Climbing 60 feet in the air is no joke, especially once you realize you’ve climbed about 20 feet too high and have to traverse the jungle of rope course to get back down.
I discovered that Thursday evening when I joined a crowd at a gala on Long Wharf.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
With multi-color lights rapidly changing and popular music pulsing, the long lines could have been the scene of Any Nightclub, U.S.A. Instead it formed outside a celebration for New Haven’s newest … furniture store.
Wine and beer flowed. The celebrity of the hour, Warren Buffet, had already come and been ushered out of the room.
Mayor Toni Harp was there for the big event too.
The crowd was jammed, and some people formed their version of a conga line to make moving through a pre-opening day bash at the newest Jordan’s Furniture outlet, the first and what will be the only in Connecticut, which officially opens to the general public on Friday inside the former New Haven Register building.
Fellow reporter Aliyya Swaby and I braved the crowd and the line to experience what everyone had really come to see: “It,” a portion of the furniture megastore that features two 60-foot high ropes courses and four 200-foot-long zip lines. It is like a jungle gym on steroids. (It costs $8 to $30 to climb different versions of the course.)
To get to It at Thursday night’s pre-opening event, we had to wait, at least on this first night.
We bumped into East Rock Alder Anna Festa (pictured), who was there with two of her three boys. The boys said they were ready to make the climb, and they weren’t scared.
We passed the time watching as kids, young and old, braved the ropes course, which looked daunting from the ground.
It looked even more intimidating from the air.
Reporter Aliyya Swaby locked, loaded and smiling.
But first we had to get strapped into the thing that would keep us from having a real Wile E. Coyote moment: the harness. Once we were sufficiently strapped in and given the thumbs up, we were on our own from there.
We came for the zip line, but soon discovered that we first had to climb before we could fly.
The first flying leap off the platform of the zip line felt initially like a little tickle of fear in the bottom of my stomach. Then I caught the air, realized that the harness did in fact work, and that fear gave way to exhilaration.
My only regret was that the ride was over too soon.
Such was our quest for the thrill of the zip, that we didn’t get to try the wonders of “Scoop It” …
… or Blaze Pizza, but we can report that the lines at both were robust.
Earlier in the day, Jordan’s President and CEO Eliot Tatelman promised that the store would be a place where people could have a good time. And on Thursday night we did.
Wow--not as in that's wonderful and exciting--but wow as in is that not decadent. People need a circus to go furniture shopping! Of course the working class of New Haven Likely won't be buying furniture here anyhow. Maybe they'll still let them use the zip lines.