Alan Mays' photos with the keyword: boardwalks

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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.

Printed on the back of this real photo postcard: "Flett, 1517 Boardwalk, Atlantic City, N.J." This seaside souvenir studio photo was originally very light, and I wasn't entirely successful in sprucing it up. But I hope it's dark enough to make out the characteristics--amazing hats, deer-in-the-headlights facial expressions, and comical foreground illustration (signed by "Flett")--that I found so amusing.

"Enjoying ourselves on a box of Fralinger's at Atlantic City, N.J. Fralinger's Salt Water Taffy, Atlantic City, N.J. Fine selections."