The Pretzel, Whacky Shack & Laff in the Dark: A History of Amusement Park ‘Dark Rides’

How American amusement parks first discovered the thrills of “dark rides,” from the Tunnel of Love to the haunted house. Ride designers had to get creative to scare riders in the early days:

“It seems so simple, but Bill Cassidy—the second owner of Pretzel, the son of Leon—told us before he passed away that that was one of the gimmicks that he was most proud of. It was just a spool of thread. It would hang from a rafter in the ceiling, and it would rub up against people’s faces and creep them out. It’s supposed to be cobwebs, I guess, but it wasn’t an actual web. It was just a string, but you couldn’t see it. You weren’t expecting it. That got a real rise out people back then. It seems to me that just about every dark ride I rode in the 1960s had that. If it didn’t come factory-installed, I’m sure the park owners themselves would tack it up.”

Author: Lisa Hix
Published: Oct 20, 2013
Length: 23 minutes (5,878 words)

Reading List: The Reality of Rape Culture

This week’s picks from Emily includes stories from The Kansas City Star, xoJane, Slate, and Defeating the Dragons.

Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 20, 2013

Shades of Green

Excerpts from emails written home from a Marine in Afghanistan:

“The most dangerous times of any deployment are the first and last thirty days. In the first thirty days, you don’t have the experience to keep you from making stupid mistakes. Add to that the swagger that any young person might have when heading off to war for the first time, and you’ve got a potentially dangerous combination. In short, you’re too stupid to realize that your aggressiveness and confidence is what is most likely to get you killed.

“During the last thirty days, you have the benefit of five to six months of combat experience, but you are tired and have convinced yourself that you have everything under control. You’ve patrolled the same roads and talked to the same people for half a year, and all you can think or talk about is going home. In short, you’ve become too cocky to realize that letting your guard down is what will get you killed. In both cases, it is our hubris that is our most dangerous enemy.”

Published: Oct 19, 2013
Length: 13 minutes (3,453 words)

Love in the Gardens

Zadie Smith on her father, mourning, and the gardens of Italy:

“There is a sentimental season, early on in the process of mourning, in which you believe that everything you happen to be doing or seeing or eating, the departed person would also have loved to do or see or eat, were he or she still here on earth. Harvey would have loved this fried ball of rice. He would have loved the Pantheon. He would have loved that Rossetti of a girl with her thick black brows.

“In the first season of mourning there is a tendency to overstate. But still I feel certain that this was the garden that would have made us both happy.”

Published: Oct 19, 2013
Length: 14 minutes (3,738 words)

The Future of the Orgasm Industry

Nitasha Tiku goes inside the world of OneTaste, a San Francisco company dedicated to the practice of “orgasmic meditation,” or OM:

“I first heard about OneTaste in March, at a breakfast meeting with a venture capitalist who had newly moved to New York from San Francisco. She hadn’t felt compelled to try it herself, but she had a friend who worked at OneTaste, who would OM if she was nervous before a big meeting. They had lingo for the men who’d perfected the craft: ‘Master stroker—that’s what it’s called!’

“Genital stimulation in a professional context seemed transgressive, even for hippie-hedonist San Francisco. Her friend, Joanna Van Vleck—who is now OneTaste’s president—met me in June when she was in New York. ‘We don’t OM, like, right in the office,’ Van Vleck explained. But she said, ‘If we have employee problems, we’re like, let’s OM together. Yeah, if two people have a discrepancy, we say: OM together!'”

Source: Gawker
Published: Oct 18, 2013
Length: 32 minutes (8,147 words)

The Year of Living Carlos Dangerously

“I’m just an empty, soulless vessel.” Marshall Sella follows Anthony Weiner during his doomed campaign for New York City mayor, and finds out what happened after election night:

"At the end of every regret, there was always Huma. Oh, he showed contrition to the voters, but that was weak beer. He apologized to Huma and expressed his pain for her so frequently that there were times when I wondered whether he’d partly been trying to talk to her through the press. His honesty was challenged by all quarters, but his love for her seemed absolute. It was the core of him, the one thing he said—despite the lies—about which I never felt a trace of doubt.

“I asked, had to ask, if they’d be staying together. ‘One thing I’m grateful for is that now I’m under no obligation to answer anything like this,’ he said. ’But we’ve had a very rough time. It causes me a great deal of pain in the way she gets reported and the way she gets discussed. Her treatment in the press has been rough. It pains me because I deserve it. She doesn’t.”

Source: GQ
Published: Oct 17, 2013
Length: 22 minutes (5,589 words)

First Chapters: ‘You Are One of Them,’ by Elliott Holt

Our latest First Chapter is from Elliott Holt’s novel, You Are One of Them. Thanks to Holt and The Penguin Press for sharing it with the Longreads community.

Published: Oct 17, 2013
Length: 11 minutes (2,854 words)

The Legend of Harvey Scissorhands

A brief history of Harvey Weinstein’s relationship with filmmakers and the editing room. Does he make movies better—or are Good Harvey and Bad Harvey working together?

“Plenty of filmmakers have lambasted Weinstein for his savage butchery — Luc Besson, Mike Leigh, James Ivory — while others have praised Harvey for helping them find their film in the editing room. Scorsese himself told Roger Ebert that the 168-minute version of Gangs — which was Scorsese’s most successful film in the decade since Cape Fear — is his director’s cut, which might be true. But it’s definitely true that any discussion of the editing of Gangs of New York always calls to mind, as critic Peter Bradshaw put it, ‘a butcher — an unprincipled villain who cuts and slashes, mangles and chomps: Harvey Weinstein.’”

Source: Grantland
Published: Oct 17, 2013
Length: 12 minutes (3,131 words)

Why Do So Many Harvard Students Go Into Management Consulting? Our College Pick

Every week, Syracuse University professor Aileen Gallagher helps Longreads highlight the best of college journalism. Here’s this week’s pick, from Victoria A. Baena and the Harvard Crimson.

Source: Longreads
Published: Oct 17, 2013
Length: 21 minutes (5,375 words)

My Year With Malala

A reporter spends time with Malala Yousafzai and her family. Yousafzai became internationally recognized after she survived being shot in the head by the Taliban:

“One day in mid-April, Time magazine arrives with Malala’s face on the cover, as one of the world’s 100 most influential people. She complains she doesn’t like the photo.

“Sometimes when I go to their house I notice elaborate bouquets. When I ask where they come from, they say: ‘Oh, Angelina Jolie was over for dinner,’ or: ‘The ex-prime minister of Norway dropped in for tea.’ The family visits London and is taken to see Boris Johnson. He leaves Malala slightly baffled. ‘He just kept saying, “What’s it all about?” ’ she says. In the paper we read she is favourite for the Nobel Peace Prize. My son is astonished. ‘How can she win?’ he asks. ‘She’s always fighting with her brother!'”

Published: Oct 17, 2013
Length: 16 minutes (4,043 words)