Nothing Green Can Stay

“[There’s] something fascinating about seeing something so big come down,” murmured the man with the mic. The crush of people around me were less circumspect: They fist-pumped and hollered as demolition footage of a spindly, arched steel structure hurtling toward the ground played on a projector. We’d all crammed into the back room of Wonderville, a barcade-cum-DIY venue that, on a Monday evening in April, hosted a memorial service to a roller coaster. Not just any coaster but Six Flags Great Adventure’s Kingda Ka, the biggest and baddest to ever do it.

Unfamiliar with the ride and its claims to fame (“456ft, 128mph, 19 years. Rest in Speed, King,” read the event flyer), I was intrigued by the event itself. Peter DiDonato, the thrill-seeking don of e-hub Theme Park Crazy, tried his best to commit to the bit, offering brief introductory remarks before a gaggle of presenters teed up tributes in the form of musical performances, poems, and a slideshow on the grief of nonhuman loss. (A doula presided over the latter.) Some in the audience—almost uniformly clad in the deceased’s Monster Energy drink–green—jeered, while a restless few at the back of the room seemed to have grown bored and started fiddling with the arcade games. I don’t have any fond memories of Kingda Ka, so who am I to judge? People mourn differently.

According to the New Jersey theme park, Kingda Ka will be replaced with an “all-new, multirecord-breaking launch coaster” as soon as next year. (Even bigger, even badder, I presume. The audience booed when the statement was read aloud.) I finished my beer and half-assedly jotted down some notes before heading for Ridgewood, where, as filmmaker John Wilson puts it, “The buildings aren’t too tall.” There’s allegedly a seventeen-story residential tower on deck, but it’s long overdue. One can only dream of building a monument to hugeness for hugeness’s sake, crushing records for what you’d hope will be the last time on earth, knowing it probably won’t be. A much more feasible option is to buy a season pass and launch yourself into the stratosphere for a mindless few minutes.