Here are some shots taken from our car along the Seawall Boulevard in Galveston.
This may be about as close as I will come to actually
visiting the "Pleasure Pier"
at my age.
It's just one of those things that is fun to look at - from afar.
Ever since Hurricane Ike came along and destroyed literally everything along the Gulf side on Galveston Island, folks have been working hard, planning new and improved tourist attractions. Where The Flagship Hotel once showed off her twin mermaids, there now stands a huge conglomeration of ways to spend money. Bubba Gump Shrimp Company is the anchor of the pier and if you just want to eat there, you don't have to buy a ticket for the rest of the pier.
The Iron Shark roller coaster is for the real
thrill-seeker," Landry's theme
park director Mark Kane said. It has a vertical-drop tower and includes a loop, four full
upside-down inversions and, after a 90-foot lift, a dead-vertical drop, except
that at one point the tracks actually bend backward, so it's beyond vertical.
Scary-looking!
The pier is a product of Galveston native Tilman Fertitta, whose
Landry's empire includes numerous restaurants and hotels, the Kemah Boardwalk entertainment area south of
Houston and casinos in Las Vegas and Atlantic City, along with other ventures.
Fertitta once worked as a lifeguard at the Flagship Hotel, which sat for 46
years on the pier and fell on hard times even before Ike bit a hole in it.
The name Pleasure Pier comes from the 1940s pier that first graced
the site, attracting tourists from all over the nation with its midway,
air-conditioned ballroom, stadium, aquarium and more. Hurricane Carla trashed
that park in 1961.
Construction has been ongoing for quite some time - the pier
surface itself was raised 32 inches — "basically building a pier on the
pier" — to make room for electricity, plumbing and other infrastructure. And before they could even start that, the old hotel had to be demolished which in itself was a huge project.
Looking at the tall
steel structure on a day when winds were topping out about 40 mph, I had to ask
about high winds. They have, of course, been taken into account. Kane said the
structures and rides are built to withstand 130 mph gusts — up to a Category 3
hurricane. ( I think I will refrain from
commenting on the possibilities of winds at 130 mph and above and all the
structures blowing inland...)
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