Alan Mays' photos with the keyword: Atlantic Ocean

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A photo of a dock or a pier for the Vintage Photos Theme Park. This is a 1957 snapshot of the Steel Pier , an amusement pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Billed as "The Show Place of the Nation," the pier hosted a variety of shows and acts, including a diving horse and a bicycle-riding bear. When I purchased this photo, however, I didn't realize that it showed a bear and a woman riding bikes on the high platform visible on the left-hand side (mouse over the image to see an enlargement ). After I spotted the bear, I still couldn't imagine that you could train an animal like that to climb a ladder and ride a bicycle. But a YouTube clip of the Bicycle-Riding Bear that's part of The Nieroslavski Family at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, N.J. --filmed during summer 1960--provides a glimpse of how the bear performed its act. Attitudes toward animal acts have changed over the past fifty years, however, and making a bear ride a bicycle seems inhumane and dangerous by today's standards. As far as I've been able to determine, there are no longer any bicycling bears or diving horses in Atlantic City.

A cyanotypes photo for the Vintage Photos Theme Park. "You can use this to keep the mice and rats away. Yes, I will keep the dog in and put out the key. A.S." Addressed to: Miss Maud W. Parker, North Lubec, Maine. Postmarked: South Lubec, ME, Oct. 18, 1906, and North Lubec, ME, Oct. 18, 1906. The joke about a photographic portrait being so bad or ugly that it scares away rodents, insects, and burglars was evidently a common one in the early twentieth century. Another version, for instance, appeared in a 1911 letter sent to American musician and composer William D. Dawson: "My Dear Mr. Armstrong: I duly received, welcome, and possessed myself of your portrait and am glad to have it. At the same time I am ashamed to recall that I have so long neglected to acknowledge it or to send the reciprocal photo to you. I have autographed one this evening and it will be shipped by freight tomorrow. It is warranted to scare away rats and burglars" (see W. T. Norton, William Dawson Armstrong, American Composer , New York: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1916, p 87). For another 1906 real photo postcard with a "scare away the rats" joke, see Guaranteed to Rid Any Cellar of Rats, Roaches, or Other Creatures (below).