It was once the most popular entertainment pier in America, featuring everything from Live TV, to Miss America, to big name stars. Anyone who was anybody could be seen at the historic Steel Pier, in Atlantic City, NJ. Once a victim of fire, neglect, and closure; the pier continues to reinvent itself with a wave of new additions. Atlantic City’s Steel Pier officially opened the gates in Saturday, June 18, 1898 featuring movie theaters, dance halls, live performances, attractions, concessions, and sharpshooter Annie Oakley headlining the festivities. The pier was constructed on steel pilings and wooden beams at a cost of $350,000. After being open for only a few short years, in 1904 a massive storm washed away a large portion of the pier and engineers at the time said it could not be rebuilt. Edward Bader (who would later become mayor of Atlantic City and have an airport named for him) took on the challenge and had his company reconstruct the pier for the following season. The pier, along with Atlantic City itself, gained much popularity during the summer months as vacationers flocked to the beach. Atlantic City is easily accessible from New York and Philadelphia by rail and city goers were eager to relax at the beach and escape the hustle and bustle. The pier was full of attractions for the whole family. The reasonable prices kept the people coming back again and again. In the early days, the pier was described as “an amusement city at sea” and “a vacation in itself.” The pier extended more than 1,621 feet out into the Atlantic Ocean and could accommodate large crowds gathering to witness the many acts. The entrance featured brightly lit billboards like those that would take decades to catch on in Vegas. Spot lights would shoot beams into...

One of the many things I love about living in New England is that Halloween starts at the end of September. It’s not just that the Halloween candy starts showing up in the stores, that happens everywhere, it’s that tons of haunted attractions open their doors a full month before Halloween so they are in full swing as the actual day approaches. New England has a rich history of being creepy. Most of our nation’s fun Halloween activities, such as carving pumpkins and trick or treating, have their roots in terrified people desperately trying to stave off death for one more winter. Fierce If you want to be just a little afraid for your safety, you need to head to Fall River, MA. First of all, you can rent the actual room where Lizzie Borden may or may not (the court found her not guilty) have given her (step) mother forty whacks. During the day, you can go on the tour and see where Lizzie may (or may not) have given her father similar treatment. Lizzie Borden’s home is a B&B, of course Fall River knows how to celebrate Halloween! The older and better known of Fall River’s two major haunted houses is the Factory of Terror. It’s promoted as three haunted attractions in one. What that really means is, it’s a long haunted house. You won’t be in and out in five minutes. You will have time to be truly scared and a little concerned that it will never end. Just by virtue of being in an empty factory in a once industrial part of town, the place is creepy. The special effects are quality and the actors are generally enthusiastic. It’s a popular attraction, for good reason, and the downside is long...

There are tons of free television and radio stations on the air right now, beaming into your home and car, which most people don’t  know exist.  But fear not, I’m about to help you access these stations – FOR FREE! In a recent blogumn, I discussed how you can listen to distant radio stations from other cities.  Some of the stations that I talked about were digital sub-channels only. Sub-channels are additional channels that both TV and radio stations are broadcasting along with their main signals, for free.  These subchannels are often labeled .2 or HD-2 (and up), but these are completely different channels from their main station, so it’s like getting a second channel for free! As technology advanced, and the government stepped in, stations began broadcasting in digital. With an old analog signal, they were only able to send one channel of programming.  Now that stations are broadcasting in digital, which is nothing more than sending 1’s and 0’s over the air, they are able to send several different channels at once. The sad part is most TV and radio stations have done a really bad job implementing and explaining what these channels are.  But fear not – I’ll make it simple!  So, let’s look at TV first. TELEVISION Television stations make most of their money by broadcasting one of the major networks on their main feed.  This is usually the original analog channel number they were assigned when the station began broadcasting a long time ago. In 2010, when stations were forced to turn off their analog signals by our government and go strictly digital the original channel numbers became meaningless.  Stations were reassigned new digital channel numbers, but most continued to use the old number on-air, so viewers would not get confused. Many...