Death Of An Icon

American has lost an icon that defined cool for many baby boomers. Evel Knievel passed away last week. He rose to fame in the 1970’s as the red, white and blue motor cycle rider that could jump over anything on his bike. His two most famous jumps were over the fountains at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas and the Snake River Canyon rocket cycle jump. Both proved to be unsuccessful. The Caesar’s jump caused him grave bodily injury but vaulted him into the iconosphere of cool. The Snake River jump proved to be his downfall and left a bad taste in the mouth of America.

As the Evel Knievel mystique was fading, you had the rise of Authur Fonzarelli aka The Fonz. Happy Days spawned the next ultra cool motor cycle rider who wore a leather jacket and exuded coolness with everything he did. From the snapping of his fingers as a call to chicks, to the rapping on the juke box for his favorite dance tune, to the jumping over trash cans or a shark, the Fonz was the television replacement for the dare devil Evel Knievel. But as all television shows go, it ended up stale and after begging Richie to come back for the finale, went the way of all great shows, into rerun heaven.

Now that you have the extreme sports athletes, most of the stunts that made Evel Knievel famous are bland. He was a pioneer in the adrenaline junkie department making a generation think that bigger and more difficult were the cool way to go. Now we have people all over the world jumping off bridges with elastic cords or jumping from planes on boogie boards. Not that Evel Knievel started the extreme stunt trend but he made it cool to want the rush. Say a final farewell to an American pioneer and icon of 1970’s pop culture.

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Cobb