The pop-up carnival at Plano and Walnut opens May 6. Do you dare?
My children have been buzzing about the carnival that just popped up at the corner of Plano and Walnut Street, next to Tango Bakery where we like to pick up panes dulces (sweet breads), sugary croissants and, on special occasions, cakes or cupcakes. (It’s outside Lake Highlands but not by much). They think I will take them to said carnival this weekend, but I’m not so sure …
I’ve always been sort of fascinated with these seemingly impromptu amusement parks, in part, because they seem a little dangerous. A search of the web turns up sites such as rideaccidents.com that track injuries and deaths on amusement park rides. Seems as if inflatable slides and ubiquitous bounce houses are the more valid concern than the Ferris wheel/roller coaster-type rides.
And, as if to punctuate my morbid fascination with these things, the author of “History of the American Traveling Carnival” writes of traveling carnivals, “One of the last fun-dangerous places we can encounter, it saves us from modernity’s empty promises of personal safety, which have lost their significance in the face of the omnipresence of media violence.”
Anyway, I probably won’t put my little girl on the Kamikaze, but we might go for the carousel and a funnel cake.
Kamikaze: probably not
Carousel: maybe
