Nik Wallenda admitted he was worried as he inched his way across the thin steel wire that spanned two countries.
Nik Wallenda admitted he was worried as he inched his way across the thin steel wire that spanned two countries.
He wasn’t concerned about the raging torrent of the Niagara River 200 feet below. Nor was it the heavy mist rising up into the night sky from the mighty falls, or the swirling winds that buffeted him from different directions.
As Wallenda walked confidently from the American to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls on June 15, his biggest concern was that damned safety harness he’d been forced to wear by ABC-TV, which broadcast Wallenda’s death-defying stunt live to an audience of more than 19 million viewers.
For the first time since he began walking a high wire when he was two years old, there was a protective barrier separating life from death. And Wallenda didn’t like it one bit.
Two weeks before the walk, the network told Wallenda it needed to guarantee its audience they wouldn’t be witnesses to Wallenda’s death should an accident occur during his 1,800-foot stroll. A safety harness tethered to a steel cable would be the network’s insurance policy.
“We went back and forth about this for a while, because I’d never worn [a harness] before,” he says.
In the end, though, it all came down to a matter of economics. The cost of staging the stunt was more than $1 million, and the money was coming out of Wallenda’s pocket. ABC had agreed to pick up more than half of the costs but was prepared to walk away from the broadcast if Wallenda didn’t agree to its demand of a safety device.
“It kind of put me in a weird situation at the last minute, so I had no choice,” Wallenda says, with a twinge of frustration in his voice.
Wallenda will lose the harness on Aug. 9 when he attempts to replicate his long walk across Niagara Falls with a leisurely summer afternoon stroll between two casinos more than 100 feet above the Atlantic City beach.
Wallenda will walk a wire strung above the beach between the Atlantic Club Casino and the Tropicana Casino and Resort, where he’ll be performing The Wallenda Family Experience, a production show featuring his family and other world-class daredevils, Aug. 12 through Sept. 22.
Wallenda, who currently holds seven world records for his various fetes that defy death, logic and common sense, said he thinks his next walk might be another record: the highest walk over any beach.
“I don’t think anyone has done this type of walk, especially at this distance and height above the beach,” he says.
The 3pm event, which is free and open to the public, is being presented by the Atlantic City Alliance, the casino-funded marketing and advertising arm of the gaming industry.
Although Atlantic City has a rich and colorful past when it comes to bizarre entertainment, the city has adopted a more forward-thinking approach to marketing itself as a destination.
But Wallenda’s stunt above the beach is a throwback to the days when Atlantic City routinely presented some of the world’s strangest and most unusual entertainment. It would have fit in just as easily in 1912 as it will a century later.
“Atlantic City has a long tradition of jaw-dropping feats that entertain, inspire and amaze,” says Alliance president Liza Cartmell. “This free event along the famed Boardwalk with the Atlantic Ocean as a backdrop is perfect for [Atlantic City] visitors.”
Nik Wallenda did it in style. The world famous daredevil pulled off a feat that amazed 150,000 onlookers crowding the beach and Boardwalk in Atlantic City when he walked on a wire 125 ft. above the sand, from Sovereign Ave. and the beach, adjacent to Atlantic Club Casino, and finished 1,500 feet later above the beach at Tropicana Casino & Resort.
On June 25, daredevil Nik Wallenda traversed a two-inch wire across countries on June 25, becoming the first person to ever walk across Niagara Falls on a tightrope.
A look back at what happened in the Atlantic City area in 2011.
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Wallenda told the media that it will be several weeks before a ruling by Guinness World Records Ltd. "on whether his outdoor stunt qualifies for the world record for performing the stunt off the side of a building."
Plus the Mays Landing Guitar Center's King of the Blues competition and the new Album of the Week feature. This week: A Roy Orbison reissue from Legacy.
A comprehensive listing of entertainment coming to the Atlantic City casinos, Boardwalk Hall and Bader Field.
Whenever you're walking into one of those big shows at a convention center, you can generally tell what goodies inside are the most popular by how many people are walking out with them. At the Philad...
Back in 1928, John Ringling hired the innovative wire-walker Karl Wallenda and his family troupe, the Great Wallendas, for his circus. Later known as the Flying Wallendas, they became the best-known ...
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