Episode 220: The Zipper

the memory palace

Nate DiMeo

Radiotopia, Publicradio, History, Natedimeo

4.8 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 15 August 2024

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Memory Palace is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. Radiotopia is a collective of independently owned and operated podcasts that’s a part of PRX, a not-for-profit public media company. If you’d like to directly support this show and independent media, you can make a donation at Radiotopia.fm/donate. I have recently launched a newsletter. You can subscribe to it at thememorypalacepodcast.substack.com.

Music

Swiming by Explosions in the Sky
Walking Song by Kevin Volans and the Netherlands Wind Ensemble
I Walk on Guilded Splinters by Johnny Jenkins
Seduction by the Balanescu Quartet
Lunette by Les Baxter and Dr. Samuel J. Hoffman
Running Around by Buddy Ross
September by Giles Lamb

Notes

This episode was pieced together from a ton of little fragments but I wanted to steer folks to a couple of resources in particular: this excellent article from a few years back in the Toronto Star by Katie Daubs, and this documentary from filmmaker, Amy Nicholson, that primarily uses the Zipper as a way to talk about changes at Coney Island but has some great details from Harold Chance and his sons.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This one was different.
0:05.0	You don't know where the ideas come from all the time when part of your job is coming up with ideas.
0:11.0	But it seems that one day at work, Joe Brown saw something in a piece of plywood. There was something there. Maybe he took it to a table saw and cut out of shape. A little different than the ones that folks there at chance amusements of Wichita, Kansas,
0:24.3	typically used when they made their rides. A change from those flat-bottom circles,
0:30.0	the little setting suns that might hang from a Ferris wheel, or if you flip them over could spin like a teacup.
0:36.0	He cut out a new shape that looked a bit like an apostrophe, or a particularly cartoony lowercase B B depending on how you oriented it.
0:44.6	Hadn't tried a shape like that before.
0:47.2	Could be something.
0:48.8	But how would he attach it?
0:51.0	Pictured people sitting in a cart the shape of that piece of wood.
0:54.0	He picked up a metal rod and placed it to one side behind the imagined backs of the imagined people.
1:01.0	That wasn't anything. That was just another
1:03.2	affairs. Put the rod on the top and the cart would swing about a bit. But
1:08.0	so what? That had been done. But then a light bulb went off.
1:14.0	One of those blinking carnival light bulbs.
1:16.0	Maybe one that's frittsing out a bit,
1:18.0	maybe making you worry that maybe the carnies aren't really keeping up
1:21.0	with maintenance like they should at this carnival.
1:23.0	Anyway, Joe Brown has an idea. He jewels a hole in the plywood, just a bit off center.
1:29.0	Puts the rod through the board and holds on to each end of the rod and starts to move the model up and around through space.
1:38.0	This was something. This one was different.
1:42.0	Harold Chance first found business success helping people take it easy.
	...

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