Friday, January 30, 2015

"Slide The City" Coming to San Jose!

A 1,000 foot slip-and-slide is coming to a very lucky street somewhere in San Jose this June. This is exactly what is sounds like... an inflated water slide three football fields long. To get an idea of the sheer scale of this, have a look at the photos below from the inaugural Salt Lake City event.

The exact date and location have not yet been set. I'm hoping for a spot somewhere around Downtown San Jose, but I'm not sure if we have a hill steep enough in the area. Where do you guys think this will go?

The pricing will range from $15 to $60 depending on how many times you want to go down the slide (one, three times, or unlimited) and the kind of swag you'd like to take home. All passes come with a water gun.

To get on the mailing list and be the first to know when early registration becomes available, just head over here.

Hat-tip to Payge Lyn for sending this in!





16 comments:

  1. The Stairs @ Comm Hill?

    LOL!

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    1. You mean "Sli-Sli-Sli-de-de-de The-The-The Ci-Ci-Ci-Ci-ty-ty-ty" ?

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  2. How about the San Carlos St overpass next to Orchard Supply!

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  3. We are in the midst of a drought should the city be allowing and promoting this type of activity? to me it sends a sign to many that there is no drought, feel free to wash your car, water your sidewalks, etc. Or is the city saying, it's okay to waste water when it's for a revenue generating event? LA cancelled this event because of the drought and San Jose should follow suit:

    http://www.laweekly.com/news/water-slide-is-denied-permission-to-happen-in-downtown-la-5092423

    I am thinking of starting the same type of position to stop the event from happening in San Jose.

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    1. Silly environmentalists, getting in the way of fun, innovative ideas.

      The water from the LA slide was scheduled to be trekked out to Griffith Park to make use out of it...but that wouldn't let the environmentalists stroke their own ego.

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    2. Environmentalist? How about common sense! All one needs to do is study the facts, for example, we had no precipitation during the month of January! and have been in one of the longest prolonged droughts in the history of the state. But hey, you go ahead and stick your head in the sand and keep using terms like innovative when describing events like this.

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    3. Oh no, it is "one of the longest prolonged droughts in the history of the state!" s
      That statement may be relevant if you solely focus on the meteo data of the past 150 years. However, on the grand scale of all things geological, this is just a blimp on the radar. Here's an excerpt for you (12,000 yr BP - Before Present)

      Holocene multidecadal and multicentennial droughts affecting Northern California and Nevada

      Quaternary Science Reviews Vol. 21 (4-6) (February 2002) pp. 659-682.

      Continuous, high-resolution d18O records from cored sediments of Pyramid Lake, Nevada, indicate that oscillations in the hydrologic balance occurred, on average, about every 150 years (yr) during the past 7630 calendar years (cal yr). The records are not stationary; during the past 2740 yr, drought durations ranged from 20 to 100 yr and intervals between droughts ranged from 80 to 230 yr. Comparison of tree-ring-based reconstructions of climate change for the past 1200 yr from the Sierra Nevada and the El Malpais region of northwest New Mexico indicates that severe droughts associated with Anasazi withdrawal from Chaco Canyon at 820 cal yr BP (calendar years before present) and final abandonment of Chaco Canyon, Mesa Verde, and the Kayenta area at 650 cal yr BP may have impacted much of the western United States.

      So, when's the "Slide the City" again?

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    4. Same paper, last paragraph, last sentence are the most important:

      "Urban and agricultural areas in western Nevada and Northern California are dependent on a water supply that originates as winter precipitation in the Sierra Nevada. Historical droughts have lasted less than a decade; however, the drought record presented in this paper indicates the occurrence of droughts that lasted several decades during the past 2740calyr. In addition, multicentennial droughts prior to 3430calyr may have been so severe as to cause the closure of Lake Tahoe. If and when such droughts reoccur, they will have severe consequences for communities in California and Nevada that are dependent on Sierran runoff.

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    5. Oh, come on. Let the kids have some water fun in the summer. If you don't have a pool at your house or apartment there's almost nowhere to go to play in the water. I'm sure it's not using that much water compared to residents watering their lawn every day in the summer.

      I find the prices of $15-$60 very steep to go down a water slide, but apart from that I think it's a fun idea.

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  4. Funny, that's sounds like my neighbor, "Come on, I really enjoy washing my cars this action has no impact on the large issue?" I guess it really is too much to ask the present to sacrifice for the future.

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    1. I could've asked Jerry Brown the very same question when we legalized DLs for illegals, i.e. roughly 3 Million live in CA and at the current daily water usage avg rate of ~100Gal. per person, we're down by 109,500,000,000 gallons (336,000 acre feet) annually.

      btw. I'd like to nominate the Coleman/W Julian St overpass for the slide. Woooooooshhhhh!

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  5. Also...who's to say that they aren't going to use recycled water and/or recycle or find a use for the water afterwards?

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    1. They were planning to recycle the water in the LA event before it got canceled. Appearances over reality, I guess.

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