This guy also has a water slide in his backyard. (Imokurnotok/Creative Commons)
Disclaimer: While this article is based on wet and wild facts, we’ve also included some satire. Buckle up and enjoy the slide, um… ride.
Nostalgia has a gravitational pull on some people. They say you can’t go back again, but you always can. The problem is, that it’s sometimes hard to reconcile the past with the present. Those Burger King Star Wars glasses? Totally full of lead. Lawn darts? Banned after it was decided that leisure and metal-tipped foot-long darts might not be the best combination. But one man decided to take action when something he grew up loving went away, and now he’s the proud owner of a full-size amusement park water slide.
Cincinnati was home to Coney Island (no, not that one), an amusement park dating back to 1850. In 1925, an outdoor freshwater pool Sunlite Pool was added. 20 years later, the Silver Bullet (no, not that one) was added to the pool. Described as a “speed slide [that] splashes down right in the heart of Sunlite Pool,” it looked like a much larger version of a slide on a playground.
Sadly, much the way of Chuck E. Cheese’s rat group and Young Sheldon, Coney Island closed up shop for good, with the park ceasing operations in December of last year. The closing of the park left quite an impression on Adam Woltermann, whose name sounds suspiciously like “water, man.” He’d worked there for five seasons, and when he heard that the park and the rides were going to be demolished, he bought the Silver Bullet for an undisclosed price.
“I like to keep things interesting and it was a cool, fun, unique piece,” Woltermann told WRKC. And nothing says “interesting” more than paying lots of money for a gigantic slide, having it professionally dismantled and moved to an undisclosed location, where the general public can’t see it, and since it’s not refurbished, it’s just 5,000 tons of metal and not a water slide currently.
With summer just around the corner, what are Woltermann’s immediate plans for the Silver Bullet? He doesn’t have any. So essentially, he has a non-functioning piece of history that thousands of Ohioans have a connection to just sitting around. And while he says he’d like to refurbish it, he’s not sure whether it will be for public or private use once it is, suggesting he has no idea what to do with his purchase.
If he refurbishes it but keeps it for private use only, he’ll quickly become the most-hated man from Ohio since Marilyn Manson. Woltermann tells the news outlet that he’s already gotten offers to buy the slide, but has turned them down.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
