True story.
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UPDATED 6/4/26: I posted a feature today on those groovy old coin-operated Batmobile kiddie rides and it got me thinking about the time the 1966 Batmobile came to my house. So, this is a great time reprint that column from wayyyy back in April 2015. Thing is, much of it was way out of date, so I’ve rewritten the piece to a significant degree. Just being transparent. Dig it! — Dan
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Back in 2014, I was involved in a one-year wonder comics convention in my hometown of White Plains, N.Y., called New York Comic Fest, led by 13th Dimension‘s co-founder Cliff Galbraith. (It later morphed into East Coast Comicon, before falling prey to the Covid lockdown.)
Anyway, one of the attractions was a 1966 Batmobile owned by a cool New Jersey guy named Jeff Breden, who a couple months earlier had taken me for a ride in the world’s greatest car outside Cliff’s Asbury Park Comicon.
Adam West once hung out in Breden’s Batmobile.
So did Burt Ward!
Since the Batmobile was coming to my town and Jeff was such an affable dude, I decided on a lark — a total lark — to ask him if he’d pick me up in the Batmobile and take me to the show.
I figured, “What the hell, why not ask?” I didn’t expect him to say yes. But he did.
In the weeks leading up to the show, I asked him a couple of more times, “Are you sure this isn’t gonna be a problem?”
He never hesitated once. “Oh, yeah, no problem.”
But I still expected some kind of hiccup until I looked out the window of my house that bright June morning. There it was: the Batmobile.
Like a kid at Christmas, I ran outside. Incredible. The Batmobile. In front of my house.
Some of our windows were boarded up because we’d just had a fire. But check out the gobsmacked jogger!
These are the things of which dreams are made.
It wasn’t long until the neighbors came out of their homes to gawk at this four-wheeled wonder on their street, phone cameras at the ready.
I was worried we were going to cause an accident because every car slowed down to rubberneck, as well as joggers and cyclists out for a morning spin.
I got in. Last time I was in Breden’s Batmobile, I took a video of the ride but this time, I didn’t want to. I just wanted to live in the moment.
Jeff fired up the (not really) atomic batteries to power and turbines to speed. Roger, ready to move out.
Heading down the block, we turned right onto the Bronx River Parkway, a lovely vista that time of year, and roared northbound to the Westchester County Center.
The sun was shining and the wind rushed past us as I sat there, living what my wife calls my “charmed Batlife.”
We made a left at the County Center, then a quick right onto Tarrytown Road, and pulled into the back of the hall through a rear garage entrance, like entering an Art Deco Batcave.
I got out.
It was 10 of the best minutes of my life.
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MORE
— I Rode in the Original BATCOPTER — and It Was Everything I Hoped. Click here.
–– Dig These 13 Wild and Wonderful Vintage 1966 BATMOBILE KIDDIE RIDES. Click here.
December 15, 2015
lucky bastard