Please Let This 1,000-Foot Water Slide Come to NYC in August

Utah-based event company purveyor of warm-weather wish fulfillment Slide the City is gunning to bring its 1,000-foot water slide to New York City. First rumored in January, the madcap scheme involves plunking down three football fields worth of plastic over a gently sloping street somewhere in the USA and then allowing young (or young-at-heart) people to shell out $15-$60 for anywhere from a single ride to unlimited soakings. Boston and Detroit are among the other places Slide the City aims to visit this summer. Meanwhile, California's drought has put the kibosh on versions in LA and San Francisco. As for New York, there's a website with a waiting list and a chance to sign up for e-mail updates and everything, so it's got to be real, right?

"We are currently working with the city to finalize the details for this event. If you get on our email list you will be among the first to hear any updates," Slide the City Marketing Director Dustin Butcher wrote in an e-mail to Curbed. "[W]e would be bringing the same event. We are just figuring out timing, location, etc. for NYC."

That means permits, probably from the Department of Transportation if not other city agencies. If it turns out to be sort of like the Color Run and the Electric Run, expect some far-flung open field in Brooklyn to be the slide's eventual home. But wouldn't it be awesome if it were, say, on Broadway? (Outside of the whole water conservation issue—which, by the way, Slide the City tries to address.)

Here is the slide in action, in a not-very-dense city that is not New York:

In a follow-up e-mail, Butcher provided some more context: "We started the event last year and have put on 5 events so far (SLC, UT; Boise, ID; West Palm Beach, FL; Fountain Hills, AZ; Ft Lauderdale, FL). We have another 6 scheduled just in May and 15 more in June. We have plans to do over 100 events in the US alone this year. None of our events yet have been in cities as big as NYC, but does that really exist?"

If, for some calamitous reason, the event doesn't get approval in New York, then check out the trillions of other cities Slide the City is targeting this year.

· Slide the City NYC [official]