We’ve highlighted before the spooky abandoned property of Chippewa Lake amusement park. Like other long forsaken amusement parks in Ohio, there’s something simultaneously depressing and alluring about these sights.
This week, urban explorer and Cleveland-area home inspector Marko Vovk published a video from his time wandering the grounds in Medina County. It’s a bleak sight, all the way around. Throughout the park, tree limbs are quite literally swallowing rusted roller coaster rails.
“When you walk through this park, you get a gloomy feeling like someone is following you or watching you,” Vovk writes. “You need to go alone to experience this feeling. It’s very cool.”
Lakewood resident Ryan Lawrence Manthey provided the music.
This article appears in Nov 5-11, 2014.
An “urban explorer” pays a neighbor $25, entitling him to pry back a chain link fence and trespass on someone else’s property. He documents the work of vandals, so he’s to be commended for preserving our memories. Why is this not as much a crime as the actions of the vandals and graffiti creators? Ruin porn allows viewers to revel in another’s misfortune, and it’s a mean-spirited perversion. For the Scene to pretend that this as a contribution to online journalism is weak and lazy, and it’s just as mean-spirited. Hooray!
So, just a few comments here on the post by Bill Lammers. I’m personally not getting the outrage here, because I don’t really see what the big deal is. At the very least, Marko is guilty of trespassing on private property; that is in no way equal to vandals, who have trespassed and vandalized property as well. The owners of the property don’t seem to be in any hurry to send the police to talk with him, so obviously they don’t really care (and since it’s their property, they can do or not do what they want with it). Ruin porn? Reveling in another’s misfortune? Those are both large stretches to say the least. I don’t recall in the video any laughing at the owners or happy dancing on the ruins as a celebration of failure. You’re welcome to feel however you want about Scene’s writing, but I would have to say there may be a teeny bit of oversensitivity in regards to what exactly is mean-spirited or not. If filming an abandoned amusement park is mean spirited, then turning on your computer is probably downright heartless for everyone involved in the failed typewriter industry.
Urban exploration politics aside, this “film” is formulaic and yawn-inducing.
I used to go this park for my dad’s company picnic. It brings back a lot of memories. I also fished on the lake many times after the park closed. You could see most of the old rides still standing. The one I remember most was the salt and pepper shakers.
Mr. Lammers, I am sorry you feel this way. I (Marko Vovk) go to these places to “Taste the Moment in Time “. Then I spend time researching and learning real history, unlike the brain washing history that indoctrinates some of the sheeple population. I would have never known about Mr. Parker Beach who worked from the bottom up, empting garbage cans to finally owning the park. I would have never known that this lake was made by a glacier and is spring feed. I would have never known about PRE -1900’s manual roller coasters. Mr. Lammers, you should thank the Scene for publishing something that did not come off the NEWS TELEPROMPTER that you commonly see on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX. Sorry for not living in the pseudo – reality- zombie – world. I like to create my own realty, and if takes squeezing into a hole in fence so be it. Now I have to go post my Urban Exploration Abandoned Trailer Park video.
PS If you want to preserve our memories, why don’t you post your own photos and movies when the park was all happy? Thank you Scene for publishing my video.
I think it is important,for us and future generations to see the Park in it’s state of decay.Thank you Marko for shooting and posting this. It might even save another Park from suffering the same fate.
Like many others that have lived in the community of Chippewa Lake in Medina county ,I too have been through the fences and gazed at the wonderful fulfillment of the Joy it must have been to be there in time when the Ballroom was still standing ( which I had seen before its misfortune of delinquents) I have also fished from the shore and off the break wall enjoying the ambience of the peaceful feeling then . Although I was there late at nite, several years earlier it would of been somewhat impossible to have shared such a quiet enjoyable evening watching to see if I would get a bite on my line. There I was walking under the roller coaster of A million smiles knowing in a sad way it was now over for that period of time,knowing the little train would never toot its whistle and be full of happy families having a great afternoon !!
Oh, for Pete’s sake Lammers, he was documenting the decay of a once thriving amusement park, and I enjoyed watching his efforts!
i grew up in Chippewa Lake used to work at park as a kid everyone in town worked there! The picnics, rides and the owners Parker and Janet Beach were great and later moved to Naples, Fl where I live too! Jungle Larry came too!