The Belle Isle giant slide is not just any old giant slide. It's on Belle Isle, for one, and in the city of Detroit, for another, which already gives it a, shall we say, certain notoriety, as one local history blogger pointed out Saturday:
August 1973. The Belle Isle slide remains open for those with courage, and if you didn’t pay the fee to ride it, you risked being shot. pic.twitter.com/fvFtf3HuuE
— 70sDetroit (@Detroit70s) August 20, 2022
But the Belle Isle slide isn't done making news. When the park reopened the slide Friday after a lengthy Covid hiatus, the first brave souls to climb the stairs and pay $1 came down almost violently. The slide was so slick that riders were launched into the air on the bumps, drawing a crowd shooting videos that went viral:
The giant slide at Belle Isle Park in Michigan was open for only 4 hours before workers shut it down to make adjustments.
— Art (@artcombatpod) August 19, 2022
I wonder why they decided to do such a thing pic.twitter.com/q7jpFdLdAO
The culprit, a Department of Natural Resources ranger told the Freep, was a fresh coat of wax. The rides were alarming enough that the DNR closed the slide after four hours, and promised to make adjustments -- more wax, but the stickier kind, presumably. But when it reopened on Saturday, it had to closed early again, because riders were still coming down too fast and bouncing. This time, the DNR told The Detroit News the wax needed retouching.
In the meantime, entrepreneurs have seized on the circus to make a little coin, and who could blame them?
