Palisades Amusement Park

Palisades Amusement Park was an amusement park located in Bergen County, New Jersey; across the Hudson River from New York City.

It was also the location where a snapshot of Jon Osterman and his research colleague/girlfriend Janey Slater was taken, just a month before the infamous accident at Gila Flats altered not only their lives, but the entire world forever.

History

Summer of 1959

In July 1959, nuclear physicists Jon Osterman and Janey Slater decided that summer to take a vacation from their work at the Gila Flats research facility in Arizona and traveled to New Jersey, where Jon met up with some college friends at Princeton University, while Janey intended to see her mother.[1] When Janey tried to call her mother at the train station but doesn't answer, they both decide to spend the day at Palisades Amusement Park in order to kill time until Janey's mother returns home.

The Watchmaker's son

The Watchmaker's son

While at the park, a carnival barker, photographing park patrons for 75 cents a picture, confuses them for a couple and snaps a photo of Janey and Jon as they were walking, calling them "young lovers, which Jon tries to correct before he's cut mid-sentence by the man as he snaps the picture.[1] He then gives them an address where they can pick up the prints once they been developed before Janey and Jon walk towards the Tilt-A-Whirl, as the photographer laughs at his own mistake. Nearby, a young boy cries after losing his balloons as his mother tries to comfort him.

By the shooting gallery, Janey's watchband suddenly snaps off and fells to the ground. Before she has time to pick it up, a fat man walks by and steps on it, angering Janey at the careless stranger. Jon then tells her that he can fix the broken wristwatch later.

Taking a Memory to Mars

In October 1959, two months after Jon Osterman was accidently locked inside the Intrinsic Field Generator and was completely vaporized on August 20, 1959, Janey Slater placed the snapshot taken of them on a bulletin board behind glass in the Bestiary bar at Gila Flats. According to Jon, it was apparently the only photograph of him that anyone had.

Decades later on October 19, 1985, following allegations of giving cancer to the people closest to him (including Janey),[2] Doctor Manhattan returns to the now-abandoned Gila Flats facility and picks the Palisades snapshot before teleporting to Mars, where Osterman reflects upon the life he had before he was transformed into a god-like superhuman and the loss of his humanity.[1]

DC Timeline

Trivia

  • Palisades Amusement Park was an actual park that ran from 1898 until closure and demolition on September 12, 1971.[3] For decades, it was one of the most highly popular attractions in the country and it often filled to capacity on occasion.
  • Although not actually named in Watchmen, it's implied that the amusement park that Slater and Osterman visited in 1959 is, in fact, Palisades.
  • Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Palisades was often heavily advertised in several comic book titles published by DC Comics, with discounts and free coupons appearing alongside with some of DC's most recognizable superheroes.[4] In some adverts, Superman acted as the park's spokesman, asking readers in one ad "to be my guest at America's greatest amusement park".[1][5] There was even a "Batman Slide" as one of the park's main attractions during the mid-60s.
    DC ads for Palisades Park

    DC ads for Palisades Park

    • In a 2008 interview,[6] Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons mentioned the park (along with Tootsie Rolls, Scwinn Bicycles, and Daisy BB guns) while discussing the adverts that appeared in comic books imported from America that he read as a child in the late 1950s. Gibbons goes on to describe the comics and the things advertised in them as having a "magical quality" to them, akin to "an artifact from fabulous alien civilization".
    • A fat man stepping Janey's wristwatch at the park is both a possible refence and symbolic metaphor for the nuclear weapon type Mark III (though known more by its code name as "Fat Man") which was famously dropped on Nagasaki by the U.S. government on August 9, 1945.[7]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Watchmaker
  2. ↑ The Judge of All the Earth
  3. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisades_Amusement_Park
  4. ↑ https://13thdimension.com/palisades-park-the-grooviest-dc-comics-promotion-of-the-silver-age/
  5. ↑ https://vintagegeekculture.tumblr.com/post/696117299704414208/the-now-closed-palisades-amusement-park-in-new
  6. ↑ http://www.watchmencomicmovie.com/102308-dave-gibbons-watchmen-comic-illustrator.php
  7. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki#Events_of_7%E2%80%939_August

External links