We just won this photo from some very nice folks on Ebay. When asked, the seller admitted that they didn’t have any info on the photo. She said she was going through some old photos in their possession and found it.
Anyone here know what’s going on in the photo? There is a banner above and left on a wall that reads, “Ride this wheel at your own risk.” I’m very curious as to what the large disk is in the center of the pavilion. I think I’ll name the two guys in the photo Vince and Larry, great grandfathers of our two modern crash test dummies.
This is a photo of Jerry Gruss and I racing unicycles that have relatively large wheels and are the predecessors to the Coker. In the shot, I have a slight lead over Jerry. As we approached the last lap, he pulled an axe handle out of the back of his shirt and smacked me over the head with it. Even unconscious, I almost beat him, he’s so slow.
The turntable we’re riding on was an original wax “super album” donated to the exhibition race by Thomas Alva Edison. It is an extra, extra, extra long play version of “Inna Gadda da Vida” by Iron Butterfly, one of Edison’s first forays into the “super album” medium. His choice of the awkward, excessive record size and hideously inane music ensured an early death to this recording medium. It’s turning at a high speed which makes the course that much more difficult. The tip speed at the edge of the record is just over the speed of sound. The shrill sound of the supersonic surface made all of the dogs within a mile radius howl as if all the moons of Jupiter were in the sky. That distracted me just enough so that Jerry was able to ambush me which is odd in that I’m usually alert to that sort of deceptive, conspiratorial behavior.
Looks like a rotating dance floor or something like that. The sign probably meant if you fell off the dance floor when drunk you couldn’t sue them for it.
I don’t know what this pavilion is for but it reminds me of the amusement
park I went to as a kid.
We’d sit in the center of the large rotating disk with our legs out straight
in front of us and our sweaty hands on either side trying to bond with the
surface of the disk. Then the disk would rotate (fast), and we’d hang on as
long as possible before sliding off into oblivion.
I wonder if those still exist. It hasn’t been that long since I was a kid.
Like a couple of years or so.
However, contrary to previously supplied misinformation, that is not Vince
and Larry, nor is it Greg and Jerry.
It is Kelsey and Kelsey’s mom. I understand that this shot was taken just
before Kelsey’s mom taught Kelsey how to do seat drag, one-footed,
backwards, in a figure eight. Afterwards, Kelsey was heard talking to
friends on her cell phone, saying over and over again, “My mom is
sooooooooo cool!”
Now that the secret’s out, I’ll be sure to keep my distance from Jerry next summer. Or if I happen to be in a race with him, I will suddenly have a shoestring caught in the pedal at the start so he gets a big lead on me.
yoopers wrote:
> We just won this photo from some very nice folks on Ebay. When asked,
> the seller admitted that they didn’t have any info on the photo. She
> said she was going through some old photos in their possession and found
> it.
I’m interested in seeing it - but it’d work better if you’d included a link
to a picture!
yoopers wrote:
> Okay. I uploaded it to my Yahoo! photo album. Here’s the link:
> http://photos.yahoo.com/yoopers98
> Click on the “Yahoo! Photo Album” folder.
Thanks. And suddenly harper is instantly recognisable
Looks to me like the whole thing ought to ring when they hop on the bit in
the middle. It looks like some sort of giant shop counter bell.
Why do you say 1940s? This image looks a lot older. I’m not an expert, but those clothing styles look like 20s or earlier.
I think the sign on the wall applies to the flying saucer those guys are riding on. I think they are trying to keep it from taking off. Nobody else wants to help, just the two kooks on the unicycles doing all the work.
Really, I think the “wheel” is some sort of plaything like what Carol McLean mentioned. I don’t think they would need to warn people about riding unicycles…
My wife, who is something of an expert on the history of American fashion, also
believes it to be much earlier than the 1940s. Based on the knickers the two
boys at the right appear to wearing she says it could be anywhere from the
1880s to the 1920s. Since men’s fashions have tended to change more slowly than
women’s, it is difficult to pinpoint. (If there were even one woman in the
photo, and assuming they’re not in costume but authentically dressed to begin
with, she would be able to give a fairly exact date.)
Based on the nature of the device they’re riding around, 1900 to the 1920s
seems more likely than any earlier.
I’m sure if we all do some investigating we can come up with some info on this
intriguing scene.
The sellers responded to my inquiry already. I incorrectly recalled
that they had advertised the photo as a 1940ish photo. They said, no,
they had advertised the photo as a 1900s photo. If they had to guess,
they would guess 1915-1918. So we press on from here.
