Saturday 2 July 2016

Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre


I’m about 6 weeks late but here it is: blog post number 2. As promised, this time I will be discussing an event which piqued my interest because of the sad lack of information about it on the internet: the Bear Mountain picnic massacre.

If you look up the phrase “bear mountain picnic massacre” in google it is highly unlikely you will get any real results for this event, unless maybe you trawl through pages and pages of search results. But let’s be real, no one has time for that. (Side note – a Yahoo answers page comes up when you search this where the “best answer” has given some information about a battle which is supposedly this event. They are incorrect, that is not what happened at all.)   
The lack of search results for this event is accredited to the legend himself, Bob Dylan. In 1961 he wrote a song titled “Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues”. Give the song a listen HERE if you wish. The ‘talking’ and ‘blues’ part of this song title refers to the style of this song, talking blues, which is a form of folk and country music. Dylan wrote this song in honour of his idol Woody Guthrie. Clearly however, the ‘Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre’ part of the title refers to the event in question. While the song is entertaining, it is not factually accurate in the slightest. He actually wrote it after being handed an article about the event, and was amused enough by it he wrote the song overnight and presented it to his friend Noel Stookey (if you don’t recognise the name he sung puff the magic dragon lmao). The song includes apparent happenings such as 6000 people arriving to the picnic, a sinking boat, and his character in the song “busting” his head and “cracking” his stomach. While not at all accurate to the story, it is a humorous spin on the event, and paints the feeling of chaos at the scene greatly.

So what actually happened? A picnic was organised for father’s day in Harlem, New York on Sunday the 18
th of June, 1961. In order to attend the event, partakers had to buy tickets, as there was a boat ride which could take only 3000 people from the 134th Street up the Hudson River to Bear Mountain.  However, things went sour when instead of the designated 3000 people arriving for the boat ride, 4000 people were awaiting the boat at 9am on Sunday to take them to Bear Mountain. This was due to the work of three teenagers; Joseph Osbourne (19), Arnold Cherry (19), and Philip Clayton (18), who had produced and sold 1000 counterfeit tickets for the event.

Tensions rose on the pier as the boat, the Hudson Belle, was delayed from arriving. Word spread that 1000 false tickets had been sold for just $3 to some picnic goers. When the Hudson Belle arrived an hour late, 40 policemen were on hand to diffuse the already chaotic scene. They however, were useless when the gangplanks were dropped. The frantic crowds surged forwards, everybody desperate to secure their rightful place on the boat ride. 60 people were trampled or fainted. 9 were carried off to hospital, and 50 were treated at the pier. Around 2500 people managed to fight their way on board before Captain George Barry cancelled the trip and ordered everybody off in the face of the overwhelming chaos. Beer cans, bottles and insults were hurled at the captain and his crew as the angry crowds left.

The three teenagers responsible for the counterfeit tickets and the ensuing pandemonium were arrested later that day.

And so you have been blessed with the true story of the Bear Mountain Massacre. Originally, when I was assigned to research this event in history I was given only the lyrics to Bob Dylan’s song Talkin’ Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues. After literally hours of research and an insane trip through a Bob Dylan fan page, did I find out the name of the boat. I then looked up “Hudson Belle father’s day” and BOOM three news articles. If you want to see these articles, which are also the references I used to write this post (and do my history homework) you can find them here, here, and here.

Thank you for reading this. See you next week with my next post (or whenever I feel like posting, more accurately)

-SH

Friday 3 June 2016

Introduction to My Blog

I've tried writing this post over three times now. I'm not sure why of all things I've had to write recently this is what I'm struggling with, but hey presto here I am, with a blog ready to go and no introductory post to put on it.
I figured a pretty solid way of introducing this blog would be to introduce myself. So hi world, my name is Shannara, I am a year 11 student in high school in New Zealand, and I am beginning a blog. This blog will likely be a mixture of personal tales, educational posts (just because I love teaching myself new things) and articles/essays I'll write about opinions I have on current events in New Zealand and around the world.
 
For a while I've toyed over the idea of beginning a blog. I've always liked the idea of it; it's a way to get myself writing again, and an easy, effective way to voice my opinions on a platform where people might just listen. But I never really seriously decided when or how I would create my blog until recently at a university expo at my school. STORY TIME
 
Throughout my life I've swapped ideas numerous times about my dream career, with these ideas ranging from everything from a ballerina to a script writer. However recently, after having dismissed the career option for years, I decided that I should like to become a journalist. My reasons for this being that I can write as part of my job, work in the media, have a career which changes day to day, and I won't have to be stuck in an office 40 hours a week. It ticks pretty much all my boxes, so as of right now it seems like a pretty decent option.
 
At the university expo at my school, I got talking to a man representing one of the universities (I cannot remember which one now) about journalism courses they offered. The man suggested other universities I would be better off trying, but left me with one bit of advice: If you want to be a good prospect for a university course, put yourself out there. I hadn't even begun thinking about looking like a good prospect for universities using anything other than my grades, so when he suggested I start a blog or offer to write for my local paper it was like he was literally my god sent blessing from heaven. I honestly can't thank him enough for finally motivating me enough to pick myself up and actually DO something with my life.
 
So here I am. Who knows how this blog is going to go or if I'm even going to remember to write in it regularly. To begin with I'll try post at least once a week and we'll see where we go from there.
 
I think for my first real post I'm going to talk about an event which happened in 1961, known to most as the Bear Mountain Picnic Disaster. I'm interested in talking about this event in particular because at the beginning of this year my history class was given an assignment to research about this event. There is virtually NOTHING about it online. It was only after hours of research and some trawling through a Bob Marley fan page did I find a snippet of information which led me to the answers I sought. That's 2 hours of my life I'll never get back.
 
I'll try get that up sometime in the next week. If you've read this far thank you, and feel free to subscribe / follow / whatever it is people do on this website.
Until next time :)

-SH