Hersheypark to add new roller coaster, Skyrush for 2012

by Joel Bullock on

After months of releasing coded clues and hints via a fictitious engineering website reminiscent of the Dharma Initiative from ABC’s Lost, Hersheypark unveiled its highly anticipated 2012 roller coaster. Dubbed Skyrush, the steel roller coaster will dominate the park’s skyline with a 200-foot tall peak. The ride will begin with an unusually speedy ascent to the top of the lift hill. Then, riders will be treated to a layout indicative of hyper coasters: high speeds, banked turns, and airtime hills. Loved by coaster fans, the airtime hills are designed to provide a weightless sensation at the crests.

Skyrush’s most intriguing feature may be its floorless seats. Each wing-shaped row of four seats will have two floored seats in the middle and two floorless seats on the edges. I’d imagine thrill junkies like myself will be scrambling for those outer seats. Roller coasters with this kind of layout and these stats aren’t rare, but the swift climb up the lift hill and the ride’s first-of-its-kind trains do make Skyrush look interesting.

Here’s an animated video that gives us a preview of what Hersheypark’s Skyrush will look like.


The Official Re-Birth of the Barbary Coast. Sort of.

by David Farley on
Certain travel magazines and newspaper travel sections like to proclaim that cities and neighborhood’s have been re-born. I remember seeing an article in a travel magazine several years ago that claimed Stockholm had achieved this seemingly other-worldly status. Oh really? I thought. It seems such an enlightened incarnation of an entire city would have been more newsworthy.

Aside from travel writing’s sometimes proclivity for exaggeration, the once legendary and long disappeared Barbary Coast neighborhood has been re-born. Well, sort of. I’ve spent the month of August looking for remnants of it and until I met a man named William Sauro I had no idea that the neighborhood is officially back.


But, you’re probably thinking right now, I thought the Barbary Coast was long gone since 1917?

I met Mr. Sauro at the Old Ship Saloon, fittingly enough, since the bar – on Pacific and Battery Streets, right in the heart of the Barbary Coast – is constructed from an old ship that had brought miners from New York to get in on the potential riches of the Gold Rush. I wanted to ask him the same question about this supposed resurrection of the Barbary Coast.
Mr. Sauro, who is retired, told me he’s the president of the Barbary Coast Neighborhood Association. Such associations, he said, have a lot of power in San Francisco. The infamous and longtime Telegraph Hill Dwellers are the most powerful neighborhood association in the city. And so, in 2005, some of the denizens of the area formerly known as the Barbary Coast decided to create their own association. “It’s mostly so we can have a say in land development and quality of life issues,” he told me as I sipped a glass of pisco punch. “Someone needs to represent the residents here and that’s what the neighborhood association does.”

But why, I asked, did they choose the name Barbary Coast? After all, it’s a bit ironic that a bunch of well-off city dwellers would take a name known for crime and poverty (adding an extra dose of the irony is that the San Francisco Board of Realtors endorsed the name change).


“The Financial District Neighborhood Association just doesn’t sound very cool,” Sauro said. I agreed.

Sauro did make an interesting connection between the current neighborhood and the legendary one, noting the expensive restaurants that have popped up along the nearby Embarcadero. “They’re great restaurants,” Sauro said. “But so expensive that people in the neighborhood are still being shanghaied–just in a totally different way.”

And so, as such, the Barbary Coast is re-born. That sounds newsworthy to me.

In Praise of Staying Home on Labor Day Weekend

by Pam Mandel on

Labor Day weekend. It’s the last hurrah of summer. Soon, it’s back to school or back to work, and in the northern hemisphere the planet tilts away from the sun as we move into fall. It’s tempting to book one more plane ticket, squeeze in one more overnight hike, one more weekend road trip. After Labor Day weekend, it’s closed toe shoes and alarm clocks and carpools and behaving like a grown up again.

Don’t give into the hype. Labor Day isn’t the last weekend ever, there’s no need to act like it. And there are a number of good reasons to stick close to home. Let’s break it down.

Campgrounds are packed. Oh, you wanted to get away from it all, but now, you’re in a parking lot of RVs and listless teenagers and that guy who won’t turn down the Bryan Adams. Sure, you might be able to snap up a last minute campsite, but if you’re going camping with everyone else, you might as well stay in town.

Traffic is a disaster. According to the National Safety Council, Labor Day weekend ranks fifth for the most dangerous driving day in the US. In addition to the dangers of sharing the road with sunburned, hungover, dehydrated lunatics, you’ll share the road with thousands of perfectly sober and sun-screened drivers, all trying to make it home for a good night’s sleep before school or work the next day. You don’t really want to spend 12 out of your 72 free hours in gridlock, do you?

Labor Day hotel rates are inflated. A random search revealed a difference of 50-75 dollars less for rooms in San Francisco on the weekend after Labor Day. Manhattan rates? About 100 dollars less a night for the weekend after Labor Day. Don’t take my word for it, try it yourself.

There are top notch festivals in your back yard. Seattle has Bumbershoot, four days of headline music acts, art, literature… Brooklyn has the West Indian American Day Parade & Carnival with incredible food and costumes. Sure, it’s about West Indies pride, but everyone is welcome. Check your local events site or paper; there’s something fantastic happening near you. Don’t dismiss those small town events, often, they’re an opportunity to fall in love with your home town all over again.

Your local friends and family want to see you. When did you last have everyone over for dinner? When did you go for a picnic in the park by your house? Spring was crappy, and then, you were away and they were away… It’s time you got your tribe together for grilling and shandy and making up stories about what’s next. You’re all off work; take advantage of it.

It’s a great time to take a break. Travel is fantastic, but it would be a lie to say it’s always easy and relaxing. Why not take the long weekend to just wind down? The end of summer is the perfect time to swing in the hammock and mentally write that “What I did on my summer vacation” report. Stock the cooler, park the car, and give yourself three days to just chill.

The weather is great and beer is on sale. ’nuff said.

Photo via Flickr user Myki Roventine.

Photo of the Day – Boston T Station

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Everywhere you look, there’s a photo waiting to happen. Consider this photo by Flickr user Aypho of one of Boston’s famous “T Stations.” Just a mundane train station, right? Not this time – the photographer’s subtle use of lighting at dusk, the colorful lines of the railway and platform edge and the blurred car in the background all convey a striking sense of movement to the image. It’s almost as if the viewer was riding along on a speeding train, being whisked away to some unknown destination off in the distance.

Taken any great photos during your recent travels? Why not add them to our Gadling group on Flickr? We might just pick one of yours as our Photo of the Day.

“SUP the Coast” paddles 2000 mile eastern seaboard

by Kyle Ellison on

Here at Gadling we recently reported on the Dudes on Media team who sea kayaked from Alaska to Seattle and traced the length of India’s Ganges River in a rowboat and a rickshaw. While the Dudes on Media team edits the India footage into what will be their 3rd documentary, on the other side of the world, the SUP the Coast duo of Mike Simpson and Will Rich recently completed an epic paddle of their own to raise awareness for SUP Cleanup and the Wounded Warrior Project.

Beginning in Key West, Florida, on June 29th the SUP the Coast team completed a 121 day stand up paddle journey along the eastern seaboard when they pulled into Portland, Maine on their 90th day of paddling. Covering an average of 30 miles a day in difficult upwind conditions, Simpson claims that progressing at “such a slow pace for such a massive distance” was the most grueling part of the journey.

With adversity, however, of course also comes the reward. Along the way, not only did the duo take comfort in the warmth and hospitality of strangers met along the journey, but they never lost the passion for the causes that initially inspired them to take to the sea.

In addition to paddling the daily 30 miles, the team also decided to spend at least 20 minutes each day cleaning up a local beach to benefit the environmental organization SUP Cleanup. According to Simpson, the cleanup segment of the trip entailed taking a blue plastic tarp, laying it flat on the sand, and once it was full of plastics and marine debris gathered from the shoreline the team would “roll it like a big blue burrito” and paddle it on the front of their boards until the nearest town for recycling and disposal.

What’s the one item that stood out the most during the cleanup project?

Plastic water bottles. “No way will I use another disposable water bottle” claims Simpson. “No way”.

The second group the paddle aimed to raise awareness for is the Wounded Warrior Project, an organization which aims to empower and support wounded military veterans returning from serving overseas. In a statement made by the SUP the Coast team prior to departing on the journey, they respectfully stated that their mission was to “stand up for those who have stood up for us”.

Still trying to wrap their head around the journey and continuing to raise support for their causes, like most long-distance adventurers, the team now must confront those two simple words:

“What’s next?”