The Condemned Rollercoaster
A fog-choked amusement park on the Jersey Shore at 6:17 AM, where a demolition crew is staring at a 1978 wooden rollercoaster that just passed its structural inspection by a single point.
The Seaside Serpent — a 46-year-old wooden coaster with 3,100 feet of track and a 72-foot drop — was scheduled for demolition at 7 AM. But the county inspector's report, filed eleven minutes ago, technically rates it a 51 out of 100, one point above the condemnation threshold. The demolition foreman says the crew is already here and the wrecking ball is warm. A local preservation society has a lawyer on speakerphone offering a temporary restraining order if someone can prove the ride still runs. The control booth key is sitting on the foreman's clipboard.
“It passed! A 51 is a 51. I rode worse at Coney Island last summer and I'm still here — mostly. One lap, we save a landmark.”
“A 51 means forty-nine percent of that structure wants to kill you. The ride hasn't carried a human being since Obama's first term.”
The Seaside Serpent completed one full lap with Double white-knuckling the lead car — though a 14-foot section of track near the second turn splintered and dropped into the sand roughly four seconds after the car cleared it. The preservation society's lawyer got his restraining order, the demolition crew got sent home, and the local news got a headline that wrote itself.
Landmark saved, baby — that little gap in the track just adds character, like a missing tooth on a hockey player.
He is celebrating 'saving' a ride that literally tried to delete itself mid-lap, and somehow I'm the unreasonable one.