Waterslide Part II

A Beautiful Weekend For Sliding Down The Streets

After yesterdays post about Day 1 of the 500 foot waterslide down Lyon Street in downtown Grand Rapids, the news reports on Monday talk of 30,000 people showed up with about 10,000 making the slide. And of course there's video, with the obligatory opening commercial and a long interview with a girl in a bikini (snort):

500 waterslide opens

Although the event was free, there was stuff for sale, including tickets to "skip the line".

Fire hoses along Lyon Street NW gushed about 20,000 gallons of water per hour, ACP Entertainment General Manager Ryan Strayhorn said, although all of the water was recycled, thanks to Dykema Excavators.

(Rob) Bliss said he sold about 470 of his 500 T-shirts, priced at $10 each, as well as numerous $30 skip-the-line tickets, although he was unsure of the exact amount.

...

Bliss said that while most of the day Saturday included starting, stopping and fixing glitches, Sunday was practically seamless.

"Today was how it was supposed to be all weekend. Sunday was what I had been envisioning since I started on this project. (Saturday early afternoon) was very scary, very painful, very difficult. I thought there was the possibility that we'd have to cancel the event," Bliss said.

Overall, Bliss said that it was "absolutely" a successful weekend.

"I think that may be have been the coolest thing I've ever done," he said.

Kind of fun to have something silly like this happen in the dog days of August on a beautiful summer weekend. (grin) And it's probably better than the sliders slid at a modest 10 mph or so, instead of the 40-60 mph which had been predicted. (duh)

Dr. Phil

Updated numbers: 8-26-2010 Th