On June 7, there will be a ribbon cutting for The Thrill Zone and all rides will be one ticket. Gillian has brought in three bigger rides. The Disk‘o,’ by Italian manufacturer Zamperla, rides on a u-shaped rail structure. Combining a breathtaking dual rocking-spinning motion with an outward-facing pedestal seat, Gillian says it has been well-received. The new ride holds 24 people and spins as it moves back and forth along the rail.
The Alien Invasion is a standard gravitron, a spaceship-like ride. There are panels, which are angled back, and riders stand against the panels. As the ride rotates, centrifugal force is exerted against the pads by the rider, removing the rider from the floor, due to the slant. The ride can reach a maximum speed of 24 rpm in less than 20 seconds. At this speed, the riders are experiencing centrifugal force equivalent to three times the force of gravity.
The ride operator is located in the center of the ride. Lights and music are part of the action, which attracts a lot of attention.
“The kids love both of these rides,” he said. “We’ve had lines since Palm Sunday weekend, it’s really been spectacular.”
Under the ever-popular Big Wheel, a Ferris wheel offering riders a panoramic view of the island, Gillian is incorporating a new haunted house, which will make its debut sometime this month. Gillian said it will be a dark and scary crowd-pleaser.
Back by popular demand is the “Wacky Worm,” a ride which Gillian moved to the Funland last year.
“We had such an outpouring from Ocean City people,” he said. “People like what they like. We had no idea how attached some people were to it. We thought it might do well in Sea Isle, which it did, but we found that it was really missed in Ocean City, so we brought in another one. We listened to the guests. They told us about it; and they weren’t happy. We hope that everyone will forgive us and enjoy the new Wacky Worm.”
The bumper boats - a large ride involving inflatable, bumping boats - is now history.
“They were difficult to operate,” he said. “They were becoming less of an attraction, and with gas prices, the bumper boats were expensive to operate. We felt that we could do something more fun and interesting.
“In this industry, you have to be constantly thinking about costs and what people like, stay ahead of the curve,” he said.
“We did a lot of work on the rides in Sea Isle, too,” he said. “We added a Demolition Derby, and three new kiddie rides. We have a nice mix of rides down there.”
The golf course along the boardwalk on the park’s north end has also been renovated.
The glow in the dark golf course, Gillian said, “turned out spectacularly.”
“Everything glows,” he said. “There are black lights, so the clubs, the balls, everything, glows. It’s pretty cool.”
In addition to new rides, Gillian said there will be new lights on the Big Wheel.
“We’re going to do light shows,” he said. “Every five or 10 minutes there will be a little action.”
At Playland’s Castaway Cove, the big excitement is with the Ferris wheel and some new additions to the golf course.
Owner Scott Simpson said the recently refurbished Ferris wheel boasts a new, elaborate LED lighting system allowing a design of up to 256 colors.
“Instead of fixed colors, we can constantly change the colors, rotating them in and out, back and forth,” he said. “We can make patterns; it’s going to be very interesting, an attraction in itself. We had clear LED bulbs, but they did not allow us the flexibility. Now we can make the wheel all red, all blue, mix it up, do whatever we want. We have a rainbow of colors to choose from.”
The metal poles are up, the signals are dangling over the street and crews have been working behind orange cones along West College Avenue in Santa Rosa to ready the long-awaited traffic lights at the crosswalk at Link Lane.
Moved by the death more than two years ago of a 15-year-old girl in the crossing, neighbors lobbied city officials, U.S. senators and even the governor with letters and petitions to demand stoplights.
As city staff studied traffic conditions, secured funds and made plans for the lights, residents continued their push, rattled by other close calls.
"I was kind of amazed, actually," when crews installed the poles, said Erick Ratliff, who led the neighborhood campaign.
City officials expect the signals will be working by mid-June.
Michelle Cordova, 15, a sophomore at Santa Rosa High School, was hit Jan. 27, 2010, in the crosswalk by a motorist whose family said he didn't see her. Cordova would have graduated last week.
Neighbors said they knew the intersection was treacherous long before Cordova was killed, although police officials at the time said their accident reports didn't indicate it was a dangerous crossing.
Then, two other teens were struck and suffered minor injuries in the same crosswalk.
A slight rise in the road, cars speeding down West College Avenue and a crosswalk that spans four lanes created conditions that pitted motorists against pedestrians, neighbors said.
As a motorist, it's difficult to see the striped crosswalk paint "until you're right on top of it," City Councilwoman Susan Gorin said.
"I could hit someone as easily as I could be hit," said Randi Farkas of Sebastopol, a marriage and family therapist whose office is just west of the crosswalk.
The project is costing $359,000 and the money comes from the city's capital improvement fund, said supervising engineer Steve Dittmer. Construction began the first week of May.
"I've seen so many rear-end crashes and I've seen so many near-misses," said Danny Hall, a staff member at the Terracina at Santa Rosa apartment complex where Cordova lived. "This is money well spent."
Cordova and a cousin were in the crosswalk, marked by striping and a florescent yellow-green pedestrian sign, at the time of the 6:19 p.m. crash.
The driver told police he did not see the girl. Police found no indication that then-22-year-old Orion Swank was speeding or distracted.
After Cordova's death, city engineers launched a traffic study and concluded that the traffic volume and other conditions warranted a stoplight, city traffic engineer Rob Sprinkle said.
Kitchens may be the hearth of the home, but bathrooms are an even more popular target for remodeling.
Bath projects, up 17% in the last two years, have become the most common remodeling jobs, says a survey this month by the National Association of Home Builders.
Nearly a third of Americans, or 31%, want to remodel their baths compared with 25% who seek the same for their kitchens, according to a December survey by Better Homes and Gardens magazineof 4,000 readers interested in buying or renovating a home.
Yet today's homeowners appear less interested in the grandeur of a master bath, with a separate spa-like tub, and more in its practicality.
"They're not doing the McMansion bathroom. … They're doing more intimate spaces," says designer Stephen Saint-Onge, author of No Place Like Home (Wiley) who has clients in the New York metro area. Even if a client still wants a separate tub and shower (most opt for just the shower), he says they'll choose a soaking tub rather than the huge whirlpool.
"We're taking out these whirlpool tubs," because people aren't using them, says Jerry Levine, an upscale Washington D.C.-area remodeler. In the master bathroom, he says clients prefer instead a large shower with a bench, a ceiling-mounted rain shower head and a hand-held shower.
Homeowners are concerned about reducing utility costs, says a fourth-quarter 2011 survey of architects by the American Institute of Architects. As a result, efficient LED (light emitting diode) fixtures and water-saving toilets are in increasing demand, says AIA's chief economist, Kermit Baker.
Also popular is accessibility via doorless showers, as well as comfort via radiant heated floors, hand showers and a linen closet or other storage, the survey finds.
"People want a classic, basic bathroom," that can be dressed up and changed with accessories such as towels, Saint-Onge says.
Conservation. With water scarcity on the rise in parts of the United States, homeowners are looking for more efficient toilets and faucets.
There are plenty of dual-flush toilets on the market, in which one button is used for solids and the second (less water) for liquids. Also, newer single-flush commodes are using as few as 1.28 gallons-per-flush, which is less than the 1.6 gpf used by many recent versions and markedly less than the 5.0 gpf of the old-fashioned commode.
Confused about how to pick a water miser? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which launched the Energy Star label for appliances 20 years ago, started the WaterSense label in 2006 for water-efficient toilets, faucets and shower heads.
"I don't hear people complaining about shower pressure," says Susan Matus, a project designer for Case Design/Remodeling, a firm in the Washington, D.C., area. "Technology has kept pace with what we want to do with conservation."
Larger, varied tiles. "We're seeing bigger tiles even in small bathrooms. That would have been unheard of 10 years ago," Matus says. She sees more clients varying not only tile size but also its texture, especially as more tile is made to look like wood, linen or something else.
"We don't see lots of glazed tile anymore," except if it's white, subway-like tile, she says.
Sunlight welcomed. Homeowners are looking for baths to serve as sun-filled oases. Connecticut-based architect Duo Dickinson says many want skylights and clerestory windows for both privacy and a connection to the outdoors.
Brad Delp was her “best friend,” someone she could turn to after a bad date, a breakup, or just a tough day. And for nearly 1 years, Meg Sullivan also lived with the famed singer for the band Boston, staying in a spare bedroom at his house on Academy Avenue in Atkinson, N.H. By all accounts, the arrangement was platonic; Pamela Sullivan, Meg’s older sister, was Delp’s fiancee.
But the relationship between Delp and the Sullivan sisters took a dark turn on the morning of Feb. 28, 2007. That’s when Meg Sullivan discovered a hidden camera that Delp had placed in her bedroom. She confronted Delp and fled to her boyfriend’s place, marking the start of a personal crisis that appears to have dominated the last nine days of Delp’s life. On March 9, Pamela Sullivan found Delp, 55, dead in his bathroom. The deeply depressed singer had killed himself by lighting two charcoal grills and letting the carbon monoxide overtake him.
These previously unreported revelations regarding Delp’s relationship with Meg Sullivan have become a central piece of the now two-year-old defamation lawsuit filed by Boston founder Tom Scholz against the Boston Herald.
Following Delp’s death, Herald stories, quoting an interview with Delp’s former wife, Micki Delp, and material from unnamed sources, seemed to suggest that Scholz was to blame for Delp’s suicide. A week after his 2007 suicide, the Herald’s Inside Track writers Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa quoted Micki Delp in a piece with the headline, “Pal’s snub made Delp do it: Boston rocker’s ex-wife speaks.’’ They wrote about the conflicts between Scholz and past band members and stated that Micki Delp said her former husband was “upset over the lingering bad feelings from the ugly breakup of the band Boston over 20 years ago’’ and “driven to despair’’ by recent changes in the group. It was, the Herald reported, “the last straw in a dysfunctional professional life that ultimately led to the frontman’s suicide, Delp’s ex-wife said.’’
For the lawsuit, Herald attorneys point to voluminous testimony from former Boston members, other local musicians, Delp’s doctor, and Delp’s friends, including Meg Sullivan, many of whom say the singer didn’t like Scholz, desperately wanted to quit the band, and felt tormented by his role as middle man in an ugly conflict between Boston’s founder and former band members. All of this was summarized in a 140-page statement filed by the Herald in April.
Scholz’s attorneys argue that the guitarist didn’t cause Delp’s depression and that the singer’s personal problems — deepened by his fiancee’s affair in the summer of 2006 and the discovery of the hidden camera in her younger sister’s bedroom — led to his suicide.
Meg Sullivan, who now lives in California, did not respond to requests for an interview, but her taped depositions in the lawsuit, along with e-mails to and from Delp filed as evidence, shed new light on the tragic story of Delp and the complicated history of Boston, a band that soared to fame in the 1970s before becoming consumed by decades of conflict.
Scholz, a gawky MIT graduate, created much of the music on the band’s 1976 debut in his basement, layering guitars, keyboards, and Delp’s soaring vocals into an album that is still the second biggest-selling in US rock history. With hits such as “More Than a Feeling” and “Don’t Look Back,” the band — made up of Scholz, Delp, and three other musicians — went on to play sold-out arenas around the world.
The world of interior lighting seems to have exploded in the last decade. Gone are the days of choosing either incandescent bulbs or recessed florescent tubes. You can still have a surface-mounted ceiling fixture or a suspended unit, but the options have expanded considerably. Today the market focus on energy-efficient light bulbs, such as compact florescent lights (CFLs) and light-emitting diode (LED) lighting - and all the variations - just adds complexity to the decision-making process.
The good news is that what is behind the light fixture has not changed (although there are a few considerations I'll discuss later). That makes it easy to opt for new designs and more variety. Whether you stay with standard wall switches or enhance the room's ambiance with dimmer switches, the installation uses standard wiring, so all of the techniques and principles are the same.
Once you have picked out the new fixture(s), examine the contents of the box to see what mounting hardware is included. Then stop by the electric components aisle, and pick up an assortment of extra hardware for mounting the fixture to your box, as well as connectors and tools you don’t have in your shop. Most stores will allow you to return anything you don’t use.
Check the fixture's packaging for a warning that says you must use wire rated for 90 degrees centigrade. Some of the newest lighting fixtures may not be compatible with wiring installed before 1985. Insulation on this older wire may not be able to tolerate the heat generated by newer fixtures. Check the labeling imprinted on the exterior sheathing for the letter codes "NM-B" or "UF-B" to be sure yours can handle the higher temperature of some newer fixtures.
Once you have turned off the electrical supply to the area in which you are working, you might not have adequate light. I use an LED light on the visor of my cap to help me focus light directly on the fixture, tools and components I am working with.
Because we never seem to have enough hands to hold things in place while we use the right tools, I recommend suspending a new ceiling fixture from the mounting box by a length of rugged string. Some DIYers like to use a length of surplus wire or even an old wire hanger, but string takes accidental conductivity out of play. If the fixture is very heavy, it might be better to recruit a helper to work with you.
Even after you have checked labels and gathered all the tools and hardware you might need, you will most likely encounter a problem or two in the course of the installation. For instance, not every electrical junction box is grounded. You can check this by touching one probe of a circuit tester to the hot wire and the other to the metal box. If the tester lights, the box is grounded. If it is not, have an electrician install a ground wire to the box, and ground your fixture to it.
Short wires can not only make the job difficult; if not handled properly they could result in a faulty installation. You can deal with them by adding something called a pigtail to the short wire, or loosen the cable anchor in the box and see if there is enough slack in the cable to provide a little extra wire to your new connection.
Fixtures quite often contain stranded wire, which can make it cumbersome to with your electric system's solid copper wire. If you encounter this situation, strip more insulation from the stranded wire than from the solid wire. Match the ends of the insulation on the wires, and twist the wire connector until it is tight. This technique locks the stranded wire in the connector better. Always use connectors that have metal threads inside. If they are not supplied with your fixture, buy some while you are at the store.
