Today's post features something that I think is cool. I also think you will think it’s cool. Yes, it has to do with DAWN OF THE DEAD of course. But what is it that I’m showing you here? Here’s the deal, I own two panels from the bottom of the escalator that used to be in JC Penney’s at the Monroeville Mall, as seen in DAWN OF THE DEAD. The picture that you see here shows what the escalator looked like in the movie and what my pieces look like currently, after I staged them outside my garage. There’s a story to go along with these of course.
The story starts October 8, 2012. A little over 9 years ago. I was told that JC Penney’s at the Monroeville Mall was selling off its fixtures on the following day, because it had closed a few weeks previously. I was invited to come out the next day on October 9th, if I wanted to come out. Cool. I wanted to go, so it was an easy decision to make. The only problem was that I live in South Carolina which is about 8 hours away from the Monroeville Mall. I had to go though, I had never gotten the chance to slide down the escalator there in JC Penney’s like Roger did in DAWN OF THE DEAD. The JC Penney’s building would soon be torn down and gone for good. Demolition ran from the end of 2012 to the spring of 2013. The Cinemark movie theater would be built there in its place. I had to get into that building if I had the chance, now I had that chance, so I got out of working the next day, and decided to make my way there. One more thing, I had to be there at 9am or some odd early hour. So I had to drive through the night to be there on time to get into JC Penney’s at the specified time. That also meant almost no sleep before I left. But I had to go…
I got there exactly at 9am or whatever time I had to be there. I met up with Kevin Kriess and Mandy Danger of the Living Dead Museum of course. They wanted to check things out and buy some of the fixtures or other things that might interest them, for the museum. You know the main reason I was there of course. Needless to say, I slid down that escalator, like seven times, it was awesome. I even slid down it in a full SWAT outfit, just like the guys wore in DAWN OF THE DEAD. I even got it on video, it’s on YouTube. I’ll provide a link at the end of this post.
Anyway, a lot happened that day, at one point I helped take apart the escalator, so that Kevin and I could keep some of the parts. It all would have been thrown out and trashed, so it wasn’t a big deal to take some of it. Kevin even paid a fee for the stuff that we took out of there.
Here’s a picture of me on that day, I had taken apart most of the one side of the escalator and I was moving to the other side of the escalator. I ended up taking home, two bottom pieces of the escalator side panel. The red arrows in the following picture are pointing to where they were, you can see the one with the red sticker that I have and where it clearly was.
Here’s another shot from the movie showing exactly where my pieces used to be on the escalator.
Kevin took most of the rest of the panel sides of the escalator, he sold some pieces over the years, and even still has some big pieces like mine in the Living Dead Museum to this day. Long story short, I ended up getting those two big bottom panels from the escalator, I also got two broken escalator steps from a nearby closet, I also got the metal sort of molding that held those panels into place on the escalator. I also got a sign from the ceiling above the top of the escalator and I got a big box of JC Penney’s blueprints from various renovations to the building over the years. It was super fun that day and so worth the trip up there.
That same day I also was able to visit the roof of the mall for the first time and I got to see the set of stairs used in the movie, that lead to the hideout of the main characters in DAWN OF THE DEAD, for the first time. It was a day of firsts. It was also Mandy’s birthday, so there was a lot going on.
The story doesn’t just end after all these events though, I still had to drive home 8 hours, I had work the next day in the evening. Yes, after all this excitement, I had to drive home that same day that I drove up there. I ended up leaving around 11pm that night and I got home around 7am. It was tough to drive up to Pittsburgh on little sleep, spend the day there, and then drive back home. That was at least 16 hours of driving, with a full day in Pittsburgh in between, it was super tough to handle, but I did it, and it was so worth it. I still have all those items that I collected that day. There is so much more that I could tell you about that day, but I think that I’ve said enough for now. It was a memorable trip to say the least.
Here’s a video of one of my slides down that beautiful, but long gone escalator…enjoy!
Each day this month I will be showing you something cool, rare, or even noteworthy concerning DAWN OF THE DEAD as a Christmas Present to the fans from me. I hope that you are enjoying this holiday look at DAWN OF THE DEAD.
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