From the Niagara Falls Review:
Once a carnie town, always a carnie town?
That’s the logic both downtown businesses and the tourism industry are using to get you to buy into events like Monday’s plunge from the Skylon Tower by daredevil Dean Sullivan and next month`s Daredevil Days festival.
Niagara Falls has a nearly 200-year-old history of stuntmen and stuntwomen. As long as people with more courage than common sense have been coming to Niagara Falls, they have been defying death by going over, jumping from, walking across or riding through the incredible geographic features that define Niagara Falls.
When Sullivan rappelled from the Skylon Tower, it revived the dormant Niagara Falls tradition of cheating death to amuse the masses.
“You have to go back to our roots. They came here to see the daredevils,†said Wayne Thomson, a city councillor and chairman of the Daredevil Days festival coming up in August.
“After you look at the falls… what do people wonder about? What are they fascinated about? They’re fascinated about daredevils,†Thomson said.