RIP Kingda Ka: Bushwick bar hosts a funeral for the iconic NJ roller coaster

A Bushwick bar will host a funeral for Kingda Ka, the iconic roller coaster at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey that was suddenly shuttered last fall and razed last month in a controlled implosion.

“This is a very impassioned community,” said organizer Evan Schwartz, who noted that the funeral will boast poetry readings, musical performances and a PowerPoint presentation on the technical engineering of the ride, which opened to great fanfare in 2005.

The event will also feature an open mic for anyone who wishes to eulogize the monumental coaster.

“People have some real memories on this thing. They grew up with news stories about its construction, the idea it was the most intimidating roller coaster in America,” Schwartz said. “It’s almost a rite of passage. As a kid, you go on it and it’s like you’ve conquered everything.”

Kingda Ka, the tallest roller coaster in the world until its demise, is a legend in the coaster community. Upon rumors of its closure, fans flooded online forums to obsess over clues from municipal demolition permits or their conversations with ride operators.

Once the closure was confirmed, bereaved fans took to social media to mourn the ride. One longtime coasterhead shared a video of himself playing funereal bagpipes in the parking lot of Six Flags Great Adventure as Kingda Ka’s green tower loomed in the background.

Video of Kingda Ka’s implosion on Feb. 28 went viral on social media. One fan posted a photo of its wreckage resting in peace at the local scrapyard. Kingda Ka merchandise, including T-shirts and pins, is selling on eBay for hundreds of dollars per item.

Kingda Ka was designed by storied ride engineer Werner Stengel, who received an honorary doctorate from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden “in recognition of his enormous creativity which connects physics and design with the experience of the body in roller coasters and other rides.”

While Schwartz, the event organizer, recognizes a funeral for a roller coaster is “silly and kind of ridiculous,” he hopes it will provide a space to discuss how “we as people bond ourselves to inanimate objects that provide us with communal memory … to come together and talk about how things are fallible and not forever.”

Schwartz said he has heard from people traveling from as far as Ohio for the event, adding that he identifies as a “coasterhead.”

“I see roller coasters as an art form on the same level as architecture, painting, film,” he said. “It’s an art form that you get to ride. I mean they’re beautiful and they give you a physical full-body experience.”

Schwartz said he heard the lore of Kingda Ka as a teenager growing up in Connecticut but didn’t get the chance to ride it until April 2022, when he went eight times in a row.

“For some reason, when I sat down on it for the first time I didn’t feel remotely intimidated,” Schwartz said. “I was just like, ‘This is what I need to be doing right now.’”

Unlike many roller coasters that build anticipation by ratcheting you up slowly to a huge drop, Kingda Ka used a hydraulic launch system to catapult its riders from 0-128 mph in 3.5 seconds, up a 456-foot vertical tower and straight down the other side in 28 seconds flat.

After rumors of the ride’s closure took hold last fall, Charles Gilbertson shared in the Facebook group “Great Adventure Connoisseurs” that he spent four days in a row at Six Flags Great Adventure doing nothing but ride Kingda Ka over and over again.

“It’s a one-trick pony with a really good trick,” Schwartz said.

REST IN SPEED: A Funeral for Kingda Ka will be held at 8 p.m. on Monday, April 7 at Wonderville, 1186 Broadway in Brooklyn. The event is free and 21+.