Garden of Broken Toys, 2012
I spent several days in Louisville, Kentucky, earlier this
week on a work-related assignment. I stayed at a hotel near the airport, which
is something I usually try to avoid because such hotels tend to be in the most desolate
of places where no one wants to live because of the airport noise and were the
only businesses either cater to travelers or people looking for use car parts or
strip clubs.
My hotel was within sight of the giant UPS sorting center and
a Ford plant. The view from much of the hotel included vast lots full of new
cars awaiting shipment. There were new cars stored in the nearby state fair
ground parking lots and in the vast parking lots of the nearby University of Louisville
Cardinals stadium.
Fortunately, my room didn’t face a field full of new cars.
Instead, I overlooked a large empty parking lot and, just beyond that, an
abandoned amusement park. I’m not talking about one of those rinky dink fairs
that travels around the country during the summer setting up shop at churches,
mall parking lots and open fields. No, this was a full-fledged theme park, its
rides quiet, its paint peeling, its gates untended and its parking lots empty
and overgrown with weeds.
This place was once known as Kentucky Kingdom and later as Six
Flags’ Kentucky Kingdom. The Six Flags company, which at one time operated
nineteen theme parks around the country, had a brief run through bankruptcy in
2010 and 2011. At some point during that time the landlord for the Kentucky
Kingdom property proposed a lease renewal for the amusement park that the Six
Flags people found so untenable that they simply closed the park. During the
two years since, rides have rusted, the wooden planks of the Thunder Run roller
coaster planks have warped and split and trees and weeds have grown where there
were once manicured lawns and gardens. Nothing has been maintained. It’s as if
the owners simply locked the gates one night and never came back.
There’ve been several parties interested in reopening the
park. But they were all unsuccessful because the city of Louisville and the
State of Kentucky would not give them the financial incentives they wanted.
The desk clerk at my hotel told me that a new company—water park
operators from over in Indiana—has bought Kentucky Kingdom and plans to reopen
the park in 2013 under the name Bluegrass Boardwalk. In the meantime, no happy music
blankets the area, no visitors squeal as the roller coaster tears around the
curves and down the steep plunges on its wooden track and there is no popcorn
or cotton candy. Just a garden of broken toys.
Thunder Run, 2012
Love the mood you've created here in these photos.
ReplyDeleteThis reminds me of a program I recently watched about what would happen to the planet after mankind ceased to exist.
ReplyDeleteGreat subject for you and your camera, but also a great subject for sketching!
ReplyDelete