Riverview's Attractions

By Clifford Terry and Entertainment writer Chicago Tribune

Jun 21, 1992 

The Bobs.

WERE THERE EVER SUCH SIMPLE WORDS struck terror into the heart of an 11-year-old boy?

Well, yes: The Pair-o-Chutes.

For the too-young, the uninitiated or those who didn`t grow up in Rogers Park as we did and never had the anticipated pleasure of taking the Western Avenue streetcar down to Belmont, the Bobs and the Pair-o-Chutes were Riverview Park`s tortuous implements of coming of age, an instant rite of machismo (or whatever it was called in those long-gone days). Ride the Bobs, that bone-cracking wooden roller coaster, and you were a tough guy. Go up on the free-fall-simulated Pair-o-Chutes, looming a couple hundred feet over the city`s Near Northwest Side, and it was a daily double of derring-do.

''Certainly by the mid-`60s, when I first went there, Riverview had a seedy enough reputation that there were sort of urban myths about people who had been thrown off the Bobs and about entire cars flying into the lagoon,''

says Robert Falls, who happens to be directing ''Riverview: A Melodrama with Music,'' which opens Monday night at the Goodman Theatre.

''Both the Bobs and the Pair-o-Chutes absolutely terrified me. I was a big chicken, visiting Chicago from a small town Downstate, and was coerced into going on them. The Bobs was really the terrifying roller coaster. There was the perception of speed, and this incredible roaring sound, and it sort of shook underneath you. The Pair-o-Chutes was scary because it was so high up. It`s funny, I live about four blocks from Riverview right now, and I still have a vivid memory about being pulled up and having that view, looking east down Belmont.''

But if there was danger in the air, there was also the hint of . . . dare we say it? . . . sex. Pubescent boys would scheme how to steal a kiss in the darkened Mill on the Floss, and grown men would line up-sometimes 400 at a time-in front of the Aladdin`s Castle to sneak a peek at the ladies` dresses being blown up by an air hose. Says Falls: ''I think the hormonal level at Riverview had to be overwhelming. So many people we`ve talked to, it was their first kiss, their first feel. It was the place you met girls.''

Sure, the place was scudsy and flaking and all, but at least it wasn`t a theme park, where they grab your money up front and then make you stand in line. The only theme was ''Laugh Your Troubles Away,'' and you could do it on Two-Cent Day or Five-Cent Night. In the games of chance-fat chance, some would say-you could fire away with darts or real .22 rifles at balloons and stuffed cats or play what seemed to be miles and miles of Skee Ball set-ups, spend several bucks and, in all likelihood, wind up with some chintzy prize. And, hey, if you dropped a kernel of popcorn onto the ground, some National Honor Roll Society type like they have at those Disney places didn`t come swooping down as if it had just been deposited by Typhoid Mary.

The 70-acre-plus Riverview was the last of the amusement parks in Chicago, outlasting the likes of Luna Park and White City. It had its roots in the late 1800s as a private skeet-shooting club run by the William Schmidt family on the banks of the north branch of the Chicago River. William`s son, George, later put in some swings and rides for the wives and children, and then expanded it for the public. Riverview Park-bounded by the river, Western and Belmont Avenues and Lane Tech High School-opened its doors on July 2, 1904, and didn`t close them until a little over 63 years later.

It was billed as the ''world`s largest amusement park,'' which it seems to have been in terms of the number of rides (60 or 70)-even outgunning Coney Island`s four-park conglomerate. In its heyday, there were nine wooden rollercoasters (including the only covered ones in the country-the Silver Flash, the Blue Streak and the Comet), and it was on one of the coasters that my Dad lost his flung-out wallet and keys (later recovered) and I my lunch.

''There were really few other entertainment outlets in those days,'' says Bob Smitka, a onetime free-lance photographer who started going to the park in the late `40s. ''There were no malls and such. It was Riverview, the movie theater or the roller rink. It was the place to go for your first date-the girl I took became my wife-and it was cheap. Where else could you go with five bucks in your pocket?''

''I absolutely think there`s a distorted romanticism about the place,''

says Falls. ''But even in its sort of dirty, grimy aspects, there`s a tremendous and wonderful sentimental attachment to it. I think Riverview occupies the same position in most people`s hearts as Wrigley Field.''

Always, talk comes back to the Bobs (b. 1926), which, in the estimation of various survivors, ran anywhere from 24 to 90 m.p.h. ''In comparison to the other roller coasters, which had hills, it had a lot of twists and turns, which threw you left to right, right to left,'' says Jim Abbate, president of the Chicago area-based National Amusement Park Historical Association. ''It wasn`t a very big ride, but it was a very intense ride. It also gave the illusion of going fast because a lot of the track was close to the ground, and you were going past the other beams and part of the structure.''

''I`ve ridden hundreds of coasters, and I have yet to ride ones as good as the Bobs,'' says Chuck Wlodarczyk, author of ''Riverview: Gone But Not Forgotten.''

As for the Pair-o-Chutes, it originally was just an observation tower called-if you really want to know-the Eyeful Tower. ''It seemed dangerous, with the rickety seats which you could swear were going to break, but in all the years it operated, from 1937 on, there wasn`t one person injured on it,'' says Wlodarczyk. ''There were stories about people getting stuck on it, but mostly it was just due to the sadistic operators. If they saw you trying to talk your wife or girl friend into going on the ride, they would get you about seven-eights of the way up and kill the power and yell, `Don`t worry, we`ll have you down as soon as we find a long enough ladder,` and they`d let you dangle there for about 10 or 15 seconds. Which seemed like 10 or 15 minutes.'' There were other rides, of course. The magnificently ornate, 70-horse Carousel, more popularly known as the Merry-Go-Round. The watery Shoot-the-Chutes. The Tilt-a-Whirl. The Water Bug. The Red Devil and Riverview Scout miniature trains, complete with engineer. There were Hades and Aladdin`s Castle, the walk-through fun houses. There were the midways-Main Walk, River Walk and the carny-filled Bowery.

And there were the sideshow freaks. ''I can still remember the pitches I did when I was a 16-year-old barker,'' says Marshall Brodien, who now appears as Wizzo the Wacky Wizard on TV`s ''Bozo.'' `We have the Mule-Faced Woman-she`s got the head, face, features and characteristics of a gigantic Georgia mule.` `We have the Armless Wonder. He`ll operate a typewriter, paint with oil, thread a needle, shuffle a deck of playing cards, take a cigarette paper in one foot and a sack of tobacco in the other and roll a perfect cigarette; the average man can`t do it with his hands.`

''These were all real freaks of nature. Of course, there would be groups today who say they were being exploited. But they had no other way to make a living. The Four-Legged Girl made so much money because she was such a great attraction-there was a $10,000 reward to anyone who could prove her to be a fake-that she supported her family and put her sisters through school.''

Riverview also was known for its exceptional safety record. In all its years, there were six deaths, and only two of those were the fault of the park-caused when one of the planes on the Strat-O-Stat broke loose from its cables and sailed across the Midway and over the fence and into the river. The other deaths were through rider negligence. The biggest non-fatal accident occurred in 1937, when two trains on the Pippin roller coaster collided, injuring 72. The next year, to help erase the memory, the park renamed the ride the Silver Streak, which later became the Silver Flash.Much of the Goodman Theatre melodrama/musical will be centered around the racially-charged African Dip, or just plain Dip, in which black men would taunt patrons into throwing balls at a target that would knock them off their planks and drop them into water. Says Wlodarczyk: ''My uncle was kind of heavy and he`d walk by and these guys would say, `Hey, Meatball, you better go on a diet. Man, you better not stop at no beer garden.` Or you`d be walking by with your girl friend or wife and they`d yell, `Hey, fella, that ain`t the girl you were here with yesterday.` A lot of people would get so frustrated they`d just throw at the screen.''

In the late `50s, the Dip was closed down after pressure brought by the NAACP. The men who lost their jobs reportedly were making over $300 a week in what was considered to be the highest-grossing concession in Riverview`s history.

The park`s 63-and-change years of worry-free laughter ended with the sudden announcement on Oct. 3, 1967, that it had been sold. ''It wasn`t like Johnny Carson leaving, where America is able to sort of get ready for the trauma,'' says director Falls. ''Riverview was there, and then it wasn`t. And some have never gotten over the trauma.''

There has been all kinds of speculation as to its demise. There were reports of increasing racial violence, and stories about robbery and sexual assaults-and even black widow spider bites-in Aladdin`s Castle and other darkened attractions. An influential newspaper columnist wrote that the park was a firetrap. But the bottom line seems to be that Riverview was located in the city of Chicago. The valuable land was bought by Arvey Corporation, headed by Jake Arvey, a political buddy of the late Mayor Daley. Rumor has it that 50 city inspectors showed up one day, and that Daley himself threatened to revoke the operating license. It is now the site of a shopping center, a police station and DeVry Institute of Technology.

After the sale, the rides were mostly demolished, although some found their way to other amusement parks. The most notable survivor is the Carousel, which sits in its own pavillion at Six Flags Over Georgia. ''They have six plainclothes guards constantly watching that ride,'' says Wlodarczyk. ''It`s the fine China of their park. In fact, one of the horses is missing. It stands 8-feet tall, and is one of the outside, non-jumpers. Six Flags is offering $50,000 for its return.''

As to whether places like Great America will be remembered with the same fondness 25 years after they have been shuttered, John Logan-author of

''Riverview: A Melodrama with Music''-doesn`t think so.

''I was 6 and living in California when Riverview closed. My generation`s concept of an amusement park is Great America, which I love, but it`s all safe and warm and cozy. It`s like going into a Jacuzzi. There`s something unique about a city park, whether Riverview or Coney Island or White City. While modern theme parks are, by design, antiseptic and safe and clean, a park like Riverview was designed to be anything but. There was peeling paint, and there were con games going on. There was action there, and it wasn`t all fake action or controlled action. One of my favorite quotes about the park was written by David Mamet: `The great thing about Riverview is that you could die there.''`