From WNYC Public Radio (you can listen to the 5-minute audio segment):<\/p>\n
Niagara Falls has long been a magnet for daredevils, but strict laws have kept them away for more than a century. That’s expected to change Friday, when circus performer Nik Wallenda will walk a two-inch-thick wire above the giant waterfall. It’s an exception officials hope will rescue tourism \u2014 and the city’s economy.<\/p>\n
At the Haunted House of Wax in Niagara Falls, tourists are greeted by two signs: one that beckons visitors to meet ghoulish wax figurines and another advertising that the building is for sale. It’s a common sight in a downtown that’s also dotted with empty lots and tacky gift shops.<\/p>\n
Paul Gromosiak has lived here for 70 years, and he still remembers the glory days. He keeps a homemade model of Niagara Falls on his kitchen table with little flags on toothpicks to mark stunts from the past 200 years. He’s already added one for Nik Wallenda.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From WNYC Public Radio (you can listen to the 5-minute audio segment): Niagara Falls has long been a magnet for daredevils, but strict laws have kept them away for more than a century. That’s expected to change Friday, when circus performer Nik Wallenda will walk a two-inch-thick wire above the giant waterfall. It’s an exception…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[54,2],"tags":[7578,389,7577,41,5673,7576,7575,3896,346,1904,7574],"class_list":["post-11264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-niagara-falls-new-york","category-niagara-falls-news","tag-circus-performer","tag-daredevils","tag-haunted-house-of-wax","tag-niagara-falls","tag-nik-wallenda","tag-paul-gromosiak","tag-public-radio","tag-stunts","tag-tightrope","tag-waterfall","tag-wnyc"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}