
Speaker 1: work digging into the history of the park, describes the
Speaker 1: park's atmosphere like this quote. A lawless land that was
Speaker 1: ruled by drunk teenage employees, frequented by even drunker teenage guests,
Speaker 1: filled with rides seemed too, that seems to defy even
Speaker 1: the most basic notions of physics and common sense. And
Speaker 1: that is like that that's the that's the whole idea,
Speaker 1: is that you're in this place that just ignores the
Speaker 1: laws of physics, ignores the laws of the country, full
Speaker 1: with drunk teenagers who are both running the park and
Speaker 1: attending the park, and that's it. And that's like, that's
Speaker 1: how you just get the result that we got. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: they were totally ignoring all all labor loss Um. Jersey
Speaker 1: law requires right operators to be sixteen years old. Fourteen
Speaker 1: year olds would would would frequently be operating these rides. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean their little hands can get in and and
Speaker 1: fix things better, I would guess, and all of the
Speaker 1: supervisors for kids like like starting at like sixteen years old,
Speaker 1: because because if you were sixteen years old, that means
Speaker 1: you were already working at the park for two years,
Speaker 1: because you started working there when you were fourteen. So like,
Speaker 1: you get bumped up real quickly when you've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of death at that point and you can handle it.
Speaker 1: One one seventeen year old was a security guard for
Speaker 1: three months and then he got bumped up to supervisor.
Speaker 1: So that kind of shows how fast that that progression
Speaker 1: goes In some cases, a previous managers talked about how
Speaker 1: the teenage staff would like Hayes new employees by quote
Speaker 1: unquote drowning them in the pool by strapping them to
Speaker 1: a board and then floating them upside down and leaving
Speaker 1: them in the pool. Um, and he ends the story
Speaker 1: by seeing things happen at Action Park that we don't
Speaker 1: talk about. So that's fun. Um. I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: died by getting hazed, but you know, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of unclear. Do you know who won't kill you by
Speaker 1: hazing Robert? I mean, basically at any of our podcast
Speaker 1: sponsors will happily kill you for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 1: They're not gonna They're not gonna duct tape you to
Speaker 1: a piece of wood and float you upside down in
Speaker 1: the swimming pool as a bit. Hello Fresh might um,
Speaker 1: look they might. Okay, I'm not gonna say that they won't. Um,
Speaker 1: because we've all lost a lot of friends to Hello Fresh.
Speaker 1: Look that's all. That's all I'm gonna say about it. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I hope their ads aren't on this. Uh we are back,
Speaker 1: and my god, I for one enjoyed it when Hello
Speaker 1: Fresh threatened to hold our heads down under a wave
Speaker 1: pool unless we ordered there feducchini alfredo dinner for two. Um,
Speaker 1: Hello Fresh, they'll fucking kill you. I honestly don't think
Speaker 1: we've ever even had hell of Fresh as a sponsor.
Speaker 1: We had one of those food box company sponsors briefly.
Speaker 1: I think it was I think it was Blue Apron.
Speaker 1: It might have been Blue Apron. I don't think our
Speaker 1: fans are really food box people. This is hurting me
Speaker 1: and a making it harder for adopts to sell us
Speaker 1: food backs. What we can we not like Pigeonhole. I
Speaker 1: don't know, Dick pills and sheets are all I want
Speaker 1: to sell. Hey, guess what you're not leading this episode? Garrison. Continue,
Speaker 1: All right, Garrison, this this is gonna be I think
Speaker 1: we're already going to my favorite quote, um that I
Speaker 1: have that I've pulled for this show. This is This
Speaker 1: is from Weird New Jersey Magazine, which is a great
Speaker 1: resource just in general. Is there were normal New Jersey magazine?
Speaker 1: I don't know, but this magazine was like staffed by
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of people who grew up to be
Speaker 1: like famous comedians. Um. So it's actually a pretty a
Speaker 1: pretty cool site in meg anyway. But here, here, here,
Speaker 1: here's a quote about Action Park that's really sums up
Speaker 1: the beauty of this place and why I want to
Speaker 1: live there. Um quote. It was truly a teen run show,
Speaker 1: and I manifested itself in the many ways from right attendance,
Speaker 1: willfully ripping the entrance, response from park attendees who misbehaved
Speaker 1: to staff, knowing all the places that one could get
Speaker 1: stoned and or drunk to hide from supervisors, and Action
Speaker 1: Park on legal trouble for letting underage employees run rides too,
Speaker 1: So chances are your personal safety may have once been
Speaker 1: in the hands of a fourteen year old tripping on acid,
Speaker 1: which is the best the best scenario that there was
Speaker 1: fourteen year old operators of these rides just tripping on
Speaker 1: acid as their leading you through this water slot. I
Speaker 1: have a I have a relative that's as detailed as
Speaker 1: I should get who very new really died because he
Speaker 1: went to six Flags with his friends and they all
Speaker 1: took a tremendous amount of acid and it was like, oh,
Speaker 1: no reason there was a problem. Um. So I can
Speaker 1: only imagine that if they had, instead of just being
Speaker 1: at six Flags, been like six Flags, it would have
Speaker 1: been a much safer situation to make the whole like
Speaker 1: weird teenage atmosphere even better. Um. At the top of
Speaker 1: the Alpine Slide on on the mountain there was there
Speaker 1: was an employee's only shed that's referred to as the
Speaker 1: sex shack Um or the weed shack Um. Basically it's
Speaker 1: just tons of drunk, high and horny teens all dating
Speaker 1: each other while running an amusement park. There was there
Speaker 1: was a massive action park employee parties um at the
Speaker 1: end of summer, basically a big old night bash where
Speaker 1: everyone stayed over at the park. People would get like
Speaker 1: blackout drunk and then wake up, go find your whistle,
Speaker 1: and then go do quote unquote lifeguarding in the morning. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's just how the park was run. And Jane
Speaker 1: was like okay with it because he's like this weird
Speaker 1: like libertarian dude, and he's like, yeah, do whatever. You
Speaker 1: can go have slow. Yeah, and you can't have sex
Speaker 1: to the shed. Go have sex to the shed and
Speaker 1: then run the park. Yeah, that's that's I mean, how
Speaker 1: else how else are you going to like run an
Speaker 1: amusement park like this. You can't hire adults, you can't
Speaker 1: hire remo. No adult people are going to complain about
Speaker 1: how it's death trapped. The children only care that they're
Speaker 1: getting beer money and are allowed to take acid. You
Speaker 1: think they're paying for beer. There was so much free
Speaker 1: alcoholic action park. Again, this is how all of society
Speaker 1: should work. It's like the free from atmosphere was very
Speaker 1: inspired by jeans libertarian ideals. Um. He like a few times,
Speaker 1: like fake killed himself in front of employees as a joke.
Speaker 1: What a fucking just pretending to commit suicide in front
Speaker 1: of his tripping employees. They still have blood on their
Speaker 1: hands from the last time somebody went down the slide
Speaker 1: the wrong way. Uh fucking a. The employees often referred
Speaker 1: to him as Uncle Jean Um and that sounds like
Speaker 1: sounds like a specific kind of uncle he kept. He
Speaker 1: kept a back ten machine gun in his office drawer.
Speaker 1: Good yeah, classic choice. Yeah, Ingram is really I mean,
Speaker 1: if you if you might need host down a bunch
Speaker 1: of like plain clothes feds trying to close down your
Speaker 1: water park. That happened. That happens a few times in
Speaker 1: the story. What that he hosts feds down show upen
Speaker 1: his park to like to like collect buddy Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: what a hero he Uh, he got this fake cattle
Speaker 1: rod um and hatched an idea to stop people from
Speaker 1: riding the ski lift to the top of the slide
Speaker 1: without a ticket. You were about have a ticket to
Speaker 1: ride on the steal it. So but like people just
Speaker 1: didn't care. They were just writing it. And He's like, oh,
Speaker 1: they should, they should be buying my tickets. So he
Speaker 1: got this plan. Um an employee would pretend to be
Speaker 1: a park guest and he would and he would he
Speaker 1: would get on the left quote unquote without getting without
Speaker 1: having a ticket. Uh. The operator were then asked for
Speaker 1: a ticket, and then when the incarnito employee didn't have one,
Speaker 1: the park operator would pull up the fake cattle prod
Speaker 1: and taste him so that would scare kids into like
Speaker 1: not riding the thing without a ticket. And he did this.
Speaker 1: This is this is a little skit that he that
Speaker 1: he did, um and it resulted in hundreds of parents
Speaker 1: calling in to complain that their kids saw someone offerating
Speaker 1: the ski lift to kill someone for not having a ticket.
Speaker 1: See and I think the fact, honestly, my only opinion
Speaker 1: of this is that the fact that he wasn't really
Speaker 1: tasting people for writing the snow out a ticket is
Speaker 1: incredible restraint on Jean's part, given the man that he is.
Speaker 1: Yes yes, um So, once enough rides were built, Jean
Speaker 1: went into marketing mode um and started airing some amazing
Speaker 1: TV ads made by his daughter Julie, starring the park's
Speaker 1: teenage employees. Um. When when a local TV reporter filming
Speaker 1: a live segment on the seventy foot bungee jump called
Speaker 1: the snapple snap up whipper snapper cool name? Um So
Speaker 1: when when this reporter refused to jump off because he
Speaker 1: was scared, Jean's youngest son, Christopher pushed the reporter off
Speaker 1: the Leach. Excellent. He was so ready for the twenty
Speaker 1: one century. It's a shame that he was born in
Speaker 1: the thirties and not like this really could have gotten
Speaker 1: uck to some ship these days. Uh So yeah, Onto Onto.
Speaker 1: Like how the park operated itself, there were there were
Speaker 1: three sections of the park. On on on the mountain,
Speaker 1: we had water World and Alpine Center. These had like
Speaker 1: all the slides water Slide it's in outdoor adventure based
Speaker 1: attractions and uh the close close to the bottom of
Speaker 1: the mountain. Uh. There was a section called motor World,
Speaker 1: which is like cart racing and like attractions that like
Speaker 1: required like motors to run. Essentially, um dividing Water World
Speaker 1: and Alpine Center and motor World was the Route ninety
Speaker 1: four highway, So a highway went right through the middle
Speaker 1: of the park. Actually, um dividing the different sections up.
Speaker 1: Um we will start the deep dive into the into
Speaker 1: the rides by discussing way way. So so it's like
Speaker 1: if like there was a giant freeway in between California Adventures. Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: and this this this gets used creatively. UM. So I
Speaker 1: when you said, I'm like, there has to be a
Speaker 1: reason why Garrison is matching this because yeah, there's there,
Speaker 1: there's there, there's it's it's it's not a great idea, Um,
Speaker 1: it's convenient for like, if you're running in the amusement park,
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, you can just pull off off the
Speaker 1: highway in two directions, dear, Both in the best places
Speaker 1: I've done go kart writing have been right off of
Speaker 1: the highway, and the best Like the danger of that
Speaker 1: is because I when I go to play, when I
Speaker 1: go go cart writing, I go to hurt people, right, Like,
Speaker 1: my goal is to make sure that if there are
Speaker 1: kids on the track, they don't graduate high You would
Speaker 1: have loved actually park, Robert Noble, that's the reason to
Speaker 1: do go cart you wouldn't say this on The problem
Speaker 1: is when you get done go kart writing and you
Speaker 1: get right back on the highway, you have to really
Speaker 1: be careful to like the like this de escalator, Robert,
Speaker 1: because if you've just been like permanently injuring like fourteen years,
Speaker 1: threatened to end high school, not end their lives in
Speaker 1: their ability to graduate high school. Here's here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. You could get drunk at a authentic
Speaker 1: German pub right next to the go carts and then
Speaker 1: take the go carts onto the highway paradise. What saw
Speaker 1: Zanna do was ending high schoolers. So hi, so here here,
Speaker 1: here's here. Here's a list of the motor World rides
Speaker 1: courtesy of Theme park tourist dot com, the primier source
Speaker 1: of info for amusing park rides. Um, we had the
Speaker 1: bumper boats, which is like bumper cars, but boats. Um.
Speaker 1: The entrance of the engines of these frequently leaked gasoline.
Speaker 1: There was at least one instance where guest needed medical
Speaker 1: attention because too much of it when it got onto
Speaker 1: his skin. Also, the pond that they were in was
Speaker 1: filled with giant snakes. Um, of course it was why not,
Speaker 1: because why would you want snakes in the bumper pool.
Speaker 1: I bet Old Gene went and got the snakes and
Speaker 1: put them in himself. People are gonna think it's authendic
Speaker 1: if there aren't snakes. What a hero. Next to the
Speaker 1: bumper boats, we had the Lola cars. These were miniature
Speaker 1: race cars an open cockpit on a long track. It
Speaker 1: costs It cost extra money to drive the cars, but
Speaker 1: people were willing to pay, especially the people who knew
Speaker 1: that you could raise the speed to dangerous levels. Without
Speaker 1: the right adjustment, you can stick your hand in the
Speaker 1: engine and like move a piece of metal that would
Speaker 1: make the speed governor of like operate wrong, and you
Speaker 1: can get up to like seventy miles an hour on
Speaker 1: these Um. So, the park had actually descript so well.
Speaker 1: And the best thing is the only way people found
Speaker 1: that out. You don't figure that out just if you're
Speaker 1: writing it a lot. You figure that out exactly, and
Speaker 1: then you're to go to the park and that spread
Speaker 1: everywhere else like that, yeah, just started started with park employees,
Speaker 1: and it's so we spread to like you know, the teenager,
Speaker 1: like you know, underground gossip thing. Um. So, something else
Speaker 1: Gene did, which one of his smarter decisions is that
Speaker 1: so like there is tons of alcohol everywhere at actually park,
Speaker 1: Like there's like alcohol stands so many places that you
Speaker 1: don't don't care what age you are, don't care any anything.
Speaker 1: But one thing he did as well is he dismantled
Speaker 1: a micro brewery pub in Germany and moved it to
Speaker 1: Action Park. So from Germany, he moved the entire pub
Speaker 1: and he set it up right next to the race cars.
Speaker 1: What a perfect human. So after the park was closed,
Speaker 1: employees were known to break into the micro brewery Steel
Speaker 1: to Steel Beer and then take them take the race
Speaker 1: cars onto the highway of Yeah, of course, uh so
Speaker 1: next to the and all of this. Gene knew all
Speaker 1: of this would happen. Yeah, he's like, yeah, it's fun.
Speaker 1: Why not. No, he wanted he wanted to pill those
Speaker 1: kids on libertarianism. You don't need fucking driver's licenses. I
Speaker 1: don't care what age you are. And if you can
Speaker 1: grab the alcohol, you can drink it. Um. There was
Speaker 1: there was there. It's like a sling shot, a bungee
Speaker 1: jumping ride or two people were shot up in the air. Um,
Speaker 1: and we were upside down. These these are pretty common
Speaker 1: in thesement parks nowadays. Um. Usually usually they cost more
Speaker 1: money because of like insurance issues, but Action Park had
Speaker 1: its own insurance set up, which we'll talk about later,
Speaker 1: so you didn't need to do that. Um. Then we
Speaker 1: have a super super go karts, which is different from
Speaker 1: the race cars. Um, basically people people because the race
Speaker 1: cars went to so much faster. I mean, like I
Speaker 1: say this, but like the super go karts could also
Speaker 1: go fifty miles an hour by messing with messing with
Speaker 1: the speed. Governor they would like shove they would shove
Speaker 1: a tennis ball in the engine, so you would like
Speaker 1: move the governor stick. It's like these these go carts
Speaker 1: still go fifty miles an hour and they were often
Speaker 1: used as bumper cars. Um. So gasoline fuel leaks where
Speaker 1: another we're on another problem um for for for the
Speaker 1: go kart track. There is a quote from an Action
Speaker 1: Park guest um the quote, I still remember being able
Speaker 1: to I still remember being able to be served Action
Speaker 1: Park or at age seventeen and then go riding the
Speaker 1: go carts if you knew how without burning yourself on
Speaker 1: the muffler to reach behind it and pulled the throttle
Speaker 1: pass where the governor was set and just take off
Speaker 1: past the other kids. Amazing wow uh um. There was
Speaker 1: another boating attraction called the superspeed Boats, which was a
Speaker 1: small pond which also had snakes um and people often
Speaker 1: fall out of the speedboats, so this was more of
Speaker 1: a problem with the snakes um and also writers would
Speaker 1: uh would would would also use the speedboats as bumper boats,
Speaker 1: which is a problem because these are super fast. Um.
Speaker 1: There was the one really drunk individual need to be
Speaker 1: rescued by life card after because the boat fully capsized. Um,
Speaker 1: but Pepe people fell out you know often, Um, I would,
Speaker 1: I'm not surprised, it would be almost disappointed if they didn't.
Speaker 1: There was a guy that uh so there there was
Speaker 1: a speedboat parked like in the dock, and another guy
Speaker 1: who was sing was going super fast and he jumped
Speaker 1: his boat on top of the other doctor boat while
Speaker 1: someone was still inside, and they very nearly got to capitabes. Um.
Speaker 1: The the the guy that they got to jumped the boat
Speaker 1: then ran off and people never found him or he
Speaker 1: never faced any punishment because he was able to run
Speaker 1: fast enough, which is yeah, that's kind of how you
Speaker 1: do it. Um. If you do something wrong, if you
Speaker 1: run quickly, then it's fine. So that was That was
Speaker 1: the speedboats and one of one of the best rides
Speaker 1: in the motor world. Maybe maybe maybe maybe My favorite
Speaker 1: is the tank ride. Um. This ride featured heavily in
Speaker 1: the TV ads back in the day. Basically, can we
Speaker 1: have Robert guess what that means? The tank ride? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing like the weapons system, right, like some child
Speaker 1: version of a tank pretty much. Um So, Like Jean
Speaker 1: built these motorized tanks and they had this whole like
Speaker 1: arena and oh man, I'm on board so far. He
Speaker 1: would let guests drive UM in these tanks for five
Speaker 1: minutes at a time, shooting tennis balls from from cannons
Speaker 1: at the other tanks. Don't don't worry, don't worry, Robert,
Speaker 1: it gets it gets better. Um when hit a tank,
Speaker 1: what I'm actually stopped for like fifteen seconds, giving the
Speaker 1: other tankers and visitors with and also on the on
Speaker 1: the edges of the arena also had cannons that people
Speaker 1: could just walk up to and shoot um And uh
Speaker 1: so yeah you can, you can just shoot tons tons
Speaker 1: of tennis balls. Um. Now, often these tanks would break
Speaker 1: down and workers would have to go inside of the
Speaker 1: arena to to to fix the tank, but they didn't
Speaker 1: shut down the bronx. So it was like the guy
Speaker 1: at a golf course whose job is to clean the
Speaker 1: driving rate, so of everyone would try to hit the
Speaker 1: employees put the two with the tennis balls just cubs.
Speaker 1: This made the tank ride an unpopular workshift. UM. And
Speaker 1: there was one time where a park attendee um of
Speaker 1: acquired gasoline from inside the park and soaked his tennis
Speaker 1: balls inside them, brought them into the tank and then
Speaker 1: lit them on fire and started shooting flaming fireballs out
Speaker 1: of his tank. Um they were, they were kicked out
Speaker 1: of the park. Unfortunate, credible, unfortunately, do you see they were?
Speaker 1: That should make you manager of the park. This is
Speaker 1: where see libertarians are never as consistent. They should not exactly, No,
Speaker 1: you should reward that kind of innovation shooting flaming tennis
Speaker 1: balls and employees. Come on, that's amazing. Come on, if
Speaker 1: you get hit by one, just dive into the castoline.
Speaker 1: You'll be all right. Hey, worst case scenario, you burn
Speaker 1: the snap and sol two problems. Oh man. So the
Speaker 1: last time I played Bumper Guards, it was this place
Speaker 1: in l A that was again right next to a highway,
Speaker 1: and I was just I was going out of my
Speaker 1: way to hit kids, as I usually do when I'm
Speaker 1: playing cup bumper cars managed to turn around, so I
Speaker 1: was going in the opposite direction and just driving head
Speaker 1: on at people. And it was like it was like
Speaker 1: me a group of adults who horrified, and these little kids,
Speaker 1: and I would just keep writing around and slamming in
Speaker 1: the walls and just screaming death like the row here
Speaker 1: in Faults. It was such a good day. God I
Speaker 1: love bumper cars. Sound real fun. We should. We should
Speaker 1: go to Oaks Park sometime. No, I can't go back
Speaker 1: to do more bumper cars. It makes me a bit
Speaker 1: can't go back. He can, I can't not. I just
Speaker 1: can't not. The only place I can do bumper cars
Speaker 1: safely is Mexico because everyone there, everyone at Mexican bumper
Speaker 1: cars is on as much acid and as violent as
Speaker 1: I am. Or at least I thought you were going
Speaker 1: to say on the four or five in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: because that's basically what it is. No, for every people
Speaker 1: four or five, it's very polite, driving, very very That's
Speaker 1: why you need the bumper cars. You need to go
Speaker 1: hurt people on the bumper cars. You need to do
Speaker 1: damage to your friends. So you can't do it. We have,
Speaker 1: we have gotten most of the notable motor worldwide. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna move up to Alpine Center. Uh. This housed
Speaker 1: all like the sports related attractions UM and like all
Speaker 1: like the sports ball fields UM and then you know,
Speaker 1: tons of like other slides. It did have another bunge
Speaker 1: jumping attraction that was seventy feet tall, which is one
Speaker 1: of the safer rides in the entire park. And Action
Speaker 1: Park was also briefly home to a skate park obviously
Speaker 1: uh now not designed by an engineer or people who
Speaker 1: knew anything about skateboarding. So the bulls that ride are
Speaker 1: scated in were separated by like um, black pavement and
Speaker 1: did it and there was no smooth edges, so a
Speaker 1: lot of tumbles. Um. An Action Park employee talked about
Speaker 1: the skate park um and he said, uh a quote.
Speaker 1: So then they built a skate park, a masterpiece and
Speaker 1: design where the smooth bulls were isolated by the black
Speaker 1: pavement between them who thought this was a good idea,
Speaker 1: The blacktop did not even meet the cement at edge.
Speaker 1: The skate park responsible for many for so many injuries
Speaker 1: that we covered up that we covered it up with dirt.
Speaker 1: I pretended it never existed. Amazing, that's libertarian jeans back
Speaker 1: in my good books. So we covered up with never
Speaker 1: resisted and thought of grander ways to hurt people, like
Speaker 1: the Honda Odysse's now before you don't even need to
Speaker 1: finish that. I'm just hoping he invented the Honda Odyssey
Speaker 1: and that was his final method of revenge on then
Speaker 1: before the mini men of the same name Honda made
Speaker 1: a four wheeled uh a not be tired go kart,
Speaker 1: which like predated a t V S and that was
Speaker 1: wicked fun, mostly for the employees who would ride them
Speaker 1: through the park, terrorizing everyone in our path. It's quoting
Speaker 1: former park employee Tom fergus So, just chasing around park
Speaker 1: guests on a t V S and all the CIP
Speaker 1: walks after you bury the skate park because it hurt
Speaker 1: too many kids. Um do do you know, Robert? Are
Speaker 1: you familiar with the people who don't drive a t
Speaker 1: V S at children and at parks? Why would you
Speaker 1: not aim and a TV so an a t V garrison.
Speaker 1: I come from the cell. There's two purpose. Grew up
Speaker 1: in the prairies. I grew up in the prairies of Canada.
Speaker 1: We we had we yeah, I know, yeah, you you
Speaker 1: and I have had this conversation with friends who are
Speaker 1: not a TV pill. There's two purposes for an a TV.
Speaker 1: One is to kill large chunks of family, of your
Speaker 1: own family and terrible a TV accidents, uh And the
Speaker 1: other is to use as a weapon against people who
Speaker 1: irritate you. And those are the jobs of an a
Speaker 1: t V um so, Yes, I I can't imagine anyone
Speaker 1: not driving it at someone. I hope we I hope
Speaker 1: we do get a sponsorship from Big A TV soon,
Speaker 1: because if they can send us free a t V s,
Speaker 1: we can have so much fun food and we could
Speaker 1: they could, we could get we could wipe out whole
Speaker 1: generations in a single weekend away from home. So here
Speaker 1: here's some ads too. Hopefully Big A TV, Sophie get
Speaker 1: on that. Can we can we get an A TV sponsorship? Please? Please?
Speaker 1: I'll put that requestion for you. Here's the ads. We're back.
Speaker 1: So do you think all this talk about injuring people,
Speaker 1: specifically children is going to go badly with our audience,
Speaker 1: with our audience, no, with our employment. Probably. Well, look
Speaker 1: you can't here, I don't know that. There's certain So
Speaker 1: there's some people who grow up and fun is doing
Speaker 1: things that are enjoyable for everyone involved. And there's some
Speaker 1: people who grow up and fun is um damaging each other. Um.
Speaker 1: And I grew up in in in the country a
Speaker 1: decent chunk of my childhood, and so fun often involved
Speaker 1: someone getting horribly injured. And you know that's that, that's
Speaker 1: just life, that's just life. And eventually you seek to
Speaker 1: replicate that fun by having I don't know, fireworks fights
Speaker 1: and trying to go bicycle jousting and beating your friends
Speaker 1: with raw fish in public parks. Um. You know, just
Speaker 1: good times, great times, great time. Alright. We we could
Speaker 1: have had some front times at Action Park. We could
Speaker 1: have had I would have traveled to the state of
Speaker 1: New Jersey to Action Park. I would have rented a
Speaker 1: house for a month. Oh man. So in the Alpine
Speaker 1: Center has a lot of rides that never got through testing. Um.
Speaker 1: Possibly maybe my favorite attraction in the entire park, which
Speaker 1: did not last for long, was called the Man in
Speaker 1: the Ball in the Ball UM. It was a giant
Speaker 1: metal ball floating inside an even bigger metal ball with
Speaker 1: with tiny wheels all around it, and you have someone
Speaker 1: in the very middle. UM. The idea was to roll
Speaker 1: down a mountain in a ball on a set track.
Speaker 1: Now this the track was made out of you see piping, um,
Speaker 1: because no one knew what they were doing um on
Speaker 1: and on human testing day it was it was very
Speaker 1: hot and PVC piping like it's plastic, so like it expands.
Speaker 1: So as they were rolling the ball with a person
Speaker 1: inside down the mountain, the track completely fell apart um
Speaker 1: and the bull rolled rolled down the mountain, over the
Speaker 1: highway and into the swamp with the snakes with someone
Speaker 1: all inside. Um. It did not pass human testing unfortunately. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. You can't get everything. I know. Another ride
Speaker 1: that did not last long was the so called zero
Speaker 1: gravity Slide, which was allegedly inspired by airplanes. Now, don't care,
Speaker 1: so no one knows how I love that allegedly doing
Speaker 1: a lot of heavy lifting there, no, so no one
Speaker 1: knows what gravity or our planes are. Who's involved with
Speaker 1: this ride? Um? You was? The goal was you would
Speaker 1: have a slide that you gave enough speed and then
Speaker 1: hit a ramp that makes you glide through the air.
Speaker 1: Now that's not how humans work. No, that's not how physics.
Speaker 1: But this guy doesn't know any of that. This man's
Speaker 1: never studied anything in his life. So the idea was
Speaker 1: like glad through the air and then land perfectly parallel
Speaker 1: back on the slide to go on in another lamp. Um,
Speaker 1: Like this guy's whole plan for building a ride is
Speaker 1: to drive to a home depot parking lot, say Trebajo,
Speaker 1: and hold out a napkin. Yes, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: So and it's a testament to the workers he hired,
Speaker 1: to the day laborers he hired, that fewer people died
Speaker 1: than you once were the episode. You're like, how did
Speaker 1: only x amount of people die? Like it should have
Speaker 1: been more. I mean there there there maybe is someone
Speaker 1: that we just don't know about. But like, it's it's
Speaker 1: weird how few there are? Is it? Man? It is
Speaker 1: very absurd. Um. I don't know. As I've learned racing
Speaker 1: go carts, it's harder to kill people than you might think.
Speaker 1: So testing on employees went surprisingly well with the zero
Speaker 1: gravity slide, but then, uh, shortly after it opened, a
Speaker 1: small kid went on and got going super fast and
Speaker 1: he launched so high that he missed the entire slide
Speaker 1: and the landing pad and was sent to the hospital
Speaker 1: and the ride got shut down. Um. So it did,
Speaker 1: just didn't last super long. Um. And probably one one
Speaker 1: of the more infamous rides at Action Park is the
Speaker 1: Alpine Slide. But it's it was the longest running like
Speaker 1: Action Park attraction and it was the first one built. Um.
Speaker 1: This was it was a long, long shoot on the
Speaker 1: side of a mountain. Uh that caused many many major
Speaker 1: perils and injuries. UM. It was I ironically referred to
Speaker 1: as the safest ride there. Um because because because because
Speaker 1: part officials would talk to like the media and say like, no,
Speaker 1: it's save We saw a nine year old grandma carrying
Speaker 1: a baby right down the slide. Um, So that was
Speaker 1: the lie they kept using. Um. Yeah, which is also
Speaker 1: very very frightening to hear, because these tracks were made
Speaker 1: out of conca fiber, fiberglass, and asbestos. Well and also
Speaker 1: I am absolutely certain, being the man that he was,
Speaker 1: if you called something the safest ride at his park,
Speaker 1: Gene would take it as an insult. Yeah, sure, like,
Speaker 1: how how dare you? How dare you say that about
Speaker 1: my child? So like the y and Dy bumpy track
Speaker 1: was made out of a concrete cement, fiberglass, and asbestos.
Speaker 1: So anyone who took a to anyone who looked like
Speaker 1: even a minor hit tended to get like very bad
Speaker 1: like friction burns um on on their skin because you're
Speaker 1: rubbing on all of these rough materials um. And also
Speaker 1: like they were usually just wearing bathing suits, like they
Speaker 1: didn't have much clothes on. Um. This The sled had
Speaker 1: two speeds, very slow because you're breaking the whole time
Speaker 1: or bullet fast, like insanely quick of that. Also the Alpines,
Speaker 1: in order to get to the top of the alpine slide,
Speaker 1: you need to get on the ski left, which we
Speaker 1: are we are talked about with like the fake tasting. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the ski lift the same thing, um, but
Speaker 1: on on the ski lift up, people would like play games,
Speaker 1: games such as like spitting on the people on the
Speaker 1: slide and trying to trying to hit them um or uh.
Speaker 1: When when you're riding up the ski lift, you would
Speaker 1: like strap your sled onto the side, and what you
Speaker 1: would also do is try to drop your herd sled
Speaker 1: on people writing down the slide. It's a whole theme
Speaker 1: park where everybody thinks the way I do at theme parks.
Speaker 1: This was I had a home at one point, Garrison.
Speaker 1: I had a home and I never got to see it.
Speaker 1: This was a daily occurrence. People dropping there like twenty pounds. Literally,
Speaker 1: what else are you going sleds on the people riding down.
Speaker 1: So at the top of the slide there was a
Speaker 1: gallery of bloody pictures of people who rode to ride previously.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. And on your little slide you had
Speaker 1: you had like a stick break which almost never worked. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why no, why would That's the least important thing in
Speaker 1: the entire park. Breaks on anything really need the break
Speaker 1: to turn the slides. Well, so you're just gonna fly
Speaker 1: on the break. If you're a coward garrison, your breaks
Speaker 1: are the other people on the ride. That's how that
Speaker 1: also happens. That's how you make it work. You use
Speaker 1: their bodies as a break. That happened. That did happen frequently.
Speaker 1: I'll bet even if you did break properly, the bumps
Speaker 1: could still send you flying off into like rocky. It's
Speaker 1: like it's like the around the slide. It was like
Speaker 1: a mountain. It wasn't like soft grassy. It wasn't soft
Speaker 1: grassy hills. It was a rocky mountain. There's the pile
Speaker 1: of rocks, so tye if they were soft rocks, it's
Speaker 1: the Appellachians, right, that's not the hard mountain. Everything broken,
Speaker 1: collar bones, broken arms, many concussions. On an average day
Speaker 1: there was fifty people injured on the slide double double
Speaker 1: on the weekends. But an incredible place near But it's okay.
Speaker 1: You've got that brewery right there. You bring your collar bone,
Speaker 1: you go. Can you get right back on the horse
Speaker 1: that you can probably find acid from a from like
Speaker 1: from like a fourteen year old who's riding, who's like
Speaker 1: operating the water slide. Yeah, I feel like you would
Speaker 1: have to work to not buy acid from a fourteen
Speaker 1: year old at Action Park like that, that would be
Speaker 1: that would be an achievement. You'd go back home, was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I went to Action Park and I did not buy
Speaker 1: drugs from a child. It's like going to Guatemala. Near
Speaker 1: near the bottom of the Alpine slide, it was a
Speaker 1: so called infirmary shack specifically for slide related injuries. UM.
Speaker 1: Inside the shack there was a white there was a
Speaker 1: small white circle on the ground UM and to help
Speaker 1: prevent infection after you know, bad friction burns, they had
Speaker 1: a special spray which was just alcohol and iodine UM
Speaker 1: that they would that employees would spray onto the open
Speaker 1: wounds caused by the slide. Now, if you can stay
Speaker 1: inside the circle as the employees sprayed you, you would
Speaker 1: win a prize. UM. And if if you ever had
Speaker 1: a big like traction burn or anything, if if you
Speaker 1: ever had one, try to get cleaned, especially by any
Speaker 1: like alcohol based spray. You can imagine how extremely painful.
Speaker 1: This would be like some of the worst pain you
Speaker 1: can imagine. Um. So, one employee of recounts over the
Speaker 1: three years they worked there, only two people ever stayed
Speaker 1: in the circle. And remember there's like fifty people getting
Speaker 1: injured on week week days, double on weekends. Um. So
Speaker 1: only two people stayed in the circle over this employees
Speaker 1: time working. And the prize was an Action Park pen.
Speaker 1: So that's worth it. Yeah. And and here's where things
Speaker 1: get to start to get a little actually get darker.
Speaker 1: The Aupline slide was the first was the site of
Speaker 1: the first death at at the park. UM. Nineteen year
Speaker 1: old George Larson Jr. Was at Action Park with his
Speaker 1: family on July ninety. He was writing the outline slide
Speaker 1: and thrown off the track and his head struck a
Speaker 1: nearby rock. After several as in Tacoma, he died. UM.
Speaker 1: Jean Mulville tried to cover up the death by saying
Speaker 1: Larson was an Action Park employee and he snuck in
Speaker 1: at nighttime and it was raining when the accident happened.
Speaker 1: None of that is true, um, but this meant that
Speaker 1: since Jean claimed he was an employee who died, he
Speaker 1: did not need to report the death to state regulators,
Speaker 1: so he just lies so he didn't have to report it.
Speaker 1: And you still you still see this lie reported in
Speaker 1: a lot of media about Action Park. Um. You still
Speaker 1: see this lie repeated again that that the first death
Speaker 1: was an employee you smoking at night, which just did
Speaker 1: not happen. Um. So the Alpine slide only caused one
Speaker 1: death that we know of, but it was responsible for
Speaker 1: most of the lawsuits and around of the citations against
Speaker 1: Action Park. Um. Yeah, it was also one of the
Speaker 1: few last rides to get shut down when the park closed. UM.
Speaker 1: So on now that that that that wraps up the
Speaker 1: Alpine Center, and we're gonna go onto water World, the
Speaker 1: final area of the park, um and all end up.
Speaker 1: The first water World attraction we're gonna talk about has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with water. It's actually a sky diving simulator. Um.
Speaker 1: There was a skydiving simulator like wind tunnel outdoors that
Speaker 1: was invented in Germany four Um. It was the first
Speaker 1: one was moved to the States. In Night seven at
Speaker 1: Action Park. Writers were special diving suits, helmets, and ear plugs,
Speaker 1: and they had an instructor there who would like help you,
Speaker 1: like get over this giant trampoline with a fan essentially. Um.
Speaker 1: Most injuries that that the sky diving stimulator came because
Speaker 1: writers instinctively try to like break their falls by by
Speaker 1: extending their arms. I used to be a part of instructor.
Speaker 1: That's pretty common when people fall, they and they don't
Speaker 1: know how to they try to use their arms and
Speaker 1: you get a lot of you know, um, like dislocated shoulders, wrists,
Speaker 1: right yeah, or just like throwing yourself out of the
Speaker 1: even like landing flat on your back is better than
Speaker 1: landing on your arm. Um. So yeah, this this because
Speaker 1: there acust a lot of shoulder The ride caused auto shoulder,
Speaker 1: just dislocation, um, severed nerves and it almost caused some
Speaker 1: permanent armed paralysis and a few guests. Um. But now
Speaker 1: onto the most famous I'll be a short lived action
Speaker 1: park attraction, the Cannonball Loop. This one was designed on
Speaker 1: a napkin. Um good. So you know how there's are
Speaker 1: the coasters that do a little like loop de loop thing,
Speaker 1: you know, like the basic thing. It's fun, you know
Speaker 1: loop loop Now, what is that but water slide? Now
Speaker 1: if you're saying, but that's not how water works, because
Speaker 1: you can't like shoot water up this thing unles you
Speaker 1: have like a hose running through it, which he didn't have.
Speaker 1: That that that doesn't not matter because Jeane drew a
Speaker 1: little loop loop on a napkin and then built this
Speaker 1: water slide. Um. In the initial testing, uh, he put
Speaker 1: down like crash test dummies, um, and the dummies came
Speaker 1: out with missing limbs and heads. Um. And then when
Speaker 1: they move on to human testing, Gene offered employees a
Speaker 1: hundred dollars to ride the cannonball loop, which was like,
Speaker 1: will you be my flesh mannequin? It's like three hundred
Speaker 1: dollars in today's money, So if you're if you're a teenager,
Speaker 1: it's not enough. You could buy like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: twenty tabs with that or something. It's great. It's a
Speaker 1: great deal. I mean. And just speaking from a libertarian
Speaker 1: point of view, there's no greater joy than handing children
Speaker 1: money to endanger their own lives. That's really that's the
Speaker 1: peak of that idea. The kind of bello never caused
Speaker 1: super bad injuries. Actually, it's surprising how much it functioned.
Speaker 1: This because it was just drawn on a napkin. Um.
Speaker 1: There was like because it looks like look at a
Speaker 1: picture of it. It's like a looty tunes right, like
Speaker 1: it's out of its mind. So of there were like,
Speaker 1: you know, concussions and stuff, but like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a concussion. It's bad, but you know it's not, it's
Speaker 1: not it's not the worst. Um. And there were some
Speaker 1: very unhappy testicles for having to like loop up and
Speaker 1: then your body it's you know, the side of the thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't feel great afterwards. But the ride was deemed
Speaker 1: safe enough by Gene and you know, the sheerest impossible
Speaker 1: nature of the construction was too entire seemed to pass up. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you have to try it. So right before you when
Speaker 1: the ride opened, right right before you got on, they
Speaker 1: would have like a garden hose to spray you down
Speaker 1: to help make you more slippery. Um. And they should
Speaker 1: have people up gotten those big Yeah. Initially there was
Speaker 1: no padding at the top of the slide. This caused
Speaker 1: a lot of injuries, uh, like smashing her head to
Speaker 1: the top of the loop. Um. But then some film
Speaker 1: padding was added. The next issue is that right writers
Speaker 1: kept exiting the slide with bizarre cuts and scratches on
Speaker 1: their body. When the slide was inspected, they realized that
Speaker 1: human teeth were found stuck in the home padding from
Speaker 1: people smashing their heads and tops. Incredible teeth just other
Speaker 1: people's teeth are imbedded so deeply in it that the
Speaker 1: teeth are biting passengers after them. Oh my god. The
Speaker 1: Cannibal Loop was again, the only thing I would change
Speaker 1: if I were running Action Park was for everyone to
Speaker 1: be covered in loupe at all times. Would have that
Speaker 1: would have gotten rid of those deaths. Yeah. So the
Speaker 1: loop was only open for a little over a month
Speaker 1: in the summer of nineteen five before the state's Advisory
Speaker 1: Board on Carnival Amusement Safety or ordered its closure. Too
Speaker 1: many teeth. You can't have this many teeth in a
Speaker 1: plain back ry. Gotta get this number of teeth down
Speaker 1: by half. So moving on to other kind of bizarre
Speaker 1: water slides, there was one called the Aqua Scoot where
Speaker 1: writers would have a hard plastic sleds on top of
Speaker 1: the attraction and go down, you know, a curved a
Speaker 1: curved open slide um and and uh but on the
Speaker 1: on the on the track, we had a little like
Speaker 1: metal rollers, you know, like you have like like like
Speaker 1: a factory assembly line. So you would rule across these
Speaker 1: on the sled and then try to skip yourself like
Speaker 1: a stone over a puddle at the bottom. UM. So
Speaker 1: it was like it was like it's like your stone skipping,
Speaker 1: but you're the stone. Um. It didn't know. If you
Speaker 1: weren't positioned to just write, you would immediately face plant
Speaker 1: and the and the pool was not very deep. It
Speaker 1: was only like a foot deep. So you were like
Speaker 1: slam into the bottom of this, of this, of this
Speaker 1: little puddle. Also there was a beast nest inside the slide. UM.
Speaker 1: He just couldn't help himself. I have to believe that
Speaker 1: every interaction of wildlife with injury is purposeful. Was Jane
Speaker 1: being like, what else could I stick in here fucking
Speaker 1: ba's nest? What One of the rides that looks actually
Speaker 1: super cool? Um was called the Colorado River Ride. It
Speaker 1: was a group inner tube ride that was a white
Speaker 1: water rafting simulator. UM. Now it begain life as a
Speaker 1: lazy river ride, and Jean was like, you know what's
Speaker 1: more fun than a lazy river rides? Action in the
Speaker 1: lazy river is white water is Class four rapids. So early, early,
Speaker 1: early human test pilots came out of this ride. Unconscious. UM.
Speaker 1: So the intensity was slightly turned down, but it was
Speaker 1: still very It was still a very intense ride. UM
Speaker 1: and Jean purposely removed all of the life guards there
Speaker 1: because quote, there are there are no lifeguards at the
Speaker 1: Colorado River. Well there you go, there you go. I mean,
Speaker 1: fair enough, my man, fair enough, there aren't gene You
Speaker 1: are correct. Nearby where the diving cliffs um like and
Speaker 1: fifteen feet tall cliffs over a freshwater pool, it was
Speaker 1: the pools about sixteen feet deep. Because like, the whole
Speaker 1: inspiration for Action Park was, like Jean says, it was
Speaker 1: like the nature that he grew up in and he
Speaker 1: figured out kids couldn't go into real nature, his park
Speaker 1: would be the next best thing. So this just meant,
Speaker 1: you know, a Colorado River ride and jumping off cliffs
Speaker 1: um on on. On the cliffs drimping one, you would
Speaker 1: often land on top of people because you know, the
Speaker 1: danger of the ride was at the section of the
Speaker 1: pool where people landed wasn't blocked off at all, and
Speaker 1: people would just jump off without caring about what's under them.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of collisions and you know you're
Speaker 1: clading on people over top of a sixteen foot pool,
Speaker 1: and people did not know how to whim um. Now,
Speaker 1: of course, shoulders will get constantly dislocated. Um. And the
Speaker 1: water was much deeper than expected. Eventually they had to
Speaker 1: paint the bottom of the pool white so it was
Speaker 1: easy to see bodies. Uh, because it's just hard to
Speaker 1: tell with you know, you know you're running a good
Speaker 1: theme park. When the sentence so it was easier to
Speaker 1: see bodies is added to an explanation of like one
Speaker 1: of your engineering changes. The now diving cliffs were not
Speaker 1: the only conflict attraction. There was another one where you're
Speaker 1: writing on the cliffs called serf Hill. UM. It was
Speaker 1: it was basically a giant slipping slide on the mountain. Uh.
Speaker 1: The The original concept was to jump off a cliff
Speaker 1: and and land on the side to continue the ride.
Speaker 1: This this this, this idea was abandoned due to space limitations,
Speaker 1: but Surf Hill got its airborne wish via other means.
Speaker 1: UM employees so you had like little like like plastic
Speaker 1: mats to write on. UM and employees would slide extra
Speaker 1: mats on the slide to make the jumps and ramps
Speaker 1: bigger and more extreme. Eventually, guests eventually guests got too
Speaker 1: much air and broke their nap and broke their neck
Speaker 1: upon landing. Um, and guess what do you know, slide
Speaker 1: down the slipping slope on on on landing like this
Speaker 1: little puddle area. Um. There was like ten lanes, but
Speaker 1: there wasn't many like barriers to speak up between the lanes,
Speaker 1: so that often be like criss crossing and collisions on
Speaker 1: the slide itself. Um. The seventh lane was particularly dangerous
Speaker 1: because that's the one that employees would stick the mats under.
Speaker 1: When Jeane discovered that the force of hitting the water
Speaker 1: at the bottom of Surf Hill could tear off bathing suits,
Speaker 1: he immediately took action by building a grandstand spectator section
Speaker 1: so people could watch. People watch. Every time I start
Speaker 1: to think he's not a great guy, he just does
Speaker 1: the best thing he could pass. People can watch teenagers
Speaker 1: to get their tops for off. Jean, and you what
Speaker 1: a perfect libertarian he is. He is checking all of
Speaker 1: the boxes. He is. He is the plata ideal of
Speaker 1: a libertarian. You've got borderline child molestation, you've got child labor,
Speaker 1: you've got uh paying people to endanger their own bodies.
Speaker 1: You've got a complete contempt for any sort of safety regulations.
Speaker 1: You've got everything. Libertarians love in a he's he's he's like,
Speaker 1: he's like their zeus yea. A park employees often would
Speaker 1: sit by a nearby snack check that offered a good
Speaker 1: view of surf hill, just excited to see all the
Speaker 1: injuries and last bakhini tops. Um, god damn it geh.
Speaker 1: Another water slide called Kennibell falls, which is like a
Speaker 1: completely covered water slide leading into a massive like like
Speaker 1: ten ft drop into a pool. Um. According to an
Speaker 1: action former a former action part guests a cluster of
Speaker 1: four or five short water slides ended by shooting you
Speaker 1: into a lake. Various kids would fly out at various times,
Speaker 1: landing on top of each other mid air um or
Speaker 1: sometimes landing on a on a sharp rock nearby because
Speaker 1: you couldn't like you wouldn't like line at to jump correctly. Um. Sure,
Speaker 1: And often lots of these like tunnels had like very
Speaker 1: abrupt degree turns, not a forty five degree turns. You
Speaker 1: would like slam into a wall and keep going to
Speaker 1: the fourth of the water, um, and just toss you
Speaker 1: in you know a different direction, um, you know it
Speaker 1: would it would shoot your young no old body into
Speaker 1: a gooey pool. Uh, full of crying kids and water snakes.
Speaker 1: It was awesome. That's the end of the quote. Uh.
Speaker 1: They had another white water rafting ride called the Roaring Rapids.
Speaker 1: This one had rafts that you that they were trying
Speaker 1: to replicate a mountain swimming hole. Uh. Jean turned up
Speaker 1: the intensity to make it another of class for rapids.
Speaker 1: Six later, Um, there was a responsible for report after
Speaker 1: report noting fractured bones and dislicated body parts. They're also
Speaker 1: exposed bolts on the underside of the tunnel and lots
Speaker 1: of lots of traffic in the forks of the path
Speaker 1: that would cause you know, people to like get stuck. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a fractured femurs, collar bones, broken nose into
Speaker 1: displicant shoulders, and knees. All were inside reports filed by
Speaker 1: Action Park just in An, India. By UM, they had
Speaker 1: a very steep water slide called the Superspeedwater Slide UM,
Speaker 1: which like almost like a completely vertical drop where you
Speaker 1: would have to like park employees would say, like they
Speaker 1: actually give instructions for this one because if you fell off,
Speaker 1: you would like fault to your death. Like very quickly. Um. Sure,
Speaker 1: so you gotta have a teenager kind of brush over
Speaker 1: what you're supposed to do to avoid that. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you will go too super fast on this because
Speaker 1: you're it's like a vertical drop. Um. And most notably,
Speaker 1: it would shoot water up your ass and mess up
Speaker 1: your junk. It was referred to by staff as the
Speaker 1: freshwater enema ride. Um. So that's fun. Um. Another popular
Speaker 1: attraction was the Tarzan swing. This was memorable for some
Speaker 1: good and bad reasons. It's kind of it's it's exact
Speaker 1: exactly what it sounds like. A giant rope swing into
Speaker 1: a into like a pool of water. Um. If people
Speaker 1: held onto the rope too long, they would, you know,
Speaker 1: they would mess up their swing and go back into
Speaker 1: like the jumping off point. That's just the problem with
Speaker 1: rope swings in general. Um. The biggest cause of alarm, however,
Speaker 1: was the pool of water. It wasn't like a pool
Speaker 1: of water. This was a section of the mountain that,
Speaker 1: like river runoff would go into it was freezing cold. Um.
Speaker 1: Lifeguards were forced to jump in the rescue people who
Speaker 1: forgot how to swim because they were so im prepared
Speaker 1: for the shock of the cold water. UM. Now, due
Speaker 1: to line placement, there was always a large cred of
Speaker 1: spectators that would often heckle people currently on the ride. UM.
Speaker 1: Park attendees recounting the crowd chanting pussy at bleeding injured
Speaker 1: riders after they climb out of this freezing pool. UM.
Speaker 1: Also the specting Also the spectating area gave a grand
Speaker 1: opportunity for people who are swinging to flash the flash
Speaker 1: the nearby crowd with boobs or dicks. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that's the that's the Tarzan swing. Um. Then oh,
Speaker 1: the they had they had a kayaking uh simulator. UM.
Speaker 1: It used giants submerged electronic fans underwater to help make
Speaker 1: turbulent conditions. Um. The kayaks will often get stuck or
Speaker 1: tip over. And in n two someone fell out of
Speaker 1: a kayak, got too close to an exposed electrical wire
Speaker 1: in the underwater fan and got electrocuted and died. Uh.
Speaker 1: This was the second visitor of death in the history
Speaker 1: of the park. The kayak ride closed shortly after. So
Speaker 1: someone got electrocuted because of underwater fans in and then uh.
Speaker 1: Around this time, they built one of the first wave
Speaker 1: pools in the country. Um. So the wave pool was
Speaker 1: nicknamed the Grave Pool for reasons that will become clear
Speaker 1: very shortly. Um. It was a onet wide by a
Speaker 1: hundred and tt long pool that caught held between five
Speaker 1: hundred and a thousand people often like shoulder and shoulder.
Speaker 1: It's a nightmare. Um. This was a wave pool designed
Speaker 1: by an engineer. Um. The water was way too marky
Speaker 1: to see through. There was like a mix of like runner,
Speaker 1: a mix of like a river runoff, body lotion, human
Speaker 1: waste and other bodily foods from like open wounds that
Speaker 1: got the waters really really murky. Um. The the artificial
Speaker 1: waves would would be like a few meters tall, and
Speaker 1: they go would go on for twenty straight minutes. Which
Speaker 1: is way too long for a wave pool. That that's
Speaker 1: that's not that's not how we do wave pools. Usually
Speaker 1: it's like five minutes on, ten minutes off or something.
Speaker 1: But twenty straight minutes of waves. Um, that's plenty of
Speaker 1: time for a good or for even like a good
Speaker 1: swimmer to get into some serious trouble because you just
Speaker 1: keep getting hit by waves and the pool gets pretty
Speaker 1: pretty deep. Um. Visitors who could not swim well would
Speaker 1: quickly have water going over their heads. Um. And experience.
Speaker 1: Swimmers who are used to ocean water didn't realize that
Speaker 1: the fresh water like the pool was fresh water, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't nearly as boint, which makes make it a
Speaker 1: lot more exhaust thing to try to swim through. UM. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there every few every few minutes, like after the way
Speaker 1: it's for done, they would they would clear out a
Speaker 1: particular section of the wave pool to scan for any
Speaker 1: bodies at the bottom, like at this at the special
Speaker 1: deep spot, they would clear everyone out to look for it. UM.
Speaker 1: Former employees claim that lifeguards at the wave pool would
Speaker 1: often claim thirty saves a day for each for each
Speaker 1: life UM, where your average your average lifeguard out of
Speaker 1: pool like may only rescue one or two people in
Speaker 1: the entire summer. And there were I think there was
Speaker 1: like there was like twelve lifeguards on duty at the
Speaker 1: way because it's massive. UM easily one of the scariest
Speaker 1: tractions at the park. UM. The first death happened in
Speaker 1: the same year of the kayaking death. UM and another
Speaker 1: guests round in nine seven. Now two deaths may not
Speaker 1: sound a lot, but that's that's that's that's that's the
Speaker 1: low tally. These lifeguards were saving so many people NonStop.
Speaker 1: There twelve lifeguards and duty saving about thirty people a day.
Speaker 1: Um for each one of them. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: nightmare because it was just so big, so so many people. UM.
Speaker 1: Lifeguards and staff would then give out rerisbands that say
Speaker 1: c f S or can't fucking swim. So if you
Speaker 1: have one of these, if you have one of these
Speaker 1: wristbands on, you've probably already gotten saved that day. Um.
Speaker 1: Also in four a man had a heart attack shortly
Speaker 1: after in the Tarzan swing pool. The the cold water
Speaker 1: believed to send him into shock, and then he died
Speaker 1: in the pool because of just how cold it was,
Speaker 1: like triggered a heart attack. Um. And then a few
Speaker 1: years later, in slight and slightly related news, UM, not
Speaker 1: this this is an action park's fault, but I think
Speaker 1: it's worth mentioning. Um, there was a bus crashed on
Speaker 1: the way to the park, killing five, killing five people
Speaker 1: on the on the highway. Um, so that that happened. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were going going to the park and it crashed. Uh.
Speaker 1: This is just this adding on to like this kind
Speaker 1: of press about the park. Um. But to a certain point,
Speaker 1: the more kind of danger and death would reported in
Speaker 1: the media. The more the local kids and teens just
Speaker 1: wanted to go because the magic and horror of action
Speaker 1: parks that you could leave with all of your dreams
Speaker 1: of fun and adventure and freedom come true, or you
Speaker 1: could leave in a body bag. Um, it's like it's
Speaker 1: this like, it's this like allure. What everyone really wants
Speaker 1: is a chance to risk your life. Uh and also
Speaker 1: not travel more than a couple of hours from home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's hard to say any people actually got
Speaker 1: hurt here. Uh, the state only requires the park to
Speaker 1: report serious injuries quote unquote, So unless you left in
Speaker 1: an ambliance, and we already know that he did, Unless
Speaker 1: you left in them, wasn't serious injury to this guy.
Speaker 1: So yeah, unless you left in an ambulance was almost
Speaker 1: certainly not gonna be reported. Um, but stories like three
Speaker 1: months in the hospital and the six moments in a
Speaker 1: body cast and the same day we got there, guy
Speaker 1: got I got stuck on the cannonball loop and not
Speaker 1: the person broke there ut cliff diving. We're not uncommon.
Speaker 1: Those are common sentiments people. People would say not to
Speaker 1: mention hundreds of thousands of dislocated joint, broken boats and concussions. Um.
Speaker 1: According to Newsweek UM quote from an emergency room doctor
Speaker 1: at nearby hospital, They claimed they admitted nearly five to
Speaker 1: ten people a day from Action Park. Um. Sometimes interesting
Speaker 1: reported yeah so so. Injuries included like ankle spring sproken bones, cuts, concussions,
Speaker 1: dislocations and and uh and uh and and head wounds.
Speaker 1: So a five five people in the emergency room per
Speaker 1: per day. Um and actually uh. The Vernon, New Jersey
Speaker 1: Ambliances had to stop serving Action Park because they would
Speaker 1: keep busy at the park all day. The city forced
Speaker 1: a Jean to buy two of its own ambliances to
Speaker 1: have its own Action Park Ambliance fleet. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: And I bet there's nothing that Jean was more responsible
Speaker 1: with than owning his own emergency services. And the majority
Speaker 1: of police calls for Vernon in the day were were
Speaker 1: for Action Park. There were there were many fights, many
Speaker 1: brawls because you know, parsity due to the sheer abundance
Speaker 1: of alcohol. Um. Now you you may be thinking, wow,
Speaker 1: this park seems pretty dangerous. I bet their insurance bills
Speaker 1: are pretty expensive. Well no, not really, um, because here's
Speaker 1: a quote from Seth Um. From seth porches, the journalis
Speaker 1: who had done most of the work on Action Park. Quote,
Speaker 1: Jean didn't believe that the concept of insurance. Yeah, this,
Speaker 1: this guy is like the ARCon of libertarianism. He is,
Speaker 1: he is, he's their captain planet Iron. Rand and her
Speaker 1: five best friends all got special rings and she and then,
Speaker 1: being a libertarian, he abandoned them to make Action Park. Immediately,
Speaker 1: she thought of if you got hurt, you should deal
Speaker 1: with that problem yourself. It wasn't his problem dealing. Um,
Speaker 1: but technically he needed like insurance to run the park.
Speaker 1: So he did what any true libertarian would do. He
Speaker 1: made his own fake insurance company in the Cayman Islands.
Speaker 1: He also used to mag inturdance company the Cayman Islands
Speaker 1: as a money laundering scheme. Uh yeah, look, he already
Speaker 1: said he was a libertarian. When when when when a
Speaker 1: park manager told Jean, like, the state says we can't
Speaker 1: do that, Jean replied, well, who the hell are they?
Speaker 1: They can't shut us down? Oh Jean, ah, you beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful animal. Surprisingly this, Surprisingly, this led to a large
Speaker 1: scale federal investigation. Yeah, that's usually how large scale federal
Speaker 1: investigations start. That's that's generally the way in the wake
Speaker 1: of the two deaths in four UM, they investigated Action
Speaker 1: Park and found all of these like financial fraud elements.
Speaker 1: This resulted in a three day hearing and the one
Speaker 1: hundred and ten count indictment UM. Jeane refused to testify
Speaker 1: or appear in court, but through his lawyer, he eventually
Speaker 1: pad guilty to counts of fraud, theft, and conspiracy, and
Speaker 1: he was instructed to give up control of Action Park
Speaker 1: since some of it was operated on state land. UM,
Speaker 1: so he hatched a new scheme. He decided to be
Speaker 1: the worst tenant he possibly could. He stopped paying bills
Speaker 1: and filing paperwork for all of his like rent to
Speaker 1: to the state because he because the state owned some
Speaker 1: of the land, he just stopped paying UM. He did
Speaker 1: everything he could to piss off this off the state
Speaker 1: landowners he was renting from. Look, the government can't own land, Garrison.
Speaker 1: The only people who can own land are weird libertarian
Speaker 1: He just didn't pay hundreds of thousand dollars in rent,
Speaker 1: and somehow and somehow this worked. By the mid eighties,
Speaker 1: the state guards away. The state got so fed up
Speaker 1: with Jean that they agreed to sell him the land
Speaker 1: for dollars just to get him out of the way,
Speaker 1: which he did so then eventually he owned all of
Speaker 1: the land. Actually park was on because he just stopped
Speaker 1: paying rent and the state was like, fine, you buy it.
Speaker 1: It's it's unclear the exact amount, but it's a multiple hundred,
Speaker 1: multiple of hundreds of thousand dollars. He just didn't pay
Speaker 1: ums and they were like and they were like, exactly,
Speaker 1: so it was it was probably around he was that
Speaker 1: annoying that they see, yeah, like it's it's actually park
Speaker 1: became like an important part of the local economy. UM
Speaker 1: for Vernon, you know, brought a lot of people into
Speaker 1: this small what else are you doing in vern like
Speaker 1: other businesses had interests in keeping the park open and
Speaker 1: having good press. Um. Jean would bribe public officials, He
Speaker 1: bought politicians houses, um, and he found a lot of
Speaker 1: ways to put people on his payroll, you know, because
Speaker 1: like he was employing because he was also employing all
Speaker 1: of their kids, Like all of their kids worked for
Speaker 1: gene um And according to local reporters who who personally
Speaker 1: knew gene specifically, like God became friends with him. At
Speaker 1: the end of his life, he was most certainly involved
Speaker 1: with the mob Um, there was a lot of sketchy
Speaker 1: friends Jeane had, and he would say a lot of
Speaker 1: like weird concerning things. Um he would he would have
Speaker 1: to make jokes with high level employees. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is the guy who heard that teenagers were having
Speaker 1: their bathing suits ripped off and said, well, let's find
Speaker 1: a way for people to watch. To make jokes with
Speaker 1: high level employees about how like certain managers knew where
Speaker 1: all the bodies are buried. It's like they couldn't betray him. Um.
Speaker 1: So like he's had a lot of you know, like jokes. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: Um so with with with a fake insurance company, six
Speaker 1: deaths and an unknown but very high number of of
Speaker 1: of injuries, you expect a lot of people to sue
Speaker 1: Action Park for damages, and they tried, but barely anyone
Speaker 1: ever succeeded. Um. If you tried to sue Action Park,
Speaker 1: Geane would always refuse to settle. He would take it
Speaker 1: to trial every single time, and he would make the
Speaker 1: trial as long and as painful as possible. Um. Action
Speaker 1: Park would win about nine of cases, and ket he
Speaker 1: got such such a reputation of being hard to sue
Speaker 1: UM that most lawyers just didn't even bother um and
Speaker 1: even when he lost cases, he just wouldn't pay multiple times.
Speaker 1: U S. Marsha, Yeah he's not. He doesn't pay the
Speaker 1: government rent. He's not paying you because he killed kill
Speaker 1: times armed you. Marshals came to the Action Park lot
Speaker 1: to collect money and like they because they got to
Speaker 1: know some of the employees, like the points be like,
Speaker 1: oh no, Gregg's here again with the Marshals. All right,
Speaker 1: someone someone go get Jeane. We we gotta we we
Speaker 1: gotta get a check or something. It's it's the U S. Marshals.
Speaker 1: Tommy Lee Jones is here with Robert Downey Jr. Um.
Speaker 1: That was the U S. Marshals. Absolutely was Marshal's It's
Speaker 1: a good movie. Okay, Okay, that was such a great
Speaker 1: there there. There are like one or two incidents that
Speaker 1: Jean did have to settle. It related to like certain deaths,
Speaker 1: but it was it was settling out of court mostly
Speaker 1: just to shut people up, um and for not very
Speaker 1: much money, like I think the first death he settled
Speaker 1: for only fifty UM. So yeah, but the death, danger
Speaker 1: and scandal of Action Park didn't immediately affect the parks
Speaker 1: aubility to operate um and like unlike the actual desert
Speaker 1: Action Park Action Parks, Action Park's own death was like various,
Speaker 1: It was a very slow process. UM. The nineties recession
Speaker 1: hit Action Park pretty hard. UM And in the eighties,
Speaker 1: Jean's parent company, Great American Recreation actually opened two spinoff
Speaker 1: locations UM that they weren't quite as wild as the original,
Speaker 1: and both of those were forced forced to shut down
Speaker 1: in the early nineties. UM And as the eighties came
Speaker 1: to a close and people started growing up, the dangerw
Speaker 1: Action Park became less appealing to the new generation of parents.
Speaker 1: UM and the bad press, deaths and lawsuits piled up,
Speaker 1: and it started impacting the park's attendants in like the
Speaker 1: mid nineties. Yeah, people they got what the problem is, Garrison.
Speaker 1: They took the lead out of the gasoline and parents
Speaker 1: started carrying about their kids doing things as opposed to
Speaker 1: just just wanting them away. UM. That's when everything went
Speaker 1: wrong in American society, if you ask me. The real
Speaker 1: kicker was when Jean's business partner, Bob Brennan was found
Speaker 1: guilty of fraud and money laundering and sentenced to ten
Speaker 1: years in prison. So Jeans Magical Money Tree ran out
Speaker 1: and by Action Park declared bankruptcy and at the end
Speaker 1: what they their last operating season was the next summer.
Speaker 1: So then Action Park closed its gates in nineteen UM.
Speaker 1: So you know the political you know circle that Action
Speaker 1: Park was able to exist and had come to an end.
Speaker 1: Um to Two years later, UH, the ski resort and
Speaker 1: the park grounds were bought by another amusement park company
Speaker 1: named Intro West. Most of the old Jerry Rick attractions
Speaker 1: were ripped out and it was renamed Mountain Creek. It
Speaker 1: became a generic smalltown ski resort, golf course, and water park.
Speaker 1: But the story isn't over just yet. UM. In twenty ten,
Speaker 1: Intro West itself had to declare. UM had to declare
Speaker 1: bankruptcy and sell Mountain Creek water Park and the ski resort,
Speaker 1: and Jean, who was now in his like late seventies,
Speaker 1: decided he wanted his theme park back, so he led
Speaker 1: a group of investors to gain control the park again,
Speaker 1: and he succeeded UM. But before he could fully enjoy
Speaker 1: turning Action Park back into before he could turn Mountain
Speaker 1: Creek back into Action Park, he died UM into into
Speaker 1: two US, two US and twelve UM. He had he
Speaker 1: he shouldn't have lasted into he was. He was seventy
Speaker 1: eight years old. He died in his home in twos
Speaker 1: and twelve. UM Two years later, Jean's son Andy, partially
Speaker 1: capitalizing on nostalgia, revived the Action Park name and added
Speaker 1: a few more kind of more action attractions and announced
Speaker 1: plans for a new, updated version of the Cannonball Loop
Speaker 1: designed by real engineers. Uh. That did not happen, UM,
Speaker 1: And there's there's that. They're they're they're they're not they're
Speaker 1: not not actually building it, because in seventeen the park
Speaker 1: file for bankruptcy again, and a year later ownership changed
Speaker 1: hands once more. UM, a Vernon native and former Action
Speaker 1: Park employee Joe Hessan, who worked at the park for
Speaker 1: eighteen years, bought controlling and then he went on to
Speaker 1: become like a snowboarding businessman or whatever. UM. He bought
Speaker 1: controlling shares in Action Park. UM and he had and
Speaker 1: he uh will have. He has exclusive year round oversight
Speaker 1: of the park's ski resort and water park operations, and
Speaker 1: he is the new CEO UM. But as of Mountain
Speaker 1: Creek was still in like twenty eight million dollars in
Speaker 1: debt to the state. UM and and that's kind of
Speaker 1: is obviously not open. Mountain Creek is open, but it's
Speaker 1: like a boring golf course with a few water slides.
Speaker 1: It's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's. It's not Action
Speaker 1: Park anymore. It is it's it's a totally different thing.
Speaker 1: It's a ski resort with a few other attractions. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of the end of Action Park. I
Speaker 1: know in the last few years it's gotten more popular
Speaker 1: on the internet. I know last year there was an
Speaker 1: HBO documentary came out made by Seth pork Is, um,
Speaker 1: who I only I only found after I did tons
Speaker 1: of research for this episode. I'm like, oh, someone already
Speaker 1: did a really good job detailing this. That's gonna it's
Speaker 1: pretty Um. It's it's, it's, it's, it's, it's it's a
Speaker 1: great documentary. You can find a whole bunch of weird
Speaker 1: articles on this. I would recommend you read the New
Speaker 1: Jersey magazine article on it. It's just hilarious. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that is the place that I wish I could live at.
Speaker 1: Uh sounds it sounds of like a blast. It's it's
Speaker 1: everything that I actually want from libertarianism plus a bunch
Speaker 1: of things I don't want, which is what libertarian get.
Speaker 1: It's always what you get. This is why he's described
Speaker 1: as like it's a mix of Iron Brand and Lord
Speaker 1: of the Flies. It's like all of the things combined
Speaker 1: to make this weird like eighties specific you know place
Speaker 1: that is almost like a fever dream. Um, but yeah,
Speaker 1: that is that is That is the story of Action Park,
Speaker 1: probably the world's most dangerous amusement park, not not noting
Speaker 1: noting park with the most deaths, but the most serious injuries. Absolutely. Um,
Speaker 1: it's shocking how few people we have reported died there
Speaker 1: based on like how ridiculous a lot of these riots.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's gotta be because everyone was drunk enough
Speaker 1: that they hit limp, you know. So. The one thing
Speaker 1: I like understated is how many places you could get
Speaker 1: alcohol for mostly free. We're actually parking so many alcohol stands.
Speaker 1: They would just give it to the fourteen year old kids.
Speaker 1: It's just I'm a certain amount of booze. Well, you
Speaker 1: can't buy this, have it for free. Look, the law
Speaker 1: says you can purchase alcohol, doesn't say we can't give
Speaker 1: it to you. That says nothing about drinking and get
Speaker 1: on them go cops, what's this stay gonna do? Stop me?
Speaker 1: They can't do that. So yeah, that's that. That is Beeds.
Speaker 1: They sent Diet on the Cannonball Rock anyway. All right,
Speaker 1: so that is that is the episode. We ran a
Speaker 1: little bit long just because there's so much to talk about.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I've never loved anyone more. I've never been
Speaker 1: more horrified by the thought of meeting he sounds He's real,
Speaker 1: real creepy, like listening to his voice sounds exactly what
Speaker 1: you think is that voice sounds like like like like,
Speaker 1: think of what we've all said, now imagine him talking.
Speaker 1: You got it. You got that's it. You got his voice. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: do you have any palpable scarrison? Um, you can finally
Speaker 1: posting about Catboy made rave outfits on Twitter dot com.
Speaker 1: You can you do post about that stuff a lot?
Speaker 1: I do now it's real fun. Yeah, just just just
Speaker 1: mainly Twitter. I guess at Hungry bow Tie and read
Speaker 1: read that weird Ingersey article because it is hilarious. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and shout out to Dan O'Brien, the only person from
Speaker 1: New Jersey I've agreed to know. Um. All right, well,
Speaker 1: welcome to the end of Behind the Bastards the podcast
Speaker 1: that's over now, goodbye by