ATLANTIC CITY - This town would be the last place looking to minimize
risk.
So, unlike Niagara Falls, Atlantic City required no safety harness for
the intrepid Nik Wallenda as he walked, on a sandy wire 100 feet above the
beach, the 1,300 feet from one casino, the Atlantic Club, to another, the
Tropicana.
"You are the master," a spectator in the crowd that police
estimated at 100,000 people shouted up at him about halfway through the
27-minute walk.
Wallenda, 33, dressed in a red shirt and black cargo shorts, pumped his
fist in response, gripping his balancing pole with one hand.
And it was masterful. Both stunt and performance art, the walk was
thrilling and serene, intimate and communal. Wallenda made sure to honor his
high-wire-walking ancestors as well as his ultimate purpose: to promote both
Atlantic City and the Wallenda Family Experience show, which opens Sunday at
the Tropicana.
Afterward, Wallenda said he almost stopped at the start because of sand
that had caked on the greased wire while it lay on the beach the last two days.
After walking out backward a few steps in his bare feet to test the
grip, he decided the elk-sole wire boots made by his mother would still grip
the wire. He restarted the walk facing forward.
"Sand on the wire. I learned a lesson," he said later.
"I'll be telling that story a long time."
Wind gusts caused additional challenges, as did casino volunteers who
were supposed to be manning the 40 sets of stabilizing ropes but who also were
taking pictures or talking on their cellphones, said Michael Richter, a clown
in Wallenda's show. Richter was the last person Wallenda hugged on his way up
and the first when he got back down.
"Walk up the hill!" Wallenda shouted down at the volunteers at
one point. The 90 bakers, slot attendants, and other casino workers had gotten
red Wallenda T-shirts and instructions to be perched in the dunes lining the
Boardwalk, the ropes extending from either side of the main wire to the ground
and secured around their backsides.
Good thing the dunes are so high - a feature otherwise considered a
detriment to Atlantic City, which is trying to get them lowered. In any case,
Wallenda said after the walk, the slacking wires had been brushing his toes.
From the ground, all seemed to go without major disruptions. The walk
started at the appointed 3:05 time (five extra minutes to build suspense), said
Jeff Guaracino of the Atlantic City Alliance, a nonprofit established by Gov.
Christie's tourism board to promote the city.
The transfixed crowd was hushed at times and cheering at others as it
sweated it out from below.
A born-again Christian, Wallenda said he sang praises, made up songs,
and generally felt peaceful during the walk.
The crowd responded in kind. "Beautiful, Nik, beautiful," said
one beach watcher, Michael Jordan of Atlantic City.
"I looked out at the water," Wallenda said as he was hustled
by security through the Tropicana, which was lined with impressed people.
"I looked at the ocean, the crowds on the Boardwalk."
Wallenda tapped into Atlantic City's current desire to up its spectacle
mojo - to bring back the emotion that once swept through a town devoted to the
diving horse, the daredevil, and the like.
The event was sponsored by the two casinos and the Alliance (the
"Do AC" folks), which is aiming to bring attention back to the bones
of the resort: the Boardwalk, beach, and classic buildings such as Boardwalk
Hall, which every night sponsors a high-tech 3D light show.
"It was clear the history had a lot of emotional content, but not
sufficient to bring people down" to visit, said Liza Cartmell, alliance president.
"We have to be current, bring back that emotional content, the risk, the
spectacle, the unusual, the sense of freedom of being by the water's
edge."
The Alliance also is bringing in architects Billie Tsien and Tod
Williams - fresh off their Barnes Foundation success in Philadelphia - and
public art curator Lance Fung to remake the gaping empty lots that mar the
Boardwalk into public art and horticulture gathering spots.
Wallenda's walk was over a cable stretched between two cranes on
Sovereign and Brighton Avenues. The cable was given 24 hours to settle, and it
had a little sag in the middle, deliberately.
At various points, Wallenda gave thumbs up, pointed to a banner plane
advertising his show, and pumped his fists. He motioned to one person on a
Boardwalk ramp to come up and join him.
"It's just like walking on the Boardwalk," said the
seventh-generation member of the Wallenda family.
Before the walk, Wallenda said his wife, mother, father, and three
children - ages 14, 11 and 9 - would be in attendance, though he predicted that
his children would be bored and on their Nintendos while he was walking.
"I just say a prayer, and that's it," he said. "It
becomes very normal to you."
The beach might seem a pretty tame location for a guy just
back from Niagara Falls, but Wallenda noted that his great-grandfather
"did amazing walks around the world and he died on a smaller one."
Karl Wallenda died at 73 after falling on a 1978 wire walk
in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in winds that exceeded 30 m.p.h. His family said the
death was the result of misconnected ropes, not the wind.
Ramone Gwyn, 16, of New Cumberland, Pa., pronounced the
beach walk "not as tricky" as Niagara Falls as he watched with his
grandmother and brother Andre, 11.
"We were pretty impressed," his grandmother, Cathy
Burkholder, said. "We're not teenagers."
For an afternoon at least, Wallenda seemed to revive the
grand spectacle of a prior era in Atlantic City.
Even the spirit of long-departed Miss America was evoked
when someone in the press room shouted to Wallenda: "Show us your
shoes!" That was the call to contestants as they paraded down the
Boardwalk before the pageant, a tradition still bitterly missed in this town.
Mr. W complied, holding up the boots that carried him across
the wire.
Top that, Miss A.
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