In 1969, Donald and Doris Fisher opened a record store in San Francisco. As an interesting add-on, the Fishers also decided that their store ought to stock a peculiar item; the couple sold blue jeans.
This little record store, which the pair dubbed "The Gap", soon became a much better outlet for denim than for vinyl. Now, you can walk in and buy jeans in over 3,000 GAP stores across the globe, but you won't find a record in any of them.
Record stores, in my experience, tend to have their own little crowds that, for whatever particular reason, choose to hang around; they derive an identity from their association. Maybe it's the particular stock of the store, or the element of the local scene it represents. I can imagine that as the record stock got smaller, and the jean selection got wider, those who'd chosen "The Gap" as their "home" record store started to feel a little homeless. Some migrated to other stores, I'm sure, but some would certainly have become record store hobos, who mostly just complained about the loss of "The Gap" to consumer culture and fashion.
But "The Gap" became GAP nonetheless.
I said all that to say this -- after today's trip to the park, I'm ready to say something I never thought I'd say:
Busch Gardens is as good today as it has ever been.
Today, I realized that Busch Gardens is no longer "The Gap", and I had become a record store hobo. The "record store" version of Busch Gardens that I remember was a quiet, quaint, sparsely populated and slow-moving themed park that replicated in romantic fashion Shakespearean - Edwardian Europe. In my mind, Busch Gardens has remained the record store since I first fell in love with it, despite the fact that the record collection has been steadily shrinking. What I've been neglecting to notice is the influx of high quality jeans into the stock room. Today I realized that the record store closed a while ago. They sell jeans now, and they're pretty nice ones.
What do I mean? I mean that today's Busch Gardens is not the sleepy historic park I loved. Busch Gardens today is a vibrant, colorful, bustling and modern theme park, which uses an anachronistic and cartoonish European fantasyland as a background for amusements and spectacle.
And they do a good job of it. All around, I noticed families having fun. Smiling. I was at the park with my wife, our daughters, a couple of our friends and their children. We never ran out of things to do. While I've lamented the addition of Sesame Street into my "vintage vinyl shop", I realized today that there's a reason it's there. No, it most certainly does not fit into the record store. BUT THE GAP IS NOT A RECORD STORE. Like the first fashion mannequin at The Gap, shoehorned into some space between the classic rock and roll and the modern hippie stuff, it was, at first, out of place. But Sesame Street, like the mannequin, was not a permanent alien...it was the advanced guard of a new direction. Sesame Street was colorful, loud, busy and fun. Soon, other things came. When Big Bad Wolf was removed, it wasn't replaced with old German folklore. At the time, the addition of the 20th century specific Verbolten seemed a sore thumb in the quiet German hamlet. So we complained. But the pretzel stand went up too. And Oktoberfest was transformed into a Bavarian storybook. And there are butterflies. And there's a 250 ft maypole. Aquitaine is France. The Globe dropped the 18th century pirate tale in favor of the Beatles.
Taken individually, each of these changes really bothered me, because I kept thinking to myself "jeans don't belong in a record store." Today, I realized that it's not a record store any more, and all of these mannequins and models actually do belong right where they are.
Why do I say it's as good now as ever? Well, I was not, today, immersed in the Europe of the past. But I had lots of fun. In fact, I had more fun than I've had at the park in many years. The experience was totally different, of course. It wasn't escapism into a fantasy world, as much as it was escaping into a world of play. Where the old Busch Gardens was a heavy experience, this one is light, whimsical, frivolous. And people seemed to genuinely enjoy it.
I wondered to myself: is this better? And I had to conclude that perhaps, yes, it is. Maybe today, what people want most is simply a colorful place to play around. Several times, I found myself reminded of Walt Disney's original impetus for building Disneyland. Walt wanted to build a place where parents and children could play together. That was the genesis of Disneyland, and, by extension, the genesis of all the clones and copies and imitators in the country (of which Busch Gardens is one). I wondered if perhaps, at some point, fans of the Europe-immersion concept (myself included) had not allowed our love of an ideal take precedence over the function of the space: to provide a place for fun.
Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. For certain, theme provides a logic to a park. The brain interprets visual noise the same as it does audial. It is important, then, the provide structure for the environment, to create a story-skeleton on which to hang the park experience. For this reason, I still believe that sticking to a theme is of central importance to theme park development and I still hate King's Dominion. However, what IS the theme of Busch Gardens? I believe that I have been laboring under the misconception that the theme has not changed since 1976...but the theme most certainly has. The new theme is more forgiving...more elastic...has more flexibility. The old Busch Gardens was a place of structure and, to an extent, rules. I liked that, because I'm a bookish kind of guy. I am becoming a history teacher. I used to have a season's pass to Colonial Williamsburg. I go on plantation tours for weekend fun. I'm not alone, certainly, but I'm bound to be in the minority.
This is not to say that I don't think the park has problems. Of course it does. I think the park's potential is met unevenly. I don't like the shows that are being produced nearly as well as shows from the past (some of which I think fit perfectly well with the modern model). And I'll continue to criticize this wasted potential. But the one major thing I have criticized is the way that modern changes have been "destroying" the park by neglecting or poorly fitting the theme as I understood it. Today I realized that when I step back and look at it with new eyes (those of my non-BGWFan friends and our children), all of the changes of the last several years have not destroyed the park. They've simply changed it into something else; something else which, I realized today, I really do like quite a lot.
I guess I could say that while I've lost a place to hang around and listen to music, I've found a pretty cool place to shop for pants.
This little record store, which the pair dubbed "The Gap", soon became a much better outlet for denim than for vinyl. Now, you can walk in and buy jeans in over 3,000 GAP stores across the globe, but you won't find a record in any of them.
Record stores, in my experience, tend to have their own little crowds that, for whatever particular reason, choose to hang around; they derive an identity from their association. Maybe it's the particular stock of the store, or the element of the local scene it represents. I can imagine that as the record stock got smaller, and the jean selection got wider, those who'd chosen "The Gap" as their "home" record store started to feel a little homeless. Some migrated to other stores, I'm sure, but some would certainly have become record store hobos, who mostly just complained about the loss of "The Gap" to consumer culture and fashion.
But "The Gap" became GAP nonetheless.
I said all that to say this -- after today's trip to the park, I'm ready to say something I never thought I'd say:
Busch Gardens is as good today as it has ever been.
Today, I realized that Busch Gardens is no longer "The Gap", and I had become a record store hobo. The "record store" version of Busch Gardens that I remember was a quiet, quaint, sparsely populated and slow-moving themed park that replicated in romantic fashion Shakespearean - Edwardian Europe. In my mind, Busch Gardens has remained the record store since I first fell in love with it, despite the fact that the record collection has been steadily shrinking. What I've been neglecting to notice is the influx of high quality jeans into the stock room. Today I realized that the record store closed a while ago. They sell jeans now, and they're pretty nice ones.
What do I mean? I mean that today's Busch Gardens is not the sleepy historic park I loved. Busch Gardens today is a vibrant, colorful, bustling and modern theme park, which uses an anachronistic and cartoonish European fantasyland as a background for amusements and spectacle.
And they do a good job of it. All around, I noticed families having fun. Smiling. I was at the park with my wife, our daughters, a couple of our friends and their children. We never ran out of things to do. While I've lamented the addition of Sesame Street into my "vintage vinyl shop", I realized today that there's a reason it's there. No, it most certainly does not fit into the record store. BUT THE GAP IS NOT A RECORD STORE. Like the first fashion mannequin at The Gap, shoehorned into some space between the classic rock and roll and the modern hippie stuff, it was, at first, out of place. But Sesame Street, like the mannequin, was not a permanent alien...it was the advanced guard of a new direction. Sesame Street was colorful, loud, busy and fun. Soon, other things came. When Big Bad Wolf was removed, it wasn't replaced with old German folklore. At the time, the addition of the 20th century specific Verbolten seemed a sore thumb in the quiet German hamlet. So we complained. But the pretzel stand went up too. And Oktoberfest was transformed into a Bavarian storybook. And there are butterflies. And there's a 250 ft maypole. Aquitaine is France. The Globe dropped the 18th century pirate tale in favor of the Beatles.
Taken individually, each of these changes really bothered me, because I kept thinking to myself "jeans don't belong in a record store." Today, I realized that it's not a record store any more, and all of these mannequins and models actually do belong right where they are.
Why do I say it's as good now as ever? Well, I was not, today, immersed in the Europe of the past. But I had lots of fun. In fact, I had more fun than I've had at the park in many years. The experience was totally different, of course. It wasn't escapism into a fantasy world, as much as it was escaping into a world of play. Where the old Busch Gardens was a heavy experience, this one is light, whimsical, frivolous. And people seemed to genuinely enjoy it.
I wondered to myself: is this better? And I had to conclude that perhaps, yes, it is. Maybe today, what people want most is simply a colorful place to play around. Several times, I found myself reminded of Walt Disney's original impetus for building Disneyland. Walt wanted to build a place where parents and children could play together. That was the genesis of Disneyland, and, by extension, the genesis of all the clones and copies and imitators in the country (of which Busch Gardens is one). I wondered if perhaps, at some point, fans of the Europe-immersion concept (myself included) had not allowed our love of an ideal take precedence over the function of the space: to provide a place for fun.
Don't misunderstand what I'm saying. For certain, theme provides a logic to a park. The brain interprets visual noise the same as it does audial. It is important, then, the provide structure for the environment, to create a story-skeleton on which to hang the park experience. For this reason, I still believe that sticking to a theme is of central importance to theme park development and I still hate King's Dominion. However, what IS the theme of Busch Gardens? I believe that I have been laboring under the misconception that the theme has not changed since 1976...but the theme most certainly has. The new theme is more forgiving...more elastic...has more flexibility. The old Busch Gardens was a place of structure and, to an extent, rules. I liked that, because I'm a bookish kind of guy. I am becoming a history teacher. I used to have a season's pass to Colonial Williamsburg. I go on plantation tours for weekend fun. I'm not alone, certainly, but I'm bound to be in the minority.
This is not to say that I don't think the park has problems. Of course it does. I think the park's potential is met unevenly. I don't like the shows that are being produced nearly as well as shows from the past (some of which I think fit perfectly well with the modern model). And I'll continue to criticize this wasted potential. But the one major thing I have criticized is the way that modern changes have been "destroying" the park by neglecting or poorly fitting the theme as I understood it. Today I realized that when I step back and look at it with new eyes (those of my non-BGWFan friends and our children), all of the changes of the last several years have not destroyed the park. They've simply changed it into something else; something else which, I realized today, I really do like quite a lot.
I guess I could say that while I've lost a place to hang around and listen to music, I've found a pretty cool place to shop for pants.
