Stumblin' Along 6/9 '24
6's to 9's
6’s to 9’s
- Quick pint, we’ll go for one, yeah?
- 10 Facts about the 1964 World’s Fair
- Roman Assault Tower
- YouTube Rabbithole
Alright @YouTheReader,
Today’s tune on the June 9th Stumblin’ Along is 6’s to 9’s by Big Wild & Rationale.
Did this same song last June 9th so maybe it’s not so unpredictable.
I prefer the Day Wave Remix to this tune, has a bit more of an uptempo beat. Last Sunday I took a trip to Somerset, New Jersey to catch a Yankee minor league game so we’ll start there.
On to Stumblin’ Along…
#GuinnessChallengeSeason
@Kids don’t try this at home. Not just because you’re underage and will have plenty of pints to drink if that ends up being your thing when you’re older but also because Guinness is actually best served in a pint glass from a tap. A pint of Guinness varies depending on the drinking establishment. If the keg it sits in is rarely poured, it can lead to some underwhelming taste. Rather than stealing gimmicks, I’d like to start taking Notes while drinking Guinness. My grandfather from Connemara, whom I never got the chance to meet, Thomas Davis, used to drink pints and by all accounts was a self-taught thinker. The one rule I’ve imposed on myself is that I will only have 1 pint per sitting from each establishment I review, so @AnyoneWorrying, don’t worry about my drinking habits. The Guinness Challenge is to “cut the G” on your first sip (more like a gulp and a half). If this is your first time hearing about it, I didn’t come up with the fun challenge @YouTheReader can try the next time you have a Guinness. The 0.0 to 10.0 scale will be extraordinarily nuanced but as a reference point, the only perfect 10.0 I plan ever to give out is at the Guinness Factory in Dublin one day.
TD Bank Park (@somersetpatriots) 6/2 ‘24
Service & Staff: A
Guinness: 5.9
Guinness Challenge: N/A (Plastic Ballpark Cup)
Song On In The Background: Take Me Out To The Ballgame
Notes if you can’t read my sloppy scribble: The Somerset Patriots vs the (David) Bowie Baysox. Catching a minor league ballgame between the Yanks’ and Orioles’ farm teams. Jasson Dominguez, Spencer Jones, Ben Rice, Augstin Ramirez, and Ben Crowley are in the good guy Patriots lineup. College Scout Insider found a pint of Guinness in the ballpark while I was glued to the seat scouting the future Yankees prospects. Got to the game in the bottom of the 2nd inning and missed 3 errors on the scoreboard. I recommend the hot dog, tenders, and fries. They also have a nice “Ice Blender” Lemon slush that hit well in the sweltering sun.
Yanks started Brock Selvidge on the hill and another lefty followed him in Ryan Anderson. The 6’6” Anderson has a funky delivery where he seems to hide the ball behind his back leg and then whips it. Dominguez was taken out in the 6th inning, my guess is the Yankees are still taking it slow on his rehab as this is pretty much his spring training. Over the loudspeaker, it’s been announced that Gerrit Cole will be making his 1st rehab start in Somerset on Tuesday, which got a nice ovation. The Yanks were no-hit until the 8th inning. Augustin Ramirez doubled into the right-center field gap and then stole 3rd base, impressive speed for a catcher. The Somerset Patriots have affordable pricing and a nice minor-league atmosphere with the NJ Transit Train running behind the RF wall. Remember when the old Yankee Stadium used to have the train you could see from behind home plate? In between innings, they have plenty of nice promotional activities mostly for the kids.
After the game, I guess the Martian was checking his phone because he gave the @You_The_Reader story tag a view. At the top of the 9th, I got to speak briefly with SNY Journalist and author of The Yankee Way, Andy Martino. He was signing the books and offered a bit of advice in the industry. Pretty cool time, shout out to College Scout Insider for the game suggestion and driving. On Tuesday it appears that Amy Cole, the wife of Gerrit Cole and former UCLA softball player, caught a foul ball. I look forward to grabbing another pint at the ballpark again!
Quite a few Sundays ago, somehow in my drunken stupor, I Stumbled Along to The City Reliquary in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The museum filled with cool New York City history is open on Saturdays and Sundays from Noon to 6 PM. For a $10 visit, you can see a ton of cool relics from The City. This week's Stumblin’ Along on Week to Week Notes features another piece on an assortment of things on one of the 1964-1965 World’s Fair.
In the museum, they had a ton of very cool old souvenirs. With this being the 60th Anniversary of the 1964 World Fair, here are…
1. It featured the iconic Unisphere.
The Unisphere is by far and away the most popular part of the World Fair of 1964. Designed by landscape architect Gilmore D. Clarke, the stainless steel globe weighs 700,000 pounds and is the largest of its kind in the world. The idea behind the Unisphere was to symbolize countries around the world depending on one another. Clarke came up with the designs in February 1961. The American Bridge Company, which is a division of US Steel, constructed the globe in 110 days. After the World Fair, US Steel would give the City $100,000 so that it could stay within the Flushing Meadows. I mean, 700,000 pounds where the hell was it going to go anyway? It sounds like US Steel foisted this on New York, that said, it’s a pretty cool structure no less.
2. The Bureau of International Exhibitions dissapproved.
Some fugazzi-ass alphabet agency that we probably were responsible for creating in the first place rejected the 1964 New York World’s Fair. How lame. The US had already had Seattle’s World Fair in 1962 so allegedly BIE thought that we should have to wait. They didn’t recognize the exhibition but President Dwight D. Eisenhower said who cares we’re hosting it anyway. Thus Week to Week Notes will follow the lead of President Ike and not recognize the International Exhibitions Bureau as anything more than a figment of our imagination.
3. The pushbutton telephone booth was a crowdpleaser.
The pushbutton telephone had visitors flocking to the RCA Pavilion. Before its introduction at the 1964 World’s Fair, people used rotary dials to call. The Touch-Tone phones promised to cut down the dialing times in half. Phone companies started to introduce the telephone to the public shortly after the fair. In 1965, AT&T charged customers $1.90 a month for the highly-coveted Touch-Tone pushbutton phones and it was reportedly a “smash hit.”
(Source: History)
4. Tomorrowland had FaceTime.
Not only did the 1964 NY World Fair give the world pushbutton phones, but they also introduced videoconferencing. Bell System invented their Picturephones which allowed callers to see each other on small television monitors. The futuristic innovation was something straight out of “The Jetsons.” It blew people’s minds away. I mean, in fairness to people in the 1960s, it took us like 50 years to come up with FaceTime and a global pandemic to make Zoom a real thing. Joseph Tirella, the author of the book Tomorrow-Land: The 1964-65 World’s Fair and the Transformation of America, said of the Picturephones, “It was really the only far-reaching piece of technology at the fair that was spot on.”
5. The Belgian Waffles were a hit.
On the opening day of the 1965 season, the Belgian Waffle was nearly as big of a crowdpleaser as the pushbutton phones and FaceTime. The New York Times reported that the “Belgian waffles sold like hotcakes.” Everybody knows hotcakes are a hit. The Belgian Waffle was debuted in 1958 at the Brussels, Belgium World Fair. The waffles the lovely ladies are eating pictured above were branded as “Bel-Gem.” While they were introduced to Americans at the 1962 World Fair in Seattle, Tirella said, “New York is where most Americans ate them for the first time.” It sounds like the Seattle World Fair was a bit of a flop.
6. Introduced the Ford Mustang.
Ford released their Mustang to the public. It was such a popular attraction at the fair that the Detroit automaker sold 400k of the new model within a year. This was 4x what they projected. Ford teamed up with Walt Disney to create the Ford’s Magic Skyway. People would hop into a motorless Mustang convertible and take a trip on a conveyor belt through Jurassic Age times. For many visitors, it was a memorable free ‘test drive’ of one of the best-selling automobiles in American history. Mustangs have now been around 60 years and over 10 million have been sold to date. Check out the YouTube Rabbithole at the end of this for a cool clip of the Ford’s Magic Skyway.
7. You could see the new Shea Stadium from a pavilion.
Shea Stadium opened up in Flushing Meadows on April 17, 1964. The brand new ballpark could be seen in the distance from the New York State Pavillion. The Queens ballpark was the home to the New York Mets from 1964 to 2008. They also hosted the New York Jets from 1964 to 1983, before the Jets relocated to Giants Stadium. Now, of course, they play in the massive tin can called JetLife Stadium at the Meadowlands. The Mets were originally established in 1962 and played their first 2 seasons in the MLB at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. William Shea was largely responsible for New York getting a National League team back in New York after the Yankees dominated the Dodgers and Giants into submission, forcing them to move to California.
8. Some of the pavilions are still standing today.
The New York Pavillion where you once could see Shea Stadium is still around today but looks abandoned because it is. They should do something with that, somebody should really get on that.
9. The parking lot looks hectic.
20,000 spaces worth of parking lot were built for the 1964 New York World Fair. I would hope at this point they planted some trees and grass, what a waste if they aren’t going to do anything with the New York State Pavillion.
10. The Irish Pavillion.
The Irish showed out with their own Pavillion made of Lisconner gray stone and reddish brown marble. They designed the structure to look like “an Irish Castle.” The New York World Fair wasn’t opened until April 22, 1964. Since it was already past Saint Patrick’s Day, they held out their grand opening until May 16 for St. Brendan’s Day. While President Eisenhower was in charge of the approval of the New York World’s Fair, President John F. Kennedy was in office when the Irish Commemoration Stone Ceremony took place on June 28, 1963. During the ceremony, JFK happened to be on a trip to Ireland and having dinner at Arus an Uachtarian in Dublin. Unfortunately, JFK would not see the opening of the 1964 NY World Fair because he passed in November of 1963. There is a pretty cool rare pamphlet online where I found this information about JFK’s dinner. I skimmed all 7 pages and was disappointed there was no mention of Guinness at the Pavilion of Ireland, but I would like to think they served a proper pint inside those Lisconner gray stone and reddish brown marble.
This Week’s Bit on The Roman Empire
This week your quick bit on The Roman Empire brought to you by Week to Week Notes featuring Ancient Rome: The Exhibition in New York is on the Roman Assault Tower.
The Roman Assault Tower, otherwise known as Siege Tower, was considered an ancient war machine. The Roman army would use the assault tower in conjunction with their battering ram. They provided defense for the Roman soldiers on the attack. Most cities in these times had massive castle-like walls to fortify attacks. The structures were built of wood, usually larch, which were accredited to Caesar himself. They were coated with fire-resistant materials like iron, animal skins, and fur to reduce the chances of projectiles in flames. Generally, these towers were customized as tall as the city wall they were conquering.
The multi-storied assault towers, sometimes as tall as nine stories, were mobile constructions that were mounted on logged wheels. The strength of the Assault Towers certainly wasn’t the surprise element. Roman soldiers pushed the assault towers to battle. Imagine that? Also, imagine being the enemy and having to watch this massive tower get hauled for hours by Roman soldiers from miles away only to know you’re about to have to fight the Roman Army afterward. Yikes. One way cities would try to prevent this war machine would be to simply dig ditches or holes in the path of the machine or try their best to throw as much fire at it as possible.
Smaller towers could incorporate their own batter ram like we found out about on last week’s Stumblin’ Along. Roman soldiers would be prepared to attach from the roof of the assault tower as a platform would be dropped on top of the castle-like walls. It also looks like they would have multiple levels of platforms that Roman soldiers could bombard from. Inside the towers were staircases or ladders. The inventor of the Assault Tower is credited to Demetrius Poliocretes. The military leader was actually a Macedonian Greek who lived before Rome ruled the world. Born in 336 BC, Poliocretes was the King of Macedon from 294 to 288 BC. Vitruvius, an ancient Roman architect and engineer said of the Roman assault towers in his De Architectura Book X-22, “The most fearsome tower of all was an enormous fortified engine called Helepolis (the “destroyer of cities”) invented by Demetrius Poliocretes. Each story of the tower was furnished with machines for battering and discharging projectiles of enormous size. They were armed with their own banks of catapults and sling throwers. It was 50 feet square at its base, more than 100 feet tall.”
