Alan Mays' photos with the keyword: Steel Pier

For more information, see the full version of this photo.

A photo of a dock or a pier for the Vintage Photos Theme Park. This is a 1957 snapshot of the Steel Pier , an amusement pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Billed as "The Show Place of the Nation," the pier hosted a variety of shows and acts, including a diving horse and a bicycle-riding bear. When I purchased this photo, however, I didn't realize that it showed a bear and a woman riding bikes on the high platform visible on the left-hand side (mouse over the image to see an enlargement ). After I spotted the bear, I still couldn't imagine that you could train an animal like that to climb a ladder and ride a bicycle. But a YouTube clip of the Bicycle-Riding Bear that's part of The Nieroslavski Family at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, N.J. --filmed during summer 1960--provides a glimpse of how the bear performed its act. Attitudes toward animal acts have changed over the past fifty years, however, and making a bear ride a bicycle seems inhumane and dangerous by today's standards. As far as I've been able to determine, there are no longer any bicycling bears or diving horses in Atlantic City.

"Central Studios. 369P. With 'Pete,' Our Gang Dog, Steel Pier, Atlantic City." Our Gang was "a series of American comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and their adventures" that first appeared in movie theaters as early as the 1920s. The films were later released on television beginning in the 1950s under the original Our Gang name or as The Little Rascals . Pete the Pup , also known as Pete the Dog With the Ring Around His Eye, was a fixture in the comedies, and he (or his successor, whose ring was painted on) posed with children for souvenir photos like this one at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the 1930s. The boy in this photo, who doesn't seem to be enjoying his time with Pete, is the same kid who's playing with his toys in Sonny, Bunny, and Dummy and A Pedal Car for Christmas .

Unrepentant milk drinkers arrested for disudderly conduct and nearly causing a cowtastrophe.